Pray without ceasing

Greetings:

I am becoming more and more aware of the importance of prayer in my walk with God.

But what does it mean in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 when it says we are to pray without ceasing? How is that possible?

To me, praying without ceasing means several things.

We need to have a personal spirit of dependence on prayer. Even when we are not speaking consciously to God in prayer, there is a deep personal dependence on him that is woven into our heart through faith. 

In that way, we have the spirit of prayer continuously.
I believe praying without ceasing means praying repeatedly and often. 

Look at Romans 1:9 (NIV), where Paul says, "God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you.”
Now we can be sure that Paul did not mention the Romans every minute of his prayers. He prayed about many other things. But he mentioned them over and over and often. So "without ceasing" doesn't mean that verbally or mentally we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day. But we should pray over and over and often. 

We are not talking about repetitive prayers written in a book. We are mean heart-felt, heart-born, heart-serious prayers.

Our mental mindset should first be: "O God . . ." I think praying without ceasing means not giving up on prayer. Don't ever come to a point in your life where you cease to pray at all. Never abandon the God of hope. 

So the key to delight in the Word of God is to pray continually - that is, to lean on God all the time. Never give up looking to him for help, and come to him repeatedly during the day and night.
I think it would be good to notice here that in real life some discipline in regular prayer times helps keep this kind of spontaneity alive. We should have a disciplined regular meeting with God. 
That time is what works for you. 

Your 'prayer time' will be different than mine, but it is essential that we set aside a personal time to praise him, honor him with our request and then listen to him. Slow down and listen to God's instructions, his lessons and what your steps need to be.

In the Old Testament we read that Daniel had some remarkable communion or prayer time with God when it was critically needed, even when the decree was passed that no one could pray except to the king, under penalty of death. But what did Daniel do, according to Daniel 6:10 (NIV), “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”

Daniel was committed to prayer no matter what. 

Do we have the same commitment?

We are to pray in order to have the delight in God and his Word that will keep us meditating and fruitful and durable and spiritually prosperous and healthy.
What do we pray to keep the fires of delight in God's Word burning?

For many of us our hearts incline more to the computer or the TV than the Word of God. We should plead with God that he reaches in and change our inclinations, our hearts so that we love to read and meditate on the testimonies of God.

We need to pray that we have spiritual eyes to see great and wonderful things in the Word, so that their desires and delights would be sustained by truth, by reality. Psalm 119:18 (NIV) says, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.”

If we are going to be inclined to the Word and stay with it and delight in it and meditate on it, we must see more than dull facts, we must see "wonderful things." 
We must see that God's Word is alive. That is the work of the Spirit to give you a mind to see great things for what they really are. Prayer and the Word of God are tied together. The Word is the means God uses to fill our minds and hearts with truth about him that makes us fruitful and durable in drought and prosperous into eternity. 

Nobody becomes like a tree planted by water by prayer alone. It is by the delighting in the Word and meditating on it continually that we grow.

Be blessed.