“Once a friend asked Stonewall Jackson how he understood the Bible’s command to “pray without ceasing.”
Jackson said that the habit of prayer had become like breathing with him: “I have so fixed the habit in my own mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without lifting my heart to God in thanks and prayer for the water of life.
Then, when we take our meals, there is grace. Whenever I drop a letter in the post-office, I send a petition along with it for God’s blessing upon its mission and the person to whom it is sent. When I break the seal of a letter just received, I stop to ask God to prepare me for its contents, and make it a messenger of good.
When I go to my class-room and await the arrangement of the cadets in their places, that is my time to intercede with God for them. And so in every act of the day I have made the practice of prayer habitual.”
What a wonderful example!
1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing
For Christians, prayer should be like breathing. You do not have to think to breathe because the atmosphere exerts pressure on your lungs and essentially forces you to breathe. That is why it is more difficult to hold your breath than it is to breathe. Similarly, when we are born into the family of God, we enter into a spiritual atmosphere where God’s presence and grace exert pressure, or influence, on our lives. Prayer is the normal response to that pressure. As believers, we have all entered the divine atmosphere to breathe the air of prayer.