To Fill All Things (3)

Be merciful to me, O Lord,
For I cry to You all day long.. Psalm 86.3

1s and 0s everywhere, all the time
The world—which Jesus rules and which He is filling with Himself—is a strange, wonderful, and sometimes spooky place.

Not long ago I downloaded the new operating system for Susie’s iPad. The longer the process took, the more I began to wonder about what in the world was going on during those 30 minutes or so. I had no idea. How was that new operating system getting to Susie’s iPad and then in her iPad working its wonders to transform the innards of that marvelous machine?

So I did what any sane person would do. I asked our son-in-law, David Durant.

David explained that the air around us is charged with particles of light, most of which we can’t see. That light, in the form of waves and photons, is always operating, going here and there, in and out, through and through, and almost nothing impedes it.

Now some people—engineers like David—have figured out how to tame certain frequencies of that light, teaching them to obey simple codes that reduce to 1s and 0s on a computer keyboard. Those codes can then be “written” to command certain kinds of behaviors on the part of material objects such as switches, turning them on or off as the code writer intends, and routing light and electrons here and there accordingly.

Still with me?

Then—and here’s the cool part—those engineers can send that stuff to Susie’s iPad, right through the air from the modem in my study to me, sitting in the family room.

Constant frequencies of light, captured and formed to convey information, impacting just the right places, can have powerful effects—even though we can’t see any of this happening.

And that, my friends, is what prayer is like.

Without ceasing
The apostle Paul’s ideal for prayer is, like the psalmist’s, that it should be continuous (1 Thess. 5.17). The spiritual “air” around us is charged with all kinds of activity. Spiritual beings inhabit that domain, and they carry on constant communications—angels with God, demons with the devil, and each with others as they struggle to control the spiritual air space of the cosmos.

People also contribute to that spiritual airspace, and, surprising as it may seem, we have the ability to code words and send them through the vast spiritual spaces of the cosmos and beyond the cosmos to the very throne room of Christ, where, when they are received, they wield real and surprising spiritual power (Jms. 5.16).

When we bend our increasingly Christ-filled minds, hearts, and consciences to the spiritual code-writing of prayer, we craft messages which shape the spiritual air as they course their way toward the Source of all living-water spiritual power, Who is filling all things with Himself. The more we pray with Christ-overflowing souls, the more we flood the spiritual airspace with the Lord, crowding out and sidelining those forces of wickedness which seek to jam those airwaves or fill them with spiritual disinformation.

And the less spiritual “airspace” the devil can command, the better for all of us.

So Paul, David, Jesus, and others in Scripture do not hesitate to exhort us to take as our ideal for prayer that we should practice prayer without ceasing, that we should maintain continuous spiritual communication with Him Who is the Source of all spiritual upgrades and Who is filling all things with Himself.

Is it possible?
We might ask whether it is actually possible to do nothing but pray all the time. But that’s not what it means to pray without ceasing. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Well, most of us. Why can’t we walk and pray at the same time? Or work and pray? Or enjoy our friends and pray? Because we’ve never learned to do so, that’s why.

Prayer without ceasing is a form of continuous conversation with God, like the “continuous conversation” of mutual love that exists within the triune Godhead. The angels help us in this effort, and so do departed saints. I don’t know how, exactly, and we don’t have any Scriptural warrant to pray to these glorious spiritual beings, but the Scriptures teach they have something to do with making our prayers presentable to God (cf. Rev. 4.8, 8.3, 4). The more we pray, the more we engage angels and departed saints in sanctifying and relaying those prayers to God, and the more both the Spirit and Jesus intercede to fill the spiritual air with holy conversation. Jesus conversation.

We pray without ceasing when prayer is the envelope in which we travel, the frequency that defines the orientation of our souls, and our first and continuous line of response to people, situations, events, and things. Jesus ever lives eternally to offer prayers to God on our behalf (Heb. 7.25). When we pray without ceasing, we unite the spiritual air of our lives with the unceasing prayers of our all-filling Christ and King.

For reflection
1. One a typical day, how often to you pray?

2. What’s one thing you could do to increase the amount of time you spend in prayer?

3. How would you expect to benefit from more prayer in your life?

Next steps—Preparation: Spend some time in prayer today, asking the Lord to show you what you can do to fill the spiritual airspace of your life with more prayer. Take hold of one solid suggestion and begin doing it every day.

T. M. Moore

Right now, from His throne in heaven, Jesus is filling all things with Himself. How is He doing that? Order a copy of our book, What in Heaven Is Jesus Doing on Earth? to learn more. Click here for the book or here for the PDF.

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Except as indicated, all Scriptures are taken from theNew King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.