Everyone is called to continual prayer but not everyone prays continually.  Do you walk through your day with an attitude of prayer or do you resort to prayer only when some test or trial drops you to your knees? Our prayer lives reveal how much we depend on God and how much we depend on ourselves. God wants us to trust Him instead of our own understanding. When we communicate continually with God throughout our day in prayer, we honor God by showing Him where our trust lies and we can be assured that He will show us our next step.

According to the Gospel Coalition:

• The Bible mentions prayer 650 times
• The Bible records God’s answer to prayer 450 times
• The Bible shows us 25 instances of Jesus praying during His earthly ministry
• The Bible records Paul discussing prayer 41 times

The Bible is our instruction manual for living a life of victory. Like with any instruction manual, we shouldn’t ignore, or skip-over instructions that the “instructor” considers important enough to repeat. Let’s say you’re assembling a desk but choose to ignore the repeated instruction to check that the pieces face the right direction; you shouldn’t be surprised when the desk drawers won’t open and close the way they were designed (OK, there may be a desk in my house like this…). How is not following the instructions of the Bible any different? If the Bible repeatedly instructs us to pray and we ignore these instructions, we shouldn’t be surprised when our lives don’t “operate” according to God’s plan and design.

If the number of times the Bible talks about prayer doesn’t convince us of its importance, then maybe this will: Jesus, the Son of God, and Paul, the man who wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament prayed continually and instruct us to pray continually.

Jesus…

“went up on the mountain by Himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23), “…spent the whole night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12), “in the early morning…got up… went away to a secluded place and was praying there” (Mark 1:35),” and fell on His face and prayed” (Matthew 26:39).

Paul….

tells us to “pray continually” (1st Thess. 5:16), “devote [our]selves to prayer” (Colossians 4:2), “be…faithful in prayer” (Romans 12:12), and “…in everything, by prayer and petition…present [o]ur requests to God” (Philippians 4:6-7).

We are to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1). Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) therefore we should imitate Jesus. Paul imitated Jesus and encouraged us to do the same (1 Corinthians 11:1). We know that Jesus prayed continually and was in constant communication with His Father. We know He did nothing without first speaking with His Father. As imitators of Christ, we should do the same: we should pray continually, be in constant communication with our Father and do nothing without first praying.  When we follow the instructions that our designer gave us, we can be assured that we will have the victory that He promised us!