Pray Without Ceasing: What?

The National Prayer Breakfast was held last week (February 4) in Washington, D.C. where Speaker of the House Paul Ryan encouraged those in attendance to follow the Apostle Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing. Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review reported on the event. Following is an excerpt focused on this year's event and Ryan's comments. You can read her entire report, which includes a reference to a memorable address by Mother Teresa in 1994, at National Review online.

I’ve always had a little bit of mixed feelings about the National Prayer Breakfast, which this year was held this morning just a stone’s throw from the White House at the Washington Hilton. In a country that needs to pray more, we give speeches about it.. . .

This morning, as some others before him, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made good use of the time. He pushed back on the idea that prayer isn’t action.

You’ll remember the Daily News cover, of course. Full disclosure: I actually think it was a little bit of a mirror for believers: Do we really pray or do we just give it lip service (including in an annual Washington establishment breakfast)? Prayer is not meant to be a platitude. It is for encounter and relationship with God. It means something. Prayer is a power we have that we don’t always use, relying on ourselves and forgetting to give praise and glory to God, and truly trust Him with our lives — and His grand plan.

My response to the Daily News cover was to try to pray more.

That said, we obviously live in a culture that tends to think of prayer as a crutch, as a matter of nostalgia, as a nice thing to do or say, but not our lifeblood.

So it was a great blessing to hear Paul Ryan push back against that.

He said:

I have noticed a growing impatience with prayer in our culture. You see it in the papers or on Twitter. When people say they’re praying for someone or something, the attitude in some quarters seems to be, “Don’t just pray; do something about it.” But the thing is, when you are praying, you are doing something about it. You are revealing the presence of God. Whenever people are in grief or even when they’re about to start a great undertaking, they feel the worst pain of all: They feel alone. How am I going to get through this? Why is this happening to me? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

That is why there is nothing more comforting—or more humbling, really—than to hear someone say, “I’m praying for you.” Because when hear you that, you realize, you’re not alone. God is there. And hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of people are all speaking to Him on your behalf. They’re not praying for some abstract notion. They’re praying for you the person. It says a lot about our country that people of both parties—and all faiths—will drop everything and pray for their fellow Americans. What it says is, we believe in the dignity of the individual. And that is why prayer should always come first.

All Americans believe this. But as Christians, we especially can appreciate this truth. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe God came down from heaven and became a man—with a name and a body—so we could know him. We could begin to understand. He walked among the poor and lowly of this world so he could raise us to new heights in the next. It is a miracle. It inspires us every day. And that is why we should “rejoice always”; “pray without ceasing”; and “in all circumstances, give thanks.”

After saying a word about “the plight of persecuted Christians around the world.”

I want to welcome all of you to Washington. You could not have come for a better reason. This breakfast is a national tradition because prayer is a part of our national heritage. It all goes back to the Declaration of Independence. We believe our rights come from God, and our job, as officeholders, is to protect those rights. So it is only natural we should ask for His guidance as we seek to do His will.

If you’re frustrated about politics today — or anything else — pray. Unceasingly — on our knees and with the offering our very lives. 

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online. She is co-author of the new revised and updated edition of How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice (available from Our Sunday Visitor and Amazon.com). Sign up for her weekly newsletter here.

Read the entire report at National Review online.

A video of the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, including comments by President Obama, Speaker of the House Ryan and others, is available at C-SPAN.

The next day, National Review carried an interview that Kathryn Jean Lopez conducted with Gary Jensen, author of the new book The 15-Minute Prayer Solution: How One Percent of Your Day Can Transform Your Life. Read our excerpt at Pray Without Ceasing: How or the full interview at National Review online.