"Out"

Keep the channel open.

I grew up thinking of the term “amen” as a switch which closed a conversation with God. When you said amen, He knew you were through communication with Him, and you could get back to the mundanities of life.

Veterans know military radio communications have a special shorthand, because information needs to be transmitted quickly for many reasons. For example, “over,” means it is your turn to talk, “wilco” means “I will comply,” and “out” means the conversation is over. These are known as prowords. (Never say “over and out,” even if they do in the movies.)

As a child “Amen” meant “out.”

Yet, when Jesus in the Gospels said “verily, verily,” or “truly, truly,” he was using the Hebrew word “amen.” He was not finished speaking, he was beginning. He was affirming the validity of what He was about to say.

It is the way we end formal prayers, but we ought never think of our prayers as being terminals. Formal prayers are visible expressions of our continual experience with God.

The term is an affirmation of truth and an imperative way of saying, “Let it be so.”

Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17), but he did not mean me should be weird or showy. God would not have us disengaged continually from daily life. He wants us to focus on our jobs, families and the many other aspects which we must do well to bring glory to God and our neighbors to Christ. We have evidence of this throughout Scripture.

Paul knew the power, pleasure and piety of prayer, and so commanded us to be incessantly in an attitude of prayer. We give up any pretense to privacy with Him, a privacy we never had. God never stops listening, and neither should we. He will never leave the conversation when we pray without ceasing.

How do we focus on the business of living while keeping the radio tuned to the Commander’s frequency? I have never known anyone whose every word was a prayer exclusively to God. I have met a few who lived a life of God-consciousness. Their actions and words, no matter how mundane, were as if The Almighty were listening along.

If we think of prayer as a paragraph beginning with addressing God and ending with “amen,” we will never achieve incessant prayer.

How do we avoid saying “out” to God?

First, notice how Paul sandwiches the command to incessant prayer between commands to “rejoice evermore” (verse 16) and to “give thanks in everything,” (verse 18). I knew someone who claimed he had given thanks to God for every drink of water, and I believed him. His life exuded persistent joy. Never-ending rejoicing and pervasive thanksgiving require constant prayer. When we really believe what we are praying, it also improves our moods.

Next, cultivate continuous worship. The songs running through our minds could be hymns and choruses. A phrase in someone’s speech could remind us of a Scripture verse.

Something my readers may not know, I love militaria. I find parallels in spiritual warfare in field manuals and stories from battles. Thinking God’s thoughts after Him creates a continual awareness of His presence.

Other enterprises demand our attention, and rightly so. We all interact with others, whether it be a spouse, a boss, a friend or a stranger. Telling a coworker how much potassium hydroxide to put into a batch of chemicals does not require as much discernment as calming an angry customer, but the Holy Spirit does not leave the room for either conversation.

Life provides cues for direct prayers. The wail of a siren, a laughing child, the scene of an accident, a homeless person at an intersection.

Enjoy God’s presence. Realize God speaks and listens at “red lights.”

Instead of worrying about an issue, we can pray. In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus uses the figure of an unjust judge who, after being exhausted by a persistent woman asking for justice, finally acquiesced, just to silence her. Prayer is not only an elixir of joy and holiness, but also a channel of power.

Prayer is not always talking to God or Him talking to us. Sometimes it involves waiting. Another proword used in radio communications is “standby.” Sometimes we must await an answer… standby. Sometimes God would speak to us… if we were only standing by.

“Prayer is not only an elixir of joy and holiness, but also a channel of power.”

Often the answer is “wait, no, or rephrase the question.” This is too often our copout when we are tired of waiting or do not fully grasp the complexity of the situation. These are, however, answers we must be ready and willing to accept.

If we have nothing to say, we must always pray, “Father, be glorified in the Son,” (John 14:13). This is the spirit with which we can pray without ceasing. Father, bring me to that place where Jesus is glorified in everything I think and do.

A prayer started at a red light will continue when the light turns green.

When I was in the Army, a colleague of mine was talking on the radio with the commanding officer and used the proword “out” before the commander did. My lieutenant immediately corrected him, “Never ‘out’ a higher,” he said. Never hang up on a superior officer.

There is no one higher than our God in three persons. He will never hang up on us, let us not hang up on Him.