Before Unceasing Prayer, There Is Unceasing Grace

I have been sitting for quite a while with the Sixth Meeting in The Pilgrim Continues His Way.

The Skhimnik is teaching the Professor and the Pilgrim about the mystery of salvation as revealed through unceasing prayer. There is much here that speaks deeply to me.

I believe prayer is essential.

I believe Paul when he says, “Pray without ceasing.”

I believe there is great wisdom in the Jesus Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

And yet, as I continued reading, something began troubling me.

I kept hearing about what I must do.

Pray.

Pray constantly.

Discipline the mind.

Develop the habit.

Call upon the name of Jesus.

Grow in virtue.

Do good works.

Persevere.

There is truth in all of that. But I found myself asking:

Where is grace?

Then I noticed something that I had almost passed over.

The Skhimnik says that the Holy Spirit stirs and woos us into prayer.

There it was.

Grace.

And suddenly I began hearing his teaching differently.

Before I Pray, God Is Already at Work

I learned years ago to picture grace as a house.

Prevenient grace is the porch.

Before I ever enter the house, the Holy Spirit is already wooing me from the street, drawing me toward the porch.

I do not create that grace.

I do not earn it.

I do not make God notice me by praying enough.

God moves first.

Grace brings me to the porch.

Grace brings me to the door.

But grace does not force me through it.

I must respond.

And now I think I understand more clearly where the Jesus Prayer belongs.

I stand at the door and pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

That prayer does not purchase my entrance.

It does not earn salvation.

It is my response of faith to the grace that has already brought me there.

I open the door.

I cross the threshold.

Justifying grace.

And then I discover something wonderful.

The threshold was never the destination.

There is a whole house in which to live.

That is sanctifying grace.

We begin as children and grow in grace.

Grace Teaches Me to Pray

This is where the Skhimnik’s teaching about unceasing prayer becomes even more meaningful to me.

Prayer cannot simply be another religious work I perform in order to become acceptable to God.

Paul writes in Romans 8 that we do not even know how to pray as we ought.

Think about that.

We don’t know how to pray.

So what does God do?

The Spirit helps us in our weakness.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t merely tell me that I ought to pray and then stand back to see whether I can figure it out.

The Holy Spirit teaches me to pray.

And perhaps my first lesson is the simplest prayer of all:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

It echoes the prayer of the publican in Jesus’ parable:

God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

There is no boasting there.

No spiritual accomplishment.

No list of good works.

No claim that I have mastered prayer.

There is simply recognition:

I need mercy.

And there is response:

I am willing to receive it.

From Mercy to Relationship

Once I enter the house, however, prayer does not end.

It grows because I am growing in grace.

The child who first learns to pray,

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,

can eventually begin praying,

Lord Jesus Christ, teach me to see.

Then:

Lord Jesus Christ, heal what is wounded. Change me.

And:

Lord Jesus Christ, be present with me.

Prayer becomes more than asking God for things.

Prayer becomes relationship.

Sometimes prayer even becomes silence—sitting quietly and allowing the Spirit, the Breath of God, to fill us.

We learn to listen.

We learn to receive.

We learn to abide.

Unceasing Prayer Is Not an Incantation

This distinction matters because even something as beautiful as the Jesus Prayer can be misunderstood.

If I believe that repeating certain words often enough will somehow produce spiritual power, prayer begins to resemble an incantation.

But the power is not in the formula.

The power is not in getting every word exactly right.

The power is not in reaching a certain number of repetitions.

The power is not mine at all.

Prayer is relationship.

The Jesus Prayer does not bring an absent God near.

God is already near.

The Holy Spirit has already been wooing me.

Grace has already been working.

When I pray,

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,

I am responding to the God who has already turned toward me in love.

That makes prayer a means of grace, not a method for manufacturing grace.

And Then Comes the Fruit

As that relationship deepens, something begins happening within me.

I begin to change.

I begin to see differently.

Wounds begin to heal.

My desires begin to change.

I begin wanting to love as God loves.

And then come the good works.

James is right: faith without works is dead.

But salvation is not the reward God gives me because I have accumulated enough good works.

The works are fruit.

Jesus said that the branch bears fruit by abiding in the vine.

Paul called love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control the fruit of the Spirit.

The fruit grows because there is life within the relationship.

Grace produces the harvest.

The Mystery Begins Earlier Than I Thought

So I do not think I need to reject what the Skhimnik is teaching.

I think I needed to listen more deeply.

His statement that the Holy Spirit stirs and woos us into prayer may unlock everything else he is saying.

The mystery of unceasing prayer does not begin with my determination to pray without ceasing.

It begins with God.

God initiates.
The Spirit woos.
Grace awakens.
I respond.

At the door I pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

I cross the threshold.

And then the Spirit begins teaching this child how to live in the house.

How to see.

How to listen.

How to be healed.

How to change.

How to love.

How to sit silently in the presence of God.

How to bear fruit.

And slowly, prayer becomes less like something I stop everything else to do and more like the relationship within which I live everything else.

Perhaps that is what “pray without ceasing” ultimately means.

The Skhimnik is teaching me about unceasing prayer.

Grace is teaching me where unceasing prayer begins.

Before there is unceasing prayer, there is unceasing grace.

The Spirit woos.

The child responds:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

And the School of Prayer begins.