Here is my latest video update for Eastbrook Church as we navigate the time of COVID-19. I will continue to re-post these weekly video updates here at my blog for those who have not seen it or who are not part of our church but could use the encouragement. You can watch it here or at the Eastbrook Church Vimeo channel.

In this update I reference 1 Thessalonians 5:17, one of the shortest verses in the Bible:

 pray continually… (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

The word behind “continually” in the Greek is also used of things like a persistent cough. We are to be persistent in prayer or, as the New Living Translation renders it, “Never stop praying.”

The life of hearing God must continue into our lives beyond set times and places. Some of the best guides on this are two men from vastly different times: Brother Lawrence, a 17th century French monk, and Frank Laubach, a 20th century missionary and worldwide ambassador for literacy. Both of these men learned how to cultivate everyday conversation with God, both speaking and hearing. I would encourage you to read their books, Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God and Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic and Games with Minutes. Hearing God does not mean we withdraw from life but that we engage in life with God. We can begin to converse with God in the midst of our activities, work , and other conversations.

This serves as a counterbalance to set times of prayer, which I talked about last week in my video update. Fixed-hour prayer and Scripture reading overflows into conversational relationship with God in prayer, while conversation relationship with God in prayer fuels our fixed-hour meeting with God in Scripture and prayer.