AIR

PRAY WITHOUT CEASING
1st Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing. (18) In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
I noticed the sign by a gas station. Now you have to pay for air for your tires from these stations. There was a time when places that sold gas were called service stations and they lived up to the name. You could pull up to the gas pumps, and at least one person and sometimes several would come out to your car and pump your gas, clean your windshield and check the air pressure in your tires. If you needed air it was free.
It is still a little hard for me to accept the fact that people charge you for air. I know that air is precious. Without air we would suffocate and die.
This is not news to you. It is something that everyone knows. You have to breathe to stay alive. Did you ever think about what it takes to stay alive spiritually. Prayer to the spirit is like air to the body. When we fail to pray we fail begin to suffocate spiritually.
One of the worst memories I have is of having congestive heart failure and having to struggle to breath. Even though I was pretty well sedated I can remember the struggle and having to fight for every breath. It was a truly miserable feeling. I have also had times in my spiritual life where I had to struggle to pray. They were times when I had let my prayer life falter and was not as close to God as I should have been. I wanted to pray, I needed to pray, but I had to force myself to pray. It was even a more terrible experience than the congestive heart failure.
Prayer is something that comes much easier if we do it continuously. Sometimes we might not know how to pray or what to pray for but I think it is important for us to pray. We certainly want to breathe without ceasing, so we should want to pray without ceasing. And God doesn't charge us for either the air, or the prayer.