Pray Without Ceasing: The Untapped Power That Makes You Unstoppable

Excerpted from 10 Principles of Godly Leadership.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18).

Each of us needs to have a personal relationship with the Lord where we “pray without ceasing.”

I go walking a lot. On a typical day, I may walk over five miles in the morning. During those walks, I’ll pray and commune with the Lord. But that’s not the only time during my day that I do something like that.

If I’m driving, I’ll listen to teaching or praise music, and I’ll be worshiping God. I’ve even gotten to the point that when I’m sleeping, I’m dreaming about the things of the Lord. I am just trying to be in communion with Him.

When you prioritize your relationship with God, you will become someone He can use. He’ll promote you in your job and at your church and do things in your life that He will want to replicate in the lives of others. If He can use you as an example to point people in the right direction, He will put you in leadership.

Everything that you need to know to be a godly leader will come out of your relationship with God. He will speak to you and tell you things like, “This isn’t the right way to represent Me. You need to do this instead.” He will show you the things you need to do. I can tell you that is true just from my own personal testimony.

Over the course of my life, I’ve made decisions that didn’t look like they were very important at the time. They were just things that the Lord put on my heart. They came out of my relationship with Him. And when I followed God’s leading, supernatural results happened.

I believe that unless you are a faithful follower of Jesus, you’re going to make a poor leader. If you want to be a godly leader, you’ve got to make your relationship with God a priority. There are going to be a lot of demands placed upon you and your time. If you deviate from putting Jesus first and deal with all of these things on your own, Satan can use that to choke your leadership. You just won’t be as effective.

It’s like flying. A plane needs constant application of thrust and lift in order to fly. The moment you turn off the engines, that plane starts dropping. It may take a period of time before you hit the ground, but you’ve got to keep that power going if you want to stay in the air.

In a similar way, you’ve got to keep your relationship with God constant. Any time you let anything—the position that God has given you or even your ministry—take away from your personal relationship with God, you’re cutting off the power. You’re going to start sinking.

Servant to All

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant (Matthew 23:11).

Christians should operate differently than the world. In the world system, people exercise dominion and authority in an ungodly way (Matt. 20:25 and Mark 10:42), but among believers, it shouldn’t be so (Matt. 20:26–27 and Mark 10:43–44). The one who’s going to be greatest must be servant of all.

Jesus illustrated this when He took off His outer garments, girded Himself with a towel, and went around washing His disciples’ feet—a job that slaves did (John 13:4–16). And they were offended! Peter said, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” But Jesus responded, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me” (John 13:8). So, Peter eventually gave in and said, “Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head” (John 13:9).

Jesus served others. He said, “I’m the master, and yet here I am serving you. I’m giving you an example. This is the way it should be with other people” (John 13:13–15). This is because He was constantly in fellowship with His Father and put His Father’s will first (Luke 22:42).

Next to Jesus, Joseph may be the greatest example of godly leader- ship in the Bible. When you read his story in Genesis, it looks like everything in his life was on a downward trajectory. God gave him dreams as a young man, where he was shown that he would be in a position of authority and his family would bow down to him (Gen. 37:5–11).

After that, Joseph’s brothers threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery (Gen. 37:23–28). He was falsely accused by his master’s wife and thrown into prison (Gen. 39:7–20). Even after he correctly interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s butler and baker, he was forgotten for a time (Gen. 40:23). Despite all these things, Joseph held on to his relationship with God.

When the butler and baker were cast into prison, Joseph was charged with their care, and the Bible says, “he served them” (Gen. 40:4). That’s amazing. There was Joseph, who could have been sitting there feeling sorry for himself after all the things that had happened to him, but he was serving others instead.

Joseph put his relationship with God first and became a servant of all. And because of that, when the butler remembered what Joseph had done for him, Joseph was called to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. He went from prison to second in command of the most powerful nation on earth within a few hours’ time (Gen. 41:9–45).

Christians are different, and we need to lead differently. There needs to be godly leaders—people who put their relationship with God ahead of everything else.

God Values You

In Revelation 2:1–3, Jesus tells John to write about the pastor of the Ephesian church, saying,

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

This is exceptional. Most of us would love to have this spoken by the Lord about our leadership. This pastor was a hard worker. He was laboring. He had dealt with errors. He was shepherding the people God gave him. Everything Jesus said here was good, but then He said in verses 4–5,

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candle- stick out of his place, except thou repent.

Here was a man who was doing all of these good things at Ephesus, but Jesus was telling him, “You may be straight as a gun barrel, but you’re twice as empty.” Jesus was telling this pastor that he didn’t have a strong personal relationship with God.

“Thou hast left thy first love,” Jesus said. And if this man didn’t repent, even though he was doing a lot of good things, Jesus was going to take that candlestick away. In the first chapter of Revelation, we learn that the word “candlestick” was talking about church. In other words, the Lord was going to lead those people someplace else.

You see, the Lord is more concerned about us and our personal relationship with Him than He is about what we do for Him. This is the foundation of the Christian life, and if you don’t get the foundation right, anything you build on it is also going to be faulty (Matt. 7:24–27). It’ll be susceptible to falling down and not lasting.

Relationship with God is not something you can bypass on your way to being a leader. In the world, most people are goal oriented. But if all your focus is on those goals, you’ll be missing God.

Leadership is not about accomplishing things. You may be doing all kinds of good things, like the pastor at Ephesus, but if you are not grounded in a relationship with God, you will not be a godly leader. Whatever kingdom you are building outside of God’s kingdom will not last.