Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer.
Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer.
Sometimes words capture the imagination. When I was a young Christian, I used to listen to records that my grandmother listened to on her bed before she died of her illness, the KJV New Testament. It was a dynamic reading, and in Romans 12:12 the reading goes: “continuing instant in prayer.”
Like many words in the English language, they change over time in usage and definition, but in the days of the KJV, Authorized Version, 1611, while “instant” had a number of meanings in that translation of Scripture, this is the one cited for the Romans 12 passage on prayer quoted above:
Pressing; urgent; importunate; earnest.
I like the power of those words. Not just devotion or perseverance in prayer, although those terms are probably closer to the meaning of the Greek term, προσκαρτερεῖτε (SBL NT). The way it was read on those well-worn records helped capture my imagination. Naturally then, it was more or less something in my head, and only a sporadic practice probably at best.
I still take home the great value of simple devotion to and perseverance in prayer (CEB; NRSVue). This means you keep at it whether you feel like it or not, even when you don’t feel like doing it at all, and it seems as if you can hardly pray. No, you keep at it. But there are those times when it seems most urgent, and you want to press the matter to God and keep doing that. Those I consider opportune times of prayer, special times which God uses in pointed ways. I actually do think that God still pours out God’s Spirit in those ordinary times of prayer when we keep at it in faith. Let’s never despise the ordinary usual practice of prayer together weekly and day after day in our individual lives.
Jesus community 