---
title: 'Stonewall Jackson on What it Means to be ‘Instant in Prayer’'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2022-09-11
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2022-stonewall-jackson-on-what-it-means-to-be-instant-in-prayer
---

# Stonewall Jackson on What it Means to be ‘Instant in Prayer’

“This same friend once asked him what was his understanding of the Bible command to be ‘instant in prayer’ and to ‘pray without ceasing.’ ‘I can give you,’ he said, ‘my idea of it by illustration, if you will allow it, and will not think that I am setting myself up as a model for others. I have so fixed the habit in my own mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without lifting my heart to God in thanks and prayer for the water of life. Then, when we take our meals, there is the grace. Whenever I drop a letter in the post-office, I sent a petition along with it for God’s blessing upon its mission and the person to whom it is sent. When I break the seal of a letter just received, I stop to ask God to prepare me for its contents, and make it a messenger of good. When I go to my class-room and await the arrangements of the cadets in their places, that is my time to intercede with God for them. And so in every act of the day I have made the practice habitual.’

‘And don’t you sometimes forget to do this?’ asked his friend.

‘I can hardly say that I do; the habit has become almost as fixed as to breathe.’” — [Mary Anna Jackson](/authors/mary-anna-morrison-jackson), *Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (*[*Stonewall Jackson*](/authors/thomas-jonathan-stonewall-jackson)*)* (1892), pp. 72-73