Prayer Is Not a Thing to Do — It Is a Way to Be

Chaplain Elijah Farabee  ·  BWC UMM Annual Prayer-Revival: Peace on Earth

BWC Mission Center  ·  June 13, 2026

✦  ANCHOR SCRIPTURE  ✦

"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

— 2 Chronicles 7:14

On the morning of June 13, 2026, brothers from across the Baltimore-Washington Conference gathered at the BWC Mission Center for the Annual Prayer-Revival: Peace on Earth. Testimonies were shared. Hearts were opened. And then Chaplain Elijah Farabee stepped forward to deliver a message that reframed the very nature of prayer — not as something we do in sacred moments, but as the atmosphere in which we are called to live.

What follows is a summary of that message, drawn from the recorded transcript, offered here so that every man who could not be in that room — and every brother who was — can carry its truth into the week ahead.

The Air We Cannot Live Without

Chaplain Farabee opened by anchoring his message in a truth every person in the room had felt in their own chest: you can hold your breath for a while, but eventually your lungs will overpower you and force you to inhale the air that sustains you. There is no willpower strong enough to permanently refuse what the body requires.

He reached for the words of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, who wrote that God's command to pray without ceasing is founded on a necessity — that the soul requires God's grace the way the body requires air, and cannot survive one moment without it.

"Our souls need God the same way our bodies need air."

— Chaplain Elijah Farabee · BWC UMM Prayer-Revival, June 13, 2026

This was not poetry. It was diagnosis. When we treat prayer as optional — something we squeeze in when life allows — we are, spiritually speaking, holding our breath. And the cost accumulates silently, until it cannot be ignored.

Filled, Not Just Emptied

Many people approach prayer as a form of subtraction: removing worry, removing guilt, removing the weight of the day. Chaplain Farabee challenged that framing with two voices from Christian writing.

Author Skye Jethani, in What If Jesus Was Serious About Prayer?, observes that empty cups are all empty in the same way — but filled cups can be filled with an infinite number of things. To pray like Jesus, Jethani writes, is to be filled with the presence of God.

Henri Nouwen adds a crucial distinction: prayer is not thinking about God in contrast to the world, but spending time with God amidst the world. It is not escape. It is not emptying ourselves. It is positioning ourselves to be filled with all the fullness of God so that we carry His presence into everything we do.

"Prayer is not an emptying of ourselves or an escape from the world. It is a positioning of ourselves to be filled with all the fullness of God and to carry His presence into all we do."

— Henri Nouwen, as cited by Chaplain Farabee

The prayer revival that morning was beautiful. But Chaplain Farabee was clear: that room was not where prayer was meant to end. It was where it was meant to be renewed — so that it could travel back out into every home, every workplace, every relationship these men occupied.

Kings in the Field: The Lesson of Solomon

Chaplain Farabee then turned to King Solomon — and he was careful about how he did it. Solomon is, he noted, a polarizing figure. Some fixate on his wealth and his eventual stumble. Others elevate only his wisdom. But to camp on either end, Farabee said, is to miss the whole man — and to miss the thing God actually saw in him.

What moved God was not Solomon's lineage, not his talent, not his title. It was the posture of his heart. When God appeared to Solomon at Gibeon and said "ask what I should give to you," Solomon did not ask for riches, long life, or the defeat of his enemies. He asked for wisdom and knowledge — so that he could lead God's people well.

God's response is one of the most striking in all of scripture:

"Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked for possessions, wealth, honor, or the life of those who hate you, and have not even asked for long life, but have asked for wisdom and knowledge for yourself that you may rule my people — wisdom and knowledge are granted to you."

— 2 Chronicles 1:11–12

A king's role, Farabee reminded the room, was never just the throne. Kings governed the political, the social, the cultural, the moral, and the spiritual lives of their people. They were in the field, not just the palace. To lead in the name of God, Solomon had to carry God into every space — and prayer was how that indwelling was maintained.

Solomon's greatest construction project — the Temple — was built with precision and devotion to honor God with the best human hands could offer. And when it was complete, Solomon did not retreat to pray privately. He stood before the entire assembly of Israel, knelt on a bronze platform, spread his hands toward heaven, and prayed aloud. His dependence on God was not a private matter. He brought it into the room.

"Prayer is not just the moments we spend on our knees. It is also how our feet move into different places."

— Chaplain Elijah Farabee

The application was direct: brothers, you are kings too. Not by crown, but by calling. Every baptized believer is called to minister — which means the space you govern, your home, your job, your relationships, your community, requires God in it. The question is whether your prayer life makes that possible.

Communication vs. Communion: What Mother Teresa Understood

Perhaps the most quietly powerful moment of the message came when Chaplain Farabee recounted an exchange between Mother Teresa and a journalist.

The journalist asked: "When you pray, what do you say to God?"

She replied: "I don't say anything. I listen."

The journalist pressed: "When God speaks to you, what does He say?"

She replied: "He doesn't say anything. He listens."

And when the journalist's confusion was obvious, she concluded: "If you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you."

This is the distinction between communication and communion. Communication has words and pauses and turns. Communion is a stream that never stops — from the side of your bed, into your car, into every room you enter. When you rise from your knees and lower your hands, the prayer does not end. It becomes movement. It becomes the way your life is lived in awareness of God's presence.

This is what Paul meant in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 when he wrote to pray without ceasing — not that every waking moment is spoken prayer, but that we walk in such constant communion with the Holy Spirit that we never truly step outside of it.

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances — for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

— 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

Two Students Who Prove It

Chaplain Farabee closed his teaching with two testimonies from his campus ministry — both shared with the students' full permission.

Kennedy

Kennedy was deeply involved in campus ministry — but hiding failing grades from her chaplain because she wanted him to be proud. After an honest conversation and a committed season of genuine prayer beyond just the weekly gatherings, she made the Dean's List. More than the grades, though, everything changed: her energy, her attitude, the friendships she chose to invest in, her output in every area of life. She stopped performing faith. She started living in it.

Elijah

Elijah loves Jesus with an intensity that is sometimes overwhelming and always contagious. He walked through a season of devastating, layered loss — the kind that makes even strong believers question everything. And yet, in the depths of grief, Elijah felt an unexpected unction to praise rather than lament. Not because his pain wasn't real. But because a life built on prayer had laid something underneath him before the storm arrived, and when grief came, the stream was already flowing.

"There is true, transformative, delivering, freeing power in prayer when we practice it."

— Chaplain Elijah Farabee

Farabee was careful not to reduce prayer to a vending machine. These weren't stories about getting things from God. They were stories about what happens to a person — their character, their peace, their direction — when prayer stops being a task on a list and becomes the air they breathe.

The Word That Went Home With Them

Chaplain Farabee concluded with Romans 12:12 — Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer — and then offered the nine words that summed up everything:

"Think of prayer as a way to lead — not a thing to do."

— Chaplain Elijah Farabee · Closing Appeal

It's when we lift our hands and when we move our feet. It's when we're silent and when we speak. It's in the invitation extended to a brother who needs to be in a room like this one. All of it, together, is prayer without ceasing. And prayer without ceasing, multiplied across the lives of men on fire for Jesus Christ, is how a land gets healed.

✦  CLOSING PRAYER  ✦

As spoken by Chaplain Farabee at the BWC Mission Center, June 13, 2026

"Heavenly Father, we thank You for these men that You have called for such a time as this. May Your Holy Spirit and the unction to pray without ceasing be alive in their lives — no matter their circumstances, their age, their heart posture. May we embody prayer as men so much that light radiates from us, Lord. And people would see You in us and say, I want some of that. Not for what You can give me, God, but for how You can change me, mold me, make me a blessing to other people. For Your glory, Lord. For You said — should You be lifted up, You will draw all men unto You. In Jesus' name we pray."

AMEN.

Baltimore-Washington Conference  ·  United Methodist Men  ·  BWCUMM.org

Annual Prayer-Revival: Peace on Earth  ·  June 13, 2026  ·  BWC Mission Center

Message by Chaplain Elijah Farabee  ·  Scripture: 2 Chronicles 7:14