Home > Work > A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
41 " Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary. Money can do what prayer does, and it is quicker and less time-consuming. Our trust in ourselves and in our talents makes us structurally independent of God. As a result, exhortations to pray don’t stick. "
― Paul E. Miller , A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
42 " We're trying to be spiritual, to get it right. We know we don't need to clean up our act in order to become a Christian, but when it comes to praying, we forget that. We, like adults, try to fix ourselves up. In contrast, Jesus wants us to come to him like little children, just as we are. "
43 " Don't try to get the prayer right; just tell God where you are and what's on your mind. "
44 " Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life. "
45 " All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. "
46 " Imagine a husband who really loves his wife. He is attentive to her needs. He listens to her heart. He is her best earthly gift. How would she react if he said to her, “Don’t ask me for anything. I’m your best gift.” When I’ve said this at our prayer seminars, everyone bursts into laughter. The husband’s love for his wife is not disengaged from responding thoughtfully and generously to her requests. If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God’s best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. "
47 " Prayer isn't meant to be a production or a problem... Prayer is meant to be the conversation where your life and your God meet. "
48 " get the words out. Feel free to stop and pray now. It’s okay if your mind wanders or your prayers get interrupted. Don’t be embarrassed by how needy your heart is and how much it needs to cry out for grace. Just start praying. Remember the point of Christianity isn’t to learn a lot of truths so you don’t need God anymore. We don’t learn God in the abstract. We are drawn into his life. Become like a little child—ask, believe, "
49 " It is striking how many spiritual writers react to the specificity of real prayer. It runs deeper than Greek Neoplatonism and the influence of Buddhist spirituality. Frankly, God makes us nervous when he gets too close. We don’t want a physical dependence on him. It feels hokey, like we are controlling God. Deep down we just don’t like grace. We don’t want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God. To embrace the Father and thus prayer is to accept what one pastor called “the sting of particularity.”4 Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence. "
50 " If you know that you, like Jesus, can’t do life on your own, then prayer makes complete sense. "
51 " We tell ourselves, “Strong Christians pray a lot. If I were a stronger Christian, I’d pray more.” Strong Christians do pray more, but they pray more because they realize how weak they are. They don’t try to hide it from themselves. Weakness is the channel that allows them to access grace. "
52 " The only way to know how prayer works is to have complete knowledge and control of the past, present, and future. In other words, you can figure out how prayer works if you are God. "
53 " All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God. But that is not the only reason he tells us to ask anything. God wants to give us good gifts. He loves to give. In the parable of the persistent "
54 " Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life; it offersus aless busy heart. "
55 " ...Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"(Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with you wandering mind. Come messy. "
56 " At the center of self-will is me, carving a world in my image. At the center of prayer is God, carving me in his Son’s image. "
57 " PRAYER IS WHERE I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend. "
58 " If the miracle comes too quickly, there is no room for discovery, for relationship. "
59 " When we suffer, we long for God to speak clearly, to tell us the end of the story and, most of all, to show himself. But if he showed himself fully and immediately, if he answered all the questions, we’d never grow; we’d never emerge from our chrysalis because we’d be forever dependent. Jill was profoundly changed in her twenty-year wait. If God had instantly explained everything to her and healed Kim, that change would not have taken place. No one works like him. He is such a lover of souls. "
60 " Alan Jacobs, in his biography of C. S. Lewis, reflected that “those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without selfforgetfulness there can be no delight. "