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61 " When Jesus prays at Gethsemane “take this cup from me,” he is being real; Christians rush to “not my will, but yours be done” without first expressing their hearts (Luke 22:42, NIV). They submit so quickly that they disappear. Overspiritualizing prayer suppresses our natural desire that our house not be burning. When we stop being ourselves with God, we are no longer in real conversation with God. "
― Paul E. Miller , A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
62 " Your heart can become a prayer factory because, like Jesus, you are completely dependent. You needed God ten minutes ago; you need him now. Instead of hunting for the perfect spiritual state to lift you above the chaos, pray in the chaos. As your heart or your circumstances generate problems, keep generating prayer. You will find that the chaos lessens. "
63 " When I begin praying Christ into someone’s life, God often permits suffering in that person’s life. If Satan’s basic game plan is pride, seeking to draw us into his life of arrogance, then God’s basic game plan is humility, drawing us into the life of his Son. "
64 " The glib way people talk about prayer often reinforces our cynicism. We end our conversations with “I’ll keep you in my prayers.” We have a vocabulary of “prayer speak,” including “I’ll lift you up in prayer” and “I’ll remember you in prayer.” Many who use these phrases, including us, never get around to praying. Why? Because we don’t think prayer makes much difference. "
65 " Jesus wants us to be without pretense when we come to him in prayer. Instead, we often try to be something we aren’t. "
66 " We can’t do battle with evil without letting God destroy the evil in us as well. "
67 " Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. "
68 " Many Christians haven’t stopped believing in God; we have just become functional deists, living with God at a distance. "
69 " When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story—to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum, when we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships. "
70 " many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. "
71 " A praying life opens itself to an infinite, searching God. As we shall see, we can’t do that without releasing control, without constantly surrendering our will to God. “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) is actually scary. "
72 " Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. "
73 " Oddly enough, it took God to show us how not to be godlike. Jesus was the first person who didn’t seek independence. "
74 " Because cynicism misses the presence of the Shepherd, it reverses the picture in John 1 of light invading darkness. Like Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, cynicism looks too long into the Dark Lord’s crystal ball. Its attempt to unmask evil unwittingly enlarges evil. Increasingly, we are returning to the world of pre-Christian paganism, where evil seemingly has the loudest voice and the last word. "
75 " Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it. "
76 " Anxiety is unable to relax in the face of chaos; continuous prayer clings to the Father in the face of chaos. "
77 " To learn how to pray is to enter the world of a child, where all things are possible. "
78 " The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God. He is a person. "
79 " We become anxious when we take a godlike stance, occupying ourselves with things too great for us. "
80 " Because prayer is all about the relationship, we can't work on prayer as an isolated part of life. "