BOOK: Paul Miller - A Praying Life

Chapter 1: What good does it do?

This chapter asks the question in the title about prayer. Miller identifies with a lot of our prayer-weariness and struggles to believe in prayer. He starts the chapter with a story of one of his daughters searching for her contact lens on the grass. When he suggests that they pray, she bursts into tears 'what good does it do?' she bawls, 'I've been asking God to help Kim to speak for a long time now, and still she can't' Kim is one of Paul's daughters who was born with several disabilities including severe autism.

Miller's advice in this chapter on how we need to rethink prayer is very helpful and refreshing. To begin with he points out how strange it is that we have an inbuilt desire to pray, that everyone who's ever lived looks to God at some point in their lives, but none of us find praying easy. On this observation he comments:

Something is wrong with us. Our natural desire to pray comes from Creation. We are made in the image of God. Our inability to pray comes from the Fall. Evil has marred the image. We want to talk to God but can't. The friction of our desire to pray, combined with our badly damaged prayer antennae leads to constant frustrations. It's as if we've had a stroke.

This is similar to something he concludes with in the final chapters when he says about Kim that 'when you're disabled, nothing feels natural at first' and then likens that to prayer since we're all born 'disabled' spiritually speaking.

On the effect of modern life on prayer:

America is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray. We are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. But prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time. Every bone in our bodies screams, 'Get to work.'

When we aren't working, we are used to being entertained. Television, the internet, video games, and cell phones make free time as busy as work. When we do slow down, we slip into a stupor. Exhausted by the pace of life, we veg out in front of a screen or with earplugs.

If we try to be quiet, we are assaulted by what C.S. Lewis called 'the Kingdom of Noise.' Everywhere we go we hears background noise. If the noise isn't provided for us, we can bring our own via iPod.

Even our church services can have that same restless energy. There is little space to be still before God. We want our money's worth, so something should always be happening. We are uncomfortable with silence.

A further observation on another prayer-killer:

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. 

He imagines going to see a 'prayer therapist'. The therapist asks him 'what does it mean that you are a son or daughter of God?' to which we reply with a theologically truthful answer:

The therapist smiles and says, 'That is right. You've done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him? 

With this he begins at a diagnoses to our problem, namely that we don't have a close or intimate relationship with our Father in heaven.

The chapter ends with God answering their prayer to find Ashley's contact lens. God is a Father who cares.

Chapter 2: where we are headed

The praying life, Miller says, is like dinner with good friends. Conversation and communication flows not because we think about it but because we enjoy being with our friends. If we focus on the conversation, the conversation dries up. The praying life is about being with God, a person:

When Jesus describes the intimacy he wants with us, he talks about joining us for dinner. 'behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.' (Rev. 3:20)

A praying life feels like our family mealtimes because prayer is all about relationship. It's intimate and hints at eternity. We don't think about communication or words but about whom we are talking with. Prayer is simply the medium through which we experience and connect to God.

...many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the centre is like making conversation the centre of a family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it. It freezes us, making us unsure of where to go. Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another. Consequently, prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the centre.

He argues for working to not restrict prayer to a narrow part of our Christian life, 'a prayer time' but instead to view it as the way we build a relationship with God:

Because prayer is all about relationship, we can't work on prayer as an isolated part of life. That would be like going to the gym and working out just your left arm. You'd get a strong left arm, but it would look odd. 

A good piece of advice about the feeling of intimacy in prayer:

So don't hunt for a feeling in prayer. Deep in our psyches we want an experience with God or an experience in prayer. Once we make that our quest, we lose God. You don't experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person

 There's that regular refrain again: he is after all, a person.

People often talk about prayer as if it is disconnected from what God is doing in their lives. But we are actors in his drama, listening for our lines, quieting our hearts so we can hear the voice of the Playwright.

Many Christians haven't stopped believing in God; we have just become functional deists, living with God at a distance.

As you develop your relationship with him, it will change you. Or more specifically, he will change you. Real change is at the heart level.

Love changes us, just as love changed God:

We keep forgetting God is a person. We don't learn to love someone without it changing us. That is just the nature of love that reflects the heart of God. Because God's love is unchanging, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus of Nazareth, now has a scarred body. The Trinity is different because of love.

He identifies the lifeblood of a good prayer life when he says:

A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer.

Learning to pray doesn't offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart. 

Part 1: Learning to pray like a child

Chapter 3: Become like a little child

come messy. Praying like children means, praying without pretence, without having it all together:

This is the gospel, the welcoming hear of God. God also cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, 'come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and will give you rest.' No. 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.' The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.

I love that idea to do with 'come to me all who are weary' it's something we can easily forget. Come to Jesus with your mess and only with your mess, only as you are. Miller adds:

Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you've been taught.

He's right. Unlearning how we've 'learnt' to pray is a crucial part of actually learning to pray. Great advice!

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 

That's the point of prayer.

Many Christians pray mechanically for God's kingdom, but all the while their lives are wrapped up in their own kingdoms. You can't add God's kingdom as an overlay to your own.

This is a call to lack of pretence in prayer again. Strip away religiosity and and formulaic praying and be yourself.


Below: Graphs I made based on the chapter in the book on story. Produced during our 'Killing Prayer' series in which I identified three 'killers' to prayer: religion, rebellion and restlessness.