Book Review: A Praying Life

I read A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul Miller over the weekend.  I saw this book available for free on Kindle a few weeks ago and am glad I picked it up.  This book has really challenged me to grow in my prayer life.  My favorite part of this book is that it is heavy on both theory and application.  Miller uses a number of different methods and illustrations to demonstrate what it means to truly follow Christ by having a robust prayer life.  I can honestly say that I have a much more clear understanding of what it means to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  I am looking forward to growing in this area as I am now accountable to a deeper and more Christ-honoring prayer life.

Here are some thoughts that I outlined while reading…

• Our natural desire to pray comes from Creation. We are made in the image of God. Our inability to pray comes from the Fall.
• Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts.
• 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. Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God.
• We don’t learn to pray in isolation from the rest of our lives.
• You don’t experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person.
• If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise, then he’s not going to do everything I want because I don’t know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take time to do all this. When we put all these things together—God’s sovereignty, love, wisdom, and patience—we have a divine story.
• Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.
• A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer.R
• The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.
• Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you’ve been taught.
• Pray about what your mind is wandering to.
• You don’t create intimacy; you make room for it. This is true whether you are talking about your spouse, your friend, or God. You need space to be together. Efficiency, multitasking, and busyness all kill intimacy. In short, you can’t get to know God on the fly.
• If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You’ll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But if, like Jesus, you realize you can’t do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray.
• God wants us to come to him empty-handed, weary, and heavy-laden. Instinctively we want to get rid of our helplessness before we come to God.
• You don’t need self-discipline to pray continuously; you just need to be poor in spirit.
• A praying life isn’t simply a morning prayer time; it is about slipping into prayer at odd hours of the day, not because we are disciplined but because we are in touch with our own poverty of spirit, realizing that we can’t even walk through a mall or our neighborhood without the help of the Spirit of Jesus.
• Anxiety is unable to relax in the face of chaos; continuous prayer clings to the Father in the face of chaos.
• So the feel of a praying life is cautious optimism—caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption.
• Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.
• Prayer is a moment of incarnation—God with us.
• What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his. I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover. I move from being an orphan to a child of God.
• Suffering is God’s gift to make us aware of our contingent existence. It creates an environment where we see the true nature of our existence—dependent on the living God.
• We can’t pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat. When we see our own self-will, it opens the door to doing things through God.
• When you persist in a spiritual vacuum, when you hang in there during ambiguity, you get to know God.
• When the story isn’t going your way, ask yourself, “What is God doing?” Be on the lookout for strange gifts.
• On Saturday, I spoke in front of a crowd who listened to my every word and respected me. When you speak, no matter how hard you try, you are at the center. Even if you are talking about Jesus and how he loves people, as I was, it’s tempting to take credit for your speaking. However, on Friday I was in front of three different crowds (at the bus stop, in the security line, and on the plane), helpless and embarrassed. I looked inadequate, I felt inadequate, and I was inadequate. God was reminding me of what I am really like. He was preparing my heart on Friday, so I’d not be confused by people’s praise on Saturday. I wanted success; he wanted authenticity.
• Remember, life is both holding hands and scrubbing floors. It is both being and doing.
• 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.
• The problem isn’t the activity of listening, but my listening heart. Am I attentive to God? Is my heart soft and teachable?
• I’m actually managing my life through my daily prayer time. I’m shaping my heart, my work, my family—in fact, everything that is dear to me—through prayer in fellowship with my heavenly Father. I’m doing that because I don’t have control over my heart and life or the hearts and lives of those around me. But God does.
• Each of us will die with unfinished stories. We can never forget that God is God. Ultimately it is his story, not ours.
• Living in unfinished stories draws us into God’s final act, the return of Jesus. While we wait for his return, it is easy to predict the pattern of the last days. The book of Revelation pictures a suffering church, dying as creation itself is unraveling. Through suffering God will finally make his church beautiful and reveal his glory. In the desert you see his glory. In the last days the bride will be made beautiful, pure, waiting for her lover. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.