A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

by Paul E. Miller

Instead of focusing on other people’s lack of integrity, on their split personalities, we need to focus on how Jesus is reshaping the church to be more like himself. We need to view the body of Christ with grace.

with the messed-up Corinthian church, Paul is thankful: “I give thanks to my God always for you” (1 Corinthians 1:4). Then he addresses their permitting of incest, suing one another in court, and getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper! Because he keeps his eye on the present work of Jesus, Paul is not overcome by evil but overcomes evil with good. Goodness infests Paul’s prayer life. He is living out the gospel. Even as God has extended grace to Paul, so Paul extends grace to the Corinthians. He looks at the church through rose-colored glasses, tinted with the blood of his Savior.

When Robertson McQuilkin resigned his seminary presidency to take care of his ailing wife, he attended a workshop where the expert said that McQuilkin’s dedication to his wife was really guilt.10 The expert had no category for love. It is a perfect example of the limitation of the Enlightenment’s view of reality. Love, this thing that everyone is pursuing, is a noncategory among social scientists. Something is seriously wrong with a view of the world that can’t explain the most basic components of life.

What Dana observed about believers — their wonder over the creation — is at the heart of why we even have science. If the stream is a result of accidental natural forces, then you just see water, rocks, and dirt. If God equals the stream, then you worship the stream god, not the creator of the stream. But if God created the stream, then wonder and curiosity naturally flow into study.

Charles Malik, the Greek Orthodox “C. S. Lewis,” said the secret to seeing God behind all things is to become a child again — like little Luke.

“A spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”13

Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.

Einstein said his science was driven by a belief in a “God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists” (emphasis added).

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.

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.

So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn’t important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn’t important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-toperson praying in the church.

In Buddhism you become enlightened and reach nirvana when you stop desiring. Thus Buddhist monks repeat “om” mindlessly to themselves in an attempt to become one with the all. The goal is the suppression of desire. Jesus could not be more different. Read the Gospels and you’ll discover a passionate, feeling man. Thank God we have a Savior who is in touch with the real world, who prays that he will not drink the cup of his Father’s wrath, who cries out on a rough wooden cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus neither suppresses his feelings nor lets them master him. He is real.

It is so particular it staggers the imagination. God found a parking spot, a specific place and time where his love would touch our world.

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.

The assumption that we can figure out how everything works comes from the Enlightenment mind-set that says everything is just matter and energy. This definition of “everything” leaves out all the important things of life, such as love, beauty, and people.

When I ask people at our prayer seminars to react honestly to Jesus’ seeming blank check in this Last Supper conversation, everyone is uncomfortable. One person asked, “Is he exaggerating?” Another said, “I don’t like to fail. If I pray and it doesn’t work, is my faith real? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with God?” Still another said, “It’s just not my experience.” Person after person said, “I’ve prayed, and it didn’t happen.” Those who paid close attention to Jesus’ fine print (“If you abide in me …” or “ask in my name”) were depressed because they don’t remain in him.

Hophni and Phinehas brought the ark of the covenant into their battle with the Philistines as a magic trick to help them defeat the enemy. They had been sexually assaulting women who came to the temple, but now with the Philistines breathing down their necks they wanted God around. The Philistines won the battle, killed Hophni and Phinehas, and captured the ark (see 1 Samuel 4:1-11). In other words, don’t mess with God. He is not your toy or your personal vending machine.

Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane demonstrates perfect balance. He avoids the Not Asking cliff, saying, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me” (Mark 14:36). Those who err on the Not Asking side surrender to God before they are real with him. Sometimes we try so hard to be good that we aren’t real. The result is functional deism, where we are separated from God. The real you doesn’t encounter the real God. In the next breath, Jesus avoids the Asking Selfishly cliff by surrendering completely: “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36). Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them. He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will. He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.

knows that the divine community he shares with his Father is going to be broken at the cross. In asking and surrendering, just for a moment, he is holding hands with his Father.

The name of Jesus gives my prayers royal access. They get through. Jesus isn’t just the Savior of my soul. He’s also the Savior of my prayers. My prayers come before the throne of God as the prayers of Jesus. “Asking in Jesus’ name” isn’t another thing I have to get right so my prayers are perfect. It is one more gift of God because my prayers are so imperfect.

As we have seen, we create two selves — a spiritual self and a material self.

Oddly enough, we can also use prayer to keep God distant. We do that by only talking to God and not to mature believers. I can demonstrate that easily. Which is easier, confessing impure thoughts to a mature friend or to God? The friend is tougher. That feels real. We need to ask the body of Christ, Jesus’ physical presence on earth, the same questions we ask God.

They say something like this: “Well, my husband and I prayed about it, and the Lord seemed to confirm it.” Possibly God did confirm it. It is also possible that you used prayer as a spiritual cover for “doing your own thing.” We can mask our desires even from ourselves.

That’s why I prefer the biblical term wisdom to our more common term guidance. Guidance means I’m driving the car and asking God which way to go. Wisdom is richer, more personal. I don’t just need help with my plans; I need help with my questions and even my own heart.

most men don’t pray thoughtfully for their wives; they just whine or withdraw.

once you’ve learned that God loves you, you need to extend his love to others. Otherwise, the love of God sours. By extending grace to his wife, the husband is being drawn into the life of the Son. He will become Christlike.

He must replace his critical spirit with a thankful spirit. One of the best ways of doing that is writing out on a card or in a prayer notebook short phrases of how he is thankful for her. By thanking God daily for specific things about his wife, he will begin to see her for who she is — a gift.

thankful heart is constantly extending grace because it has received grace. Love and grace are uneven. God poured out on his own Son the criticism I deserve. Now he invites me to pour out undeserving grace on someone who has hurt me. Grace begets grace. This husband is taking a journey into the heart of God.

The fatalism inherent in so much modern psychology immobilizes us as well. Emotional states are sacred. If I’m grumpy, I have a right to feel that way and to express my feelings. Everyone around me simply has to “get over it.” One of the worst sins, according to pop psychology, is to suppress your emotions. So to pray that I won’t be angry feels unauthentic, as if I am suppressing the real me.

“Claire, because of Jesus you can start any day over again.” In our modern world, such a response is almost heretical. Now that we have discovered our feelings, we are trapped by them.

idolizing our emotions doesn’t free us to be ourselves but instead results in us being ruled by the ever-changing wind of feelings. We become a thousand selves or, to use Jesus’ words, “a reed shaken by the wind” (Matthew 11:7).

It had never occurred to me to pray that Andrew would put his things away because the solution was obvious: “Andrew, put your things away.” There was absolutely no moral ambiguity about what needed to happen.

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.

The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own. Once I see that, then prayer flows. I have to be praying because I’m no longer in charge. Either I see all of life as a gift, or I demand that life have a certain look to it.

Having closed all your doors, Jesus opens the door to prayer and tells you how he gets things done (7:7).

Self-will and prayer are both ways of getting things done. At the center of self-will is me, carving a world in my image, but at the center of prayer is God, carving me in his Son’s image.

During a particularly hard time in my life, I remember realizing God is my fortress doesn’t mean that God is giving me a fortress. It means he is the fortress (see Psalm 62:2). Except for God, I am completely alone. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

We can’t pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat.

began to see that I, too, loved the world and the things in the world. Even my frugality was a form of the love of money. The obsession of saving small amounts of money isn’t that different from the obsession of gaining large amounts of it. In both, money is the center. I also began to notice that I tended to be extra polite with a donor to our ministry. That, too, is a form of the love of money.

It is surprising how seldom books on parenting talk about prayer.

Until we become convinced we can’t change our child’s heart, we will not take prayer seriously.

Because we live in a fallen world, God has to use broken images of himself, such as fathers.

The fact that we know our king or father is flawed means we know what a good father should do.

Jesus was drawing us down low, where he lived.

We had thought the harm was a daughter with disabilities, but this was nothing compared to the danger of two proud and willful parents. Because Kim was mute, Jill and I learned to listen. Her helplessness taught us to become helpless, too.

The waiting that is the essence of faith provides the context for relationship.

We’ve lost a sense of divine artistry in our lives because the Enlightenment put art, poetry, and literature in the same category as religion. It defined these things as “not real.” So poetry isn’t allowed in history or biology books. This, of course, is a false separation. Open any biology book, and you are immediately confronted by the work of a spectacular artist and designer.

The ancient Greeks had two kinds of stories: comedy and tragedy. A comedy was fun, but it wasn’t real. A tragedy was real but not fun.

Lewis’s mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted, and it was this openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life — his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story.3

The downward journey is a gospel story.