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January 5 - April 1, 2022
Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts.
Many Christians haven’t stopped believing in God; we have just become functional deists, living with God at a distance.
When we slow down to pray, we are immediately confronted with how unspiritual we are, with how difficult it is to concentrate on God.
To learn how to pray is to enter the world of a child, where all things are possible.
Jesus encourages us to believe like little children by telling stories about adults who acted like children: the parable of the persistent widow, who won’t take no for an answer from an unjust judge (see Luke 18:1-8), and the parable about a man who badgers his neighbor to lend him three loaves for a friend who has come at midnight (see Luke 11:5-8).
IF YOU KNOW THAT YOU, LIKE JESUS, CAN’T DO LIFE ON YOUR OWN, THEN PRAYER MAKES COMPLETE SENSE.
When he prays, he is not performing a duty; he is getting close to his Father.
If Jesus has to pull away from people and noise in order to pray, then it makes sense that we need to as well.
Praying out loud can be helpful because it keeps you from getting lost in your head. It makes your thoughts concrete. But it is more than technique; it is also a statement of faith. You are audibly declaring your belief in a God who is alive.
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.
Strong Christians do pray more, but they pray more because they realize how weak they are.
It didn’t take me long to realize I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.[2]
Disney is right. Because of the intrusion of a good God into an evil world, there are happy endings.
Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it.
The Enlightenment mind-set marginalizes prayer because it doesn’t permit God to connect with this world. You are allowed a personal, local deity as long as you keep him out of your science notes and don’t take him seriously.
his faith allowed him to be calm and her lack of faith caused her to be fearful.
the secret to seeing God behind all things is to become a child again—like
power in prayer comes from being in touch with your weakness.
equating spirituality with a suppression of desire and emotion.
Frankly, God makes us nervous when he gets too close.
“The human ego assumes its self-sufficiency and self-mastery and imagines itself secure. . . . It does not recognize the contingent and dependent character of its life and believes itself to be the author of its own existence.”[5]
Suffering is God’s gift to make us aware of our contingent existence.
The most precious things in life can’t be proven or observed directly, but we know them as surely as we know that the sun and moon exist.
asking boldly and surrendering completely.
We forget we are embodied spirits, designed to hear from God.
But the point of prayer is shifting control from you to God.
I do not understand prayer. Prayer is deeply personal and deeply mysterious. Adults try to figure out causation. Little children don’t. They just ask.
The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own.
We can’t pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat.
God is upset with Israel because they are not lamenting. We think laments are disrespectful. God says the opposite. Lamenting shows you are engaged with God in a vibrant, living faith.
First, a lament is directed toward God.
a lament submits.
Finally, laments almost always circle back to faith.
Most of our prayers are answered in the context of the larger story that God is weaving.
Don’t demand that the story go your way.
Look for the Storyteller.
Stay in the story.
Be on the lookout for strange gifts. God loves to surprise us with babies in swaddling clothes lying in mangers.
Nothing clears out self-righteousness better than serving someone who is critical of you.
God teaches humility in humble places.
By praying regularly for them, my heart tunes in to their struggles.
Our “prayer doesn’t work” often means “you didn’t do my will, in my way, in my time.”
Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend.
Learned helplessness lurks just underneath the surface of that prayer time.
We need time to be with our Father every day because every day our hearts and the hearts of those around us are overgrown with weeds.
I’ve come to realize that the more distant I am from a story, the less I know what God is doing. God will help me with my story but not someone else’s.
