A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

by Paul E. Miller

The very thing we are afraid of, our brokenness, is the door to our Father’s heart. A grace-saturated vision enables us to defeat cynicism and talk with our Father, restoring a childlike simplicity and wonder.

Among the thousands of cultures in the history of humanity, our culture is the only one not to have any regular public acknowledgment of a spiritual world. In view of the sweep of human history, our culture is odd. Reflecting on the

When you lump God together with feelings and subjective opinion, then God is marginalized. Prayer feels odd.

Prayer is private and personal, not public and real.

Secularism is a religious belief that grew out of the pride of human achievement, particularly scientific achievement. It masquerades as science or reality, opposed to religion, which it calls opinion. Secularism claims to have given us the gift of science when, in fact, Christianity gave us the gift of science.

“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Modern man recognizes no such rock, and that is the source of all estrangement and all tragedy.[9]

God world and a real world. When those worlds touched, she tried to keep them separate. She has been breathing the air of the culture.

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.

there is One who created and continues to uphold it. The “strength” that the babes and sucklings of faith show, by their simple and direct and unhesitating affirmation, puts to shame all the strength of the clever and the strong.

Because it is my Father’s world, then as Emily and I kneel by a stream to do a science experiment, we should pray and ask for his help. It is a complete unity of thinking and feeling, physical and spiritual, public and personal. It is my Father’s world.

We might approach the speaker to ask his or her advice. We readily admit our lack of knowledge, but it would never occur to us that the speaker might have access to divine power. We don’t think it would make any difference. We are confident in science but not God. The issue of power—the ability to make a difference, to change something—is at the heart of asking. Asha’s culture has not

But unlike these other kinds of experts, power in prayer comes from being in touch with your weakness. To teach us how to pray, Jesus told stories of weak people who knew they couldn’t do life on their own. The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying

An infinite-personal God is such an astounding idea that we struggle to grasp it. Our modern world is okay with an infinite God, as long as he doesn’t get too personal, as long as he stays out of science notes. Non-Western cultures have no trouble thinking that God is personal, but they doubt he is infinite.

David captures the infinite-personal God with the first sentence of Psalm 23, “The LORD [infinite] is my shepherd [personal].” In the ancient Near East nothing else came close to this picture of intimacy. Occasionally an ancient king would be described as a shepherd of his people, but the gods were never interested in “little old me.” The words me or my, which sound like “ee” in Hebrew, ring thirteen times through the psalm. The infinite God is interested in me.

Because God is both infinite and personal, he will “[listen] to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays” (6:19).

Isaiah is also in awe that God “[dwells] in the high and holy place [infinite], and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit [personal]”

Majesty and humility are such an odd fit. This is one reason we struggle with prayer. We just don’t think God could be concerned with the puny details of our lives. We either believe he’s too big or that we’re not that important. No wonder Jesus told us to be like little children! Little children are not daunted by the size of their parents. They come, regardless.

We don’t like God too close, especially if God is a deity we can’t control. We have a primal fear of walking with God in the garden, naked, without clothing. We desperately want intimacy, but when it comes, we pull back, fearful of a God who is too personal, too pure. We’re much more comfortable with God at a distance.

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.

Jill and I pray because we are helpless against the onslaught of life. When I pray over a problem, that problem begins to sparkle with the energy of God. Strange things happen.

The root problem is that this writer is overspiritualizing prayer. He submits so quickly to God that he as a person can’t emerge. 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.

If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God’s best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer.

we ask nothing of God, we are left adrift in an evil world. Such a position may feel spiritual because it seems unselfish, but it is unbiblical because it separates the real world of our desires from God’s world. The kingdom can’t come because it is floating.

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.

Desire and surrender are the perfect balance to praying.

We don’t want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God. To embrace the Father and thus prayer is to accept what one pastor called “the sting of particularity.”[4] Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence.

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. Every day I experience my Father’s caring presence.

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.

God is a person, and his universe reflects his personhood. The closer something is to the character of God, the more it reflects him and the less it can be measured. Things such as integrity, beauty, hope, and love are all in the same category as prayer. You can tell their presence and even describe them, but you can’t define them, simply because they are too close to God’s image.

It is often true with answers to prayer that when you look back, everything looks seamless, as if it would have all happened anyway. But looking back is actually a godlike stance, presuming to know how everything works.

As soon as you take a specific answer to prayer and try to figure out what caused it, you lose God. We simply cannot see the causal connections between our prayers and what happens.

The inability to see the connection between cause and effect is intrinsic to the nature of prayer because it is the direct activity of God.

If you turn

God into an object, he has a way of disappearing.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO ENTER THIS DIVINE DANCE WE CALL PRAYER, YOU HAVE TO SURRENDER YOUR DESIRE TO BE IN CONTROL, TO FIGURE OUT HOW PRAYER WORKS.

Often answers to prayer start prior to the actual prayer. (Kim’s speech computer company was founded fourteen years before Kim was born.) The only way to know how prayer works is to have complete knowledge and control of the past, present, and future. In other words, you can figure out how prayer works if you are God.

You’ve got to let God take the lead. You have to trust. Then God will delight

you, not only with the gift of himself but also with parking places, pajamas, poured milk, and Pathfinders. No one works like him!

In other words, don’t mess with God. He is not your toy or your personal vending machine. You’ve got to be in the vine.

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.

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.

Desire, feelings, and passion are also part of who we are. If we remember that Jesus is a person and not a robot, then it makes perfect sense.

They knew they were going to die, whether or not they were holding hands. But life is more than logic. As humans, we reflect the complexity of God. Part of divine beauty is that we were made for community, so when we leap to our death, we hold hands with a friend.

While this sounds like a contradiction, these men are asking boldly and surrendering completely. They avoid functional deism or separation from God by their bold statement of God’s deliverance; then they avoid living selfishly by their complete surrender to the story God has placed them in.

Jesus is yelling, “My Father has a big heart. He loves the details of your life. Tell him what you need and he will do it for you.” Jesus wants us to tap into the generous heart of his Father. He wants us to lose all confidence in ourselves

His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God. But that is not the only reason he tells us to ask anything. God wants to give us good gifts. He loves to give.

Deep down, we just don’t believe God is as generous as he keeps saying he is.

Imagine that your prayer is a poorly dressed beggar reeking of alcohol and body odor, stumbling toward the palace of the great king. You have become your prayer. As you shuffle toward the barred gate, the guards stiffen. Your smell has preceded you. You stammer out a message for the great king: “I want to see the king.” Your words are barely intelligible, but you whisper one final word, “Jesus. I come in the name of Jesus.” At the name of Jesus, as if by magic, the palace comes alive. The guards snap to attention, bowing low in front of you. Lights come on, and the door flies open. You are ushered into the palace and down a long hallway into the throne room of the great king, who comes running to you and wraps you in his arms.

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.