A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

by Paul E. Miller

Life—it’s always a production and a problem. You cycle through your to-do list, your anxieties, distractions, pressures, pleasures, and irritants.

Father—to “my Father and your Father” (John 20:17), as he put it to Mary from Magdala. He shows you how to start talking with the God who rules the world, who has freely chosen to take your best interests to heart. Talking life over with this on-scene God is the sort of conversation

We keep our doubts hidden even from ourselves because we don’t want to sound like bad Christians. No reason to add shame to our cynicism. So our hearts shut down. The glib way people talk about prayer often reinforces our cynicism.

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 frustration. It’s as if we’ve had a stroke.

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.

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” (Revelation 3:20). A

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.

with God at a distance. We view the world as a box with clearly defined edges. But as we learn to pray well, we’ll discover that this is my Father’s world. Because my Father controls everything, I can ask, and he will listen and act. Since I am his child, change is possible—and hope is born.

LEARNING TO PRAY DOESN’T OFFER YOU A LESS BUSY LIFE; IT OFFERS YOU A LESS BUSY HEART.

Finally, as you get to know your heavenly Father, you’ll get to know your own heart as well. 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.

and

to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God. He is a person. So, instead of being frozen by your self-preoccupation, talk with God about your worries. Tell him where you are weary. If you don’t begin with where you are, then where you are will sneak in the back door. Your mind will wander to where you are weary. We are often so busy and

person. So, instead of being frozen

instead of being frozen by your self-preoccupation, talk with God about your worries. Tell him where you are weary. If you don’t begin with where you are, then where you are will sneak in the back door. Yo...

Your heart could be, and often is, askew. That’s okay. You have to begin with what is real. Jesus didn’t come for the righteous. He came for sinners. All of us qualify. The very things we try to get rid of—our weariness, our distractedness, our messiness—are what get us in the front door! That’s how the gospel works. That’s how prayer works. In bringing

In bringing your real self to Jesus, you give him the opportunity to work on the real you, and you will slowly change. The kingdom will come. You’ll end up less selfish. The kingdom comes when Jesus becomes king of your life. But it has to be your life. You can’t create a kingdom that doesn’t exist, where you try to be better than you really are. Jesus calls that hypocrisy—putting on a mask to cover the real you. Ironically,

supremely confident of their parents’ love and power. Instinctively, they trust. They believe their parents want to do them good. If you know your parent loves and protects you, it fills your world with possibility. You just chatter away with what is on your heart.

Childlike faith drives this persistence.

dreaming. Our childlike faith dies a thousand little deaths. Jesus encourages us to believe like little children by telling stories about adults who acted like children: the parable of the persistent

chapter we saw that believing the gospel—knowing God’s acceptance for us in Jesus—helps us to come to him messy. Now we see that the gospel also frees us to ask for what is on our hearts. Learning

When your mind starts wandering in prayer, be like a little child. Don’t worry about being organized or staying on task. Paul certainly wasn’t! Remember you are in conversation with a person. Instead of beating yourself up, learn to play again. Pray about what your mind is wandering to. Maybe it is something that is important to you. Maybe the Spirit is nudging you to think about something else. Learn

When it comes to prayer, we, too, just need to get the words out. Feel free to stop and pray now. It’s okay if your mind wanders or your prayers get interrupted. Don’t be embarrassed by how needy your heart is and how much it needs to cry out for grace. Just start praying. Remember, the point of Christianity isn’t to learn a lot of truths so you don’t need God anymore. We don’t learn God in the abstract. We are drawn into his life.

Clue #1: His Identity Whenever Jesus starts talking about his relationship with his heavenly Father, Jesus becomes childlike, very dependent. “The Son can do nothing of his own accord” (John 5:19). “I can do nothing on my own” (John 5:30). “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). “The Father who sent me has himself given me . . . what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49). Only a child will say, “I only do what I see my Father is doing.” When

IF YOU KNOW THAT YOU, LIKE JESUS, CAN’T DO LIFE ON YOUR OWN, THEN PRAYER MAKES COMPLETE SENSE. But

One-Person Focus When Jesus interacts with people, he narrows his focus down to one person.

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. Praying

flesh. It didn’t happen. Instead, God reminded Paul of how the gospel works. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The gospel,

gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help. We look at the inadequacy of our praying and give up, thinking something is wrong with us. God looks at the adequacy of his Son and delights in our sloppy, meandering prayers.

We don’t need self-discipline to pray continuously; we just need to be poor in spirit. Poverty of spirit makes room for his Spirit. It creates a God-shaped hole in our hearts and offers us a new way to relate to others. YOU DON’T NEED SELF-DISCIPLINE TO PRAY CONTINUOUSLY; YOU JUST

NEED TO BE POOR IN SPIRIT.

Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: They both question the active goodness of God on our behalf. Left unchallenged, their low-level doubt opens the door for bigger doubt. They’ve lost their childlike spirit and thus are unable to move toward their heavenly Father. When

Cynicism is so pervasive that, at times, it feels like a presence. Behind the spirit of the age lies

Satan can’t stop you from praying,

then he will try to rob the fruit of praying by dulling your soul. Satan cannot create, but he can ...

With the Good Shepherd no longer leading us through the valley of the shadow of death, we need something to maintain our sanity. Cynicism’s ironic stance is a weak attempt to maintain a lighthearted equilibrium in a world gone mad.

some point, each of us comes face-to-face with the valley of the shadow of death. We can’t ignore it. We can’t remain neutral with evil. We either give up and distance ourselves, or we learn to walk with the Shepherd. There is no middle ground. Without the Good Shepherd, we are alone in a meaningless story. Weariness and fear leave us feeling overwhelmed, unable to move. Cynicism leaves us doubting, unable to dream. The

Jesus keeps in tension wariness about evil with a robust confidence in the goodness of his Father. He continues, “Beware of men” (10:17); then in the next breath he warms our hearts to our Father’s love, saying, “Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (10:31). Since your Father is intimately involved with the death of even one sparrow, won’t he watch over your life? You don’t have to distance yourself with an ironic, critical stance. You don’t have to shut down your heart in the face of evil. You can engage it. Instead

The feel of a praying life is cautious optimism—caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption. Cautious optimism allows Jesus to boldly send his disciples into an evil world. When

He sees the whole story and is completely trustworthy to be at work on a grand scale, in the minutiae, and even in my own life.” SO THE FEEL OF A PRAYING LIFE IS CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM—CAUTION BECAUSE OF THE FALL, OPTIMISM BECAUSE OF REDEMPTION. Our confidence in the face of evil comes directly from the spirit of Jesus and animates a praying spirit. Audacious faith is one of the hallmarks of Jesus’ followers. As we shall see later,

Watch what he says before he helps these people. Before he heals a blind man, he tells his disciples that “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3, NIV). Before he raises the widow of Nain’s son, he tells her, “Weep not” (Luke 7:13, KJV), reversing the ancient Jewish funeral dirge, “Weep, all that are bitter of heart.” When

is answered almost immediately because in the act of praying I’ve become like a child.

death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.

Thankfulness isn’t a matter of forcing yourself to see the happy side of life. That would be like returning to naive optimism. Thanking God restores the natural order of our dependence on God. It enables us to see life as it really is. Not

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4:2) Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18)

Cynicism looks reality in the face, calls it phony, and prides itself on its insight as it pulls back. Thanksgiving looks reality in the face and rejoices at God’s care. It replaces a bitter spirit with a generous one. In the face

Repentance brings the split personality together and thus restores integrity to the life. The real self is made public. When the proud person is humbled, the elevated self is united with the true self. In

nothing. It was a stunning display of patience. Cynicism looks in the wrong direction. It looks for the cracks in Christianity instead of looking for the presence of Jesus. It is an orientation of the heart. The sixth cure for cynicism, then, is this: develop an eye for Jesus. JESUS

Ministry itself can create a mask of performance, the projection of success. Everyone wants to be a winner. In contrast, Jesus never used his power to show off. He used his power for love. So he wasn’t immediately noticeable. Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it. In order to see Jesus, I would have to look lower. I would