A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

by Paul E. Miller

Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts. It was easier on our faith not to pray. After only a few minutes, our prayer is in shambles. Barely out of the starting gate, we collapse on the sidelines—cynical, guilty, and hopeless.

Feels like Dinner with Good Friends

Is Interconnected with All of Life

Because prayer is all about relationship, we can’t work on prayer as an isolated part of life. That would be like going to the gym and working out just your left arm. You’d get a strong left arm, but it would look odd. Many people’s frustrations with prayer come from working on prayer as a discipline in the abstract.

Becomes Aware of the Story

Gives Birth to Hope

Becomes Integrated

Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.

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

Reveals the Heart

As you develop your relationship with your heavenly Father, you’ll change. You’ll discover nests of cynicism, pride, and self-will in your heart. You will be unmasked. None of us likes being exposed. We have an allergic reaction to dependency, but this is the state of the heart most necessary for a praying life. A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer.

First, it reflects a real relationship.

Second, my prayer was interconnected with every aspect of my life.

Third, my life became a story filled with tension that eventually led to change, to hope, because during those six years I learned to pray.

Fourth, my life became integrated.

understood the connections between my prayer and some of the hard thi...

“Abandon all, you will receive heaven.”[2] When you give God your life, he gives you the gift of himself.

We’re trying to be spiritual, to get it right. We know we don’t need to clean up our act in order to become a Christian, but when it comes to praying, we forget that. We, like adults, try to fix ourselves up. In contrast, Jesus wants us to come to him like little children, just as we are.

The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.

We’ll sing the old gospel hymn “Just as I Am,” but when it comes to praying, we don’t come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up.

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.

asking like a child, believing like a child, and even playing like a child.

believe like a child.

learning to play again.

As we mature as Christians, we see more and more of our sinful natures, but at the same time we see more and more of Jesus. As we see our weaknesses more clearly, we begin to grasp our need for more grace.

IT DIDN’T TAKE ME LONG TO REALIZE THAT I DID MY BEST PARENTING BY PRAYER. I BEGAN TO SPEAK LESS TO THE KIDS AND MORE TO GOD. IT WAS ACTUALLY QUITE RELAXING.

ANXIETY IS UNABLE TO RELAX IN THE FACE OF CHAOS; CONTINUOUS PRAYER CLINGS TO THE FATHER IN THE FACE OF CHAOS.

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child on its mother; like a weaned child is my soul on me. PSALM 131:1-2[2]

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 4:6-7

When you stop trying to control your life and instead allow your anxieties and problems to bring you to God in prayer, you shift from worry to watching.

Satan’s first recorded words are cynical. He tells Adam and Eve, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Satan is suggesting that God’s motives are cynical.

In essence, he tells them, “God has not been honest about the tree in the middle of the garden. The command not to eat from the tree isn’t for your protection; God wants to protect himself from rivals. He’s jealous. He is projecting an image of caring for you, but he really has an agenda to protect himself. God has two faces.” Satan seductively gives Adam and Eve the inside track—here is what is really going on behind closed doors. Such is the deadly intimacy that gossip offers.

“I know that I am not alone in my struggle with cynicism. But most of us are not aware that it is a problem, or that it is taking hold in our hearts. It just feels like we can’t find the joy in things, like we are too aware to trust or hope.”

Cynicism begins with the wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaged, loving, and hoping. R. R. Reno, a Catholic scholar, called cynicism a perverse version of “being in the world but not of the world.” We’ve moved from a Promethean age of great deeds to a listless, detached age.[1] A leading spokesperson for her generation, Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, at thirty-two years old, wrote, “Unlike our parents, we never believed in anything. Our defining characteristic is cynicism. But that’s a double-edged sword. It protects you from crushing disappointment, but it paralyzes you from doing anything.”[2]

To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being “in the know,” cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit. Cathie is feeling the early edges of that.

A praying life is just the opposite. It engages evil. It doesn’t take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God’s face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope.

Cynicism begins, oddly enough, with too much of the wrong kind of faith, with naive optimism or foolish confidence. At first glance, genuine faith and naive optimism appear identical since both foster confidence and hope. But the similarity is only surface deep. Genuine faith comes from knowing my heavenly Father loves, enjoys, and cares for me. Naive optimism is groundless. It is childlike trust without the loving Father.

No culture is more optimistic than ours. America’s can-do spirit comes from the Judeo-Christian confidence in the goodness of God acting on our behalf. Knowing that the Good Shepherd is watching and protecting me gives me courage to go through the valley of the shadow of death. Even in the presence of my enemies, I can enjoy a rich feast because God is with me. Faith in God leads to can-do boldness and daring action, the hallmarks of Western civilization.

In the nineteenth century that optimism shifted its foundation from the goodness of God to the goodness of humanity. Faith became an end in itself. President Roosevelt rallied the nation during the Depression by calling people to have faith in faith. ...

confidence itself. Disneyland, the icon of naive optimism, promises that we’ll find Prince Charming...

“I make the jump from optimism to darkness so quickly because I am not grounded in a deep, abiding faith that God is in the matter, no matter what the matter is. I am looking for pleasant results, not deeper realities.”

At 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 combination shuts down our hearts, and we just show up for life, going through the motions. Some days it’s difficult to get out of our pajamas.

Our personal struggles with cynicism and defeated weariness are reinforced by an increasing tendency toward perfectionism in American culture. Believing you have to have the perfect relationship, the perfect children, or a perfect body sets you up for a critical spirit, the breeding ground for cynicism.

In the absence of

perfection, we resort to spin—trying to make ourselves look good, unwittingly dividing ourselves into a public and private self. We cease to be ...

The media’s constant Monday-morning quarterbacking (“this shouldn’t have happened”) shapes our responses to the world, and we find ourselves demanding a pain-free, problem-free life. Our can-do attitude is turning into relentless self-centeredness. Psychology’s tendency to hunt for hidden motives adds a new layer to our ability to judge and thus be cynical about what others are doing. No longer do people commit adultery out of lust—they have unmet longings that need to be fulfilled. Cynicism is the air we breathe, and it is suffocating our hearts. Unless we become disciples of Jesus, this present evi...

Jesus does not ignore evil.

so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

Jesus tells us to instead be warm but wary—warm like a dove but wary like a serpent.