Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer

by Tyler Staton

Prayer is not for the faint of heart.

Prayer itself makes us anxious because it uncovers fears we can ignore as long as we don’t engage deeply, thoughtfully, vulnerably with God.

Prayer means the risk of facing silence where we’re addicted to noise.

The story that was supposed to free us is really just swapping jail cells.

Jesus hasn’t revealed a God we can perfectly understand, but he has revealed a God we can perfectly trust.

That’s significant because in first-century Israel, the temple was the most revered building on earth. The Jewish people believed it was literally the house of Yahweh—the place where God’s presence dwelt. The house God lived in. There were cleansing rituals required just to cross the threshold, and restricted access the nearer you got to the center. Even most priests couldn’t enter the innermost room because in ancient Hebrew spirituality, the temple was the presence of God. And Jesus is calling that very place “home.”

A Senate subcommittee in 1967 jointly predicted that by 1985, the average American would work twenty-two hours a week for twenty-seven weeks a year because of all the leisure time this new technology would free up.6 In reality, “the average time people spend on leisure has decreased since the 1980s.”7

hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.

“And so we end up as good people, but as people who are not very deep: not bad, just busy; not immoral, just distracted; not lacking in soul, just preoccupied; not disdaining depth, just never doing the things to get us there,”

When we use others to meet our needs, we can’t love them.

Sin is shorthand for any attempt to meet our deep needs by our own resources.

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that you are loved—loved right now without qualification or restriction, loved unconditionally for who you are, loved in a way you can’t lose. The bad news is that you find it very hard to believe that and even harder to experience it. Your instinct is, and will forever be, to try to drum up your own lovableness, to become lovable in some way you can define and control, to try to become in your own eyes what you already are in God’s. The good news is called grace; the bad news is called sin.

My real life is a mockery of who I want to be and wish I was.

God didn’t lower the standard of holiness. He found a way to make us holy that isn’t dependent on our performance. Grace wins.

If you show up to a great doctor and describe yourself as “generally sick,” they’re not gonna be able to do a lot for you. To confess is to say, “I want to name my symptoms, completely and comprehensively, because I want healing, completely and comprehensively.”

Ope-

Prayer replaces control with trust. A God-given desire is only fulfilled by God-given means.