Thoughts Along The Journey

[For our next discussion, I would encourage you to read chapters 12-18 in Paul Miller’s book, A Praying Life]

Prayer often feels like a task, not like a time of communion.  For that reason, I was struck by Paul Miller’s comment in chapter 12 where he describes the prayer of a young child: “Because Luke was created for communion with God, he naturally drifted into prayer.  He was unaware that two hundred years ago Kant divided knowledge into public and private, thus marginalizing prayer. Because Luke had become aware of his own culture, he also knew he had to hide his praying from his mother.”

Naturally drifting into prayer is not the natural reflex for most of us.  Yet, it is the innate response of a “child” who senses the great love of his/her Father; a love that is based not on what he/she has done, but on the simple fact that he/she belongs to the Father.  This is not something that comes naturally to me as an “adult”.  But the desire for that communion should lead me to turn more and more to turn to Him in prayer.  Perhaps the reminder of the reality of who I am to the Father would be a good starting point for my prayers, for our prayers.

We can also feel the disapproval of the culture around us to prayer.  Have you ever hesitated to pray (or to offer to pray) in a given situation, wondering what others might think?  I am not suggesting that we become “prayer dispensing machines”, but there have been times when I have felt led by the Spirit to offer to pray for others and I have talked myself out of it.  I now see those as missed opportunities to bring others into communion with our Father.

Prayer is not a task, but experiencing it as “communion” is the journey that we are on and for which we need one another in order to “drift more and more naturally into prayer.”

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Helplessness is not a word that many of us like the sound of. It implies that we can, in all truthfulness, do nothing and need to rely totally on another.

Yet Paul Miller, in chapter 6 of A Praying Life says that, “The gospel, God’s free gift of grace in Jesus, only works when we realize we don’t have it all together. The same is true for prayer.” Really, you might say. Paul Miller goes on, “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.” (55)

I’m not sure I really like that thought. I would prefer that my prayers be well built around strong theology ushering me up into God’s presence, if you will. “Sloppy meandering prayers” sound too feeble, vulnerable, and well helpless.

It seems that is just the paradox of prayer in relation to our journey with God. Paul Miller puts it this way: “Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything he isn’t already doing. He is inviting us into his life of helpless dependence on his heavenly Father. To become more like Jesus is to feel increasingly unable to do life, increasingly wary of your heart. Paradoxically, you get holier while you are feeling less holy. The very thing you are trying to escape – your inability – opens the door to prayer and then grace.”

I actually thought of putting at the end of this post, some kind of prayer “growth-o-meter”. You know something where you could point to where you currently are in your journey of prayer and then where you would like to be. However, I realized that even “charting” one’s life of prayer would simply be a reflection of the fact that we still think we can do life and prayer on our own.

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Thanks to Laura for this week’s post on A Praying Life:

I’ve been picking up on a theme in the first few chapters of Paul Miller’s, A Praying Life.  I find this theme thoroughly disturbing and don’t like it.  It is this notion of “being childlike” in my relationship with God. It’s not that Miller makes me feel like a heel for not being better at prayer (unlike pretty much every other book on prayer I’ve read)—I think it is that he hits the nail right on my juvenile head about what my problem really is.

This theme starts in chapter three and runs, well, pretty much through the rest of the book (in some form or other):

 “Jesus wants us to be without pretense when we come to him in prayer.”

“…little children never get frozen by their selfishness…they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed.”

“What do they ask for? Everything and anything … Repeatedly … Without guile. They just say what is on their minds. They have no awareness of what is appropriate or inappropriate.”

“Little children can’t imagine that their parents won’t eventually say yes.”

Come just as I am, “totally self-absorbed” and not “aware of what is appropriate or inappropriate”? What is THAT?!  Have you ever said something that was completely inappropriate and realized it just as the words come out of your mouth?  It awful, it’s embarrassing, humiliating.  I am supposed to shoot for that?  Hmmm.  Mr. Miller is implying some serious let-your-guard-down stuff.  When it gets right down to it I suppose he is implying that sometimes my “correct” prayers are just full of it. 

This bothers me not so much because it implies a “let’s be real with God” attitude (I can dig that), but because it demands a level of dependence I barely fathom. In chapter 5, we read that Jesus’ childlike dependence is revealed in “I can do nothing on my own”.   Dependence is a term I know I am supposed to live out.  But I start cringing when I think about the neediness Christ is living out here. This is clearly a problem because I run from being needy in front of people like I run from the plague.  Embarrassing myself (by being inappropriate for example) or being visibly selfish might reveal to others around me that I am needy.  Am I so much more honestly needy before the Lord then?

How ‘bout you?

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