A Praying Life

Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend. I’m aware of the weeds of unbelief in me and the struggles in others’ lives. The Holy Spirit puts his finger on issues that only he can solve. I’m actually managing my life through my daily prayer time. I’m shaping my heart, my work, my family—in fact, everything that is dear

We don’t need a praying life because that is our duty. That would wear thin quickly. We need time to be with our Father every day because every day our hearts and the hearts of those around us are overgrown with weeds. We need to reflect on our lives and engage God with the condition of our souls and the souls he has entrusted to our care or put in

If I hadn’t written down my reflections, I wouldn’t have known what God was teaching me. By the time I was finished, I knew my part in God’s play. It was offstage in a corner, waiting. Not particularly glamorous but crystal clear. Opening my heart up for God to speak to me through his Word opened the door to repentance. My prayer time itself was a

Communion or conversation with God breaks down into two questions: How am I doing? What is coming at me? Am I happy, sad, thankful, discouraged, angry, frustrated? What is God saying to me? What does the Word say?

a praying life looks like. It is both being and doing. I’m with God. I sense his presence. He is speaking into my life. But our relationship doesn’t float. I’m not hunting for an experience with God; I’m inviting God into my life experience. He is in me, and I am in him. As I bring to him my real life with my real needs, he acts in amazing ways. He

My prayer time began with me feeling angry and overwhelmed, and it ended with the Spirit personalizing Scripture to the state of my heart. Without realizing it, my prayer time had shifted from “Paul as victim” to “Paul as sinner.” By the end I had a clear plan: Do nothing. Wait on God.

Later that month I realized God wanted to teach me how to listen to those who had a problem with me. Here’s what I wrote in my journal about what I was learning: Be sensitive to how hard it is for the other person to share. Ask, “Do you want me to respond or to just think about it?” Even if it doesn’t seem true, try to find something I’ve done wron

Notice the three-step pattern: planting, waiting, and then working again at the harvest. Jesus’ description of how the kingdom works is alien from how many of us pray.

We need the sharp-edged, absolute character of the Word and the intuitive, personal leading of the Spirit. The Word provides the structure, the vocabulary. The Spirit personalizes it to our life. Keeping the Word and the Spirit together guards us from the danger of God-talk becoming a cover for our own desires and the danger of lives isolated from