A Praying Life

Ancient people would not have been snookered by Disney’s message to “Have faith in yourself.” Both the Greeks and the Jews knew the world was a dangerous, chaotic place. Neither were naive about how treacherous and fragile life was. But the similarities end there. The Greeks accepted the chaos. The Jews brought the chaos to God in their lamenting.

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.

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. De

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

Jill and I have saturated Kim’s life with prayer, but it dawned on me recently that I had never prayed for her or with her that she would stop pacing. Why? Because I already knew the solution: “Kim needs to stop pacing. I will tell her to stop pacing.” In other words, I didn’t feel helpless. I knew what to do. I call this the idiot approach to life

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.

So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn’t important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn’t important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church.

Laments might seem disrespectful, but in fact they are filled with faith—a raw, pure form of faith that simply takes God at his word. Every child is a professional lamenter, as in, “Mom, you said you’d take me to the pool this week! Why haven’t you? I want to go today.” The child is bringing together promise and hope (“Mom, you said . . .”) with re

I would not have started praying regularly for other men in my life unless I had a prayer card for them. We usually don’t pray for things that function like wallpaper in our lives. We only pray when the wallpaper starts peeling.

Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: They both question the active goodness of God on our behalf.