Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

What if it’s awkward or disappointing or boring, or what if God stands me up altogether? When we’ve got that much to lose, prayer might be scarier than the avoidance of never being alone with God.

Instead, even in the church, our prayers don’t exchange overwhelmed lives for transcendent peace. They simply drag God into our overwhelmed lives, and the only way we can make him fit is to shrink him down to a reduced size. We keep on praying, but we lower the bar of expectation and power in prayer.

Walter Wink confidently exclaims, “History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being.”

The middle is where the mystery lies. The middle is where all our questions about prayer are littered. Is prayer really necessary? If God is all-powerful, that means he accomplishes what he wants, when he wants, right? So why does he need me to ask? Why does God sometimes seem to answer prayers, but only after a long, long period of asking? If the

What is actually happening when I pray? Is anything happening because I prayed that was not going to happen if I didn’t? Or is anything not happening because I prayed that was bound to happen otherwise? Do my prayers actually matter? Do they matter to God, and do they matter in real life in the real world? At the end of the day, what is happening i

Because in spite of everything, I still prefer God’s presence to anything else. It’s not the gritting your teeth, “come on God, you owe me this” kind of prayer. It’s being present to the One who chose me first and chooses me again today. It’s the joy of my life.

it’s precisely there that Jesus is drawn instinctively to be with you, to feel the sting, to offer his healing presence, to empathize with your weakness and mine.

To everyone else, this is a dingy, old public middle school in need of government funding and mild renovations. To me, this is holy ground. This is the place where God started something in me that has never stopped.

He never backed down or qualified his statement. In fact, he kept saying this kind of thing. Here’s a sampling of what Jesus had to say on the subject of prayer: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9) Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have r

The invitation of prayer anytime, anywhere is this: Take a vacation. Stop playing God over your own life for a moment. Release control. Return to the created order. Be still. Prayer begins there.