Book Review: A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller
June 9, 2009 Posted by Amy Hall
| I’ve never read a book that approached the subject of prayer in quite this way before, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Last year was extremely difficult for me. I became overwhelmed by how much evil, hatred of God, and disregard for the truth we’re surrounded by in this world. This, coupled with the inability of my own puny efforts to make a dent in said evil was killing me spiritually. Add to this some upheaval in a few major areas of my life, and it soon became apparent to me how weak my faith in God’s power and goodness was. This passage in A Praying Life described my experience well: |
The first thing that happens is we slowly give up the fight. Our wills are broken by the reality of our circumstances. The things that brought us life gradually die. Our idols die for lack of food….
The still, dry air of the desert brings the sense of helplessness that is so crucial to the spirit of prayer. You come face-to-face with your inability to live, to have joy, to do anything of lasting worth. Life is crushing you.
Suffering burns away the false selves created by cynicism or pride or lust. You stop caring about what people think of you….
The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town.
This book reached me right where I was because it approached prayer from a place of helplessness. It’s our helplessness and our need for God that fuels prayer. We are blessed when God crushes us…if we let this kill our pride in ourselves, but not our trust, openness to, and dependence on God.
And that is the key to this book - learning to let our helplessness create a humble, childlike heart that draws us powerfully to God. He, rather than the act of praying, is the real subject of A Praying Life:
Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another. Consequently, prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center.
There is only one answer to the inevitable evil and suffering we will confront in life:
At some point, each of us comes face-to-face with the valley of the shadow of death. We can’t ignore it. We can’t remain neutral with evil. We either give up and distance ourselves, or we learn to walk with the Shepherd. There is no middle ground…. Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.
Focusing on the Shepherd is the answer, and prayer is the means by which we connect, repent, humble ourselves, and become as open and guileless as children, coming to God with all of our needs and feelings, however ugly, beautiful, or messy they might be.
I found all of this to be very powerful. Not only did these ideas renew hope in me, but they pushed me to come to God in the very moments when I was weakest, rather than turn away from Him in cynicism and defeat as I had begun to do. I was able to pray again because the book helped me see my weakness as the very place of hope, for that was where I would be most open to His strength, and things could only change through His strength.
Drawbacks about the book: Sometimes the writing meandered a bit. Also, I’m unsure about his stance on hearing from God. After advocating listening to God, he dedicated a brief chapter to the ways this can go wrong, and it included some caveats that I appreciated (e.g., “If I had told our staff, ‘God told me [X],’ I would have elevated my own thoughts to the level of biblical authority”). In the end, I’m unclear how much we disagree. The examples he gave seemed to be more of the Holy Spirit using Scripture to convict him rather than God giving him special instructions. For example, he explains, “The Word provides the structure, the vocabulary. The Spirit personalizes it to our life.” I wouldn’t disagree with that the way it’s written. I’m just unclear how far he would take this.
The same is true for his very brief mention of lectio divina, which could simply refer to praying through Bible passages and meditating on them as a whole, or a practice I completely reject where one focuses on a single word at a time and waits for God to reveal things about each word, or possibly something in between. He seemed to be suggesting the first, but he did not go into details, so people may interpret this differently.
But even if one disagrees with these brief points made in the book, there is certainly plenty of good to glean from A Praying Life.
Related posts:
- Book Review: The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf
- Book Review: Jack's Life by Douglas Gresham
- Audio Book Review: The Good Life by Charles Colson & Harold Fickett
- Book Review: 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life edited by Alex Chediak
- Book Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
- Book Review: A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren
Posted in Amy's Posts, Book Reviews, The Christian Life
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June 14th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
“Make me hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.”
-Psalm 51:8
“Whom have I in heaven but You,
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
-Psalm 73:25-26