A Praying Life

Pete Evans | September 2012 - Highfields Book of the Month

By Paul E. Miller - (2009) Colorado Springs:Navpress

The plain fact is that most of us struggle to pray. There are some people who 'pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests' (Eph 6.18) but frankly they are few and far between.

I don't think anyone would say that praying isn't important, and yet most of us find that we rarely do it and that when we do pray we struggle to hold our train of thought. Many of the greatest day-dreams I have had began with the words 'Heavenly Father'; I am sure I'm not alone.

And that can make us nervous reading books about prayer. You worry that the first line will be something like; 'Hey, if you only pray for 4 hours a day, don't worry; this book will help you to overcome your failure.'

One of the main reasons I like this book is that Paul Miller has struggled to pray too. The pages are full of stories about times when he or people he knows have found prayer hard and he takes time to analyse why.

Whilst it is really difficult to summarise everything he says in just a few sentences, here are a few key ideas;

Firstly, we are incredibly cynical about prayer. We doubt it works, we view it as overly spiritual in a post-enlightenment culture and we don't understand how to 'do it right'. We also feel desperate from time to time as we realise that our prayerlessness reflects how stale and conservative our relationship with God is.

Secondly, prayer shouldn't be like that. We should love to talk to our Heavenly Father about everything, learning as we do so about who He is, who we are and what He has in store for us. Our lives should be full of vibrant and joyful prayer, witnessing the work of our Father as He answers us.

Thirdly, the key to resolving this is learning to pray like children. This is really the big idea of the book – Jesus teaches us to pray to our Father, and understanding what that means will shape our hearts and free us to talk to Him and know Him better. And if this book results in us learning, by God’s grace, how to do that, then we’d all better get reading!

I'll be honest, this isn't a short book. It's almost 300 pages long. And the writing on each page is small. And there aren't any pictures. But it really is worth getting stuck into. It's a fantastic mix of theological insight and practical wisdom, stacked full of scripture and real-life illustrations. The chapters are short and readable, sometimes just 5 pages long, so this could be a dip-in-and-out book over a long period if that suits. Either way, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. It's less than a tenner but the truth it contains is worth infinitely more.