I recently completed A Praying Life by Paul E Miller. The book is a refreshing, honest journey in the journey to get to know God better through conversations with Him. The book encourages us to have those conversations even when they don't feel that spiritual. I know I will be quoting this book for months to come. I have highlighted some of the more meaningful passages below.

"If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else--a lack of discipline or too many obligations. But when something is important to us, we make room for it. Prayer is simply not important to many Christians because Jesus is already an add-on. That is why , suffering is so important to the process of learning how to pray. It is God's gift to us to show us what life is really like. "

"A praying life isn't simply a morning prayer time; it is about slipping into prayer at odd hours of the day, not because we are disciplined but because we are in touch with our own poverty of spirit."

"The Enlightenment has captured the West, obscuring our view of what the world is really like. Now, we see a flat two-dimensional world that relegates God to the sidelines as a feel-good cheerleader. Prayer is private and personal, not public and real. If it makes you feel good, then pray for sick people or commune with God, but don't take it seriously or make it public."

From Einstein's biographer: "Einstein said his science was driven by a belief in a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

To teach us how to pray Jesus told stories of weak people who knew they couldn't do life on their own. The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.

We don't like God who is too close, especially if God is a deity we can't control. We have a primal fear of walking with God in the garden, naked, without clothing. We desperately want intimacy, but when it comes, we pull back, fearful of a God who is too personal, too pure. We're much more comfortable with God at a distance.

"If you are going to enter this divine dance we call prayer, you have to surrender your desire to be in control, to figure out how prayer works. You've got to let God take the lead. You have to trust. Then God will delight you not only with the gift of himself but also with amazing answers. No one works like him!"

p. 149

Here's a partial list of kingdom prayers that we seldom ask

· Change in others (too controlling, too hopeless)

· Change in me (too scary)

· Change in things I don't like in the culture (too impossible)

We can't pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat. When we see our own self-will, it opens the door to doing things through God. Instead of singing Frank Sinatra's song, "My Way," we enter into God's story and watch Him do it His way. No one works like Him.

God customizes deserts for each of us. Joseph's desert is being betrayed and forgotten in an Egyptian jail. Moses lives in the Midian desert as an outcast for 40 years. The Israelis live in the desert for 40 years. David run from Saul in the desert. All of them hold on to the hope of God's Word yet face the reality of their situation.

On protracted, unanswered prayer:

The theme of the desert is so strong in the Scripture that Jesus reenacts the desert journey at the beginning of his ministry by fasting for 40 days in a desert while facing Satan's temptation. His desert is living with the hope of the resurrection yet facing the reality of His Father's face turned against him at the cross.

The Father turning his face against you is the heart of the desert experience. Life has ended. It no longer has any point. You might not want to commit suicide, but death would be a relief. It's very tempting to survive the desert by taking the bitterness offered by Satan--to maintain a wry, cynical detachment from life, finding a perverse enjoyment in mocking those who still have hope.

When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story -- to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum where we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships. p. 192

Sometimes when we say "God is silent" what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories. the ones we live in, he is seldom silent. p. 201

Gospel stories always have suffering in them. American Christianity has an allergic reaction to this part of the gospel. We'd love to hear about God's love for us, but suffering doesn't mesh with our right to the "pursuit of happiness." So we pray to escape a gospel story, when that is the best gift the Father can give us. p. 214

"I need to tune in to my Father's voice above the noise of my own heart and the surrounding world -- what C.S. Lewis called "the Kingdom of Noise." p. 245

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. p. 257

We live in many overlapping stories, most of which are larger than us. Each of us will die with unfinished stories. We can never forget that God is God. Ultimately it is His story, not ours. I've come to realize that the more distant I am from a story, the less I know what God is doing. God will help me with my story, but not with someone else's. p. 266