A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

A beautiful book in its simplicity. Filled with examples from every day life. Plainly written. The last chapter of practical tools is amazing. Highly recommend this very readable, very do-able approach to incorporating prayer into your life.

The book is excellent! Hard to put down. So much good information on praying and developing a close relationship with Jesus. Everyone should read this. Especially if you struggle with daily prayer.

If you were to ask the average Christian on the street for a list of the top five things they struggle with, I'm willing to bet that prayer will more often than not appear at the top of that list. Some may say the busyness of modern life steals away too much of their time. Others may say they feel like prayer just doesn't make a difference. While I'm willing to concede that time management challenges and feelings may affect our outlook on prayer, I'm not willing to accept these and other similar excuses as the sole reasons people struggle with or altogether avoid prayer. All excuses aside, I think the reality of the situation is that prayer can be downright difficult. Each of us attempts to approach God in prayer through the context of our own religious training and upbringing or for some, the lack thereof. Many of us are able to recite from memory the rote prayers we learned during our childhood. So many of these prayers are full of Biblical truth and deep theological meaning, but years of monotone repetition have left them feeling old and powerless. On the other end of the prayer spectrum you will find what some call "vending machine" prayers. These sorts of prayers consist of nothing more than our never ending list of wants and felt needs, addressing God like he is the proprietor of a heavenly candy store or a cosmic Santa Claus. Like the rote prayers of our childhood, these too will leave us feeling disappointed and frustrated with prayer and ultimately with God. If this sounds all too familiar, chances are you could be one of the many who have been living in the midst of a lifelong struggle with prayer. Based on your experiences `til now, you may seriously wonder if there is any hope for long-term sustained change in your prayer life. Like me, you've probably read other books on prayer, only to shortly thereafter end up right back where you began. While I can't speak to all of the reasons those other books might have come up short for you, I can recommend a new book that has the potential revolutionize your prayer life. The author of this new book is Paul Miller. Paul is the director for SeeJesus.net, a discipling mission and developer of interactive Bible studies. As a part of his work for SeeJesus.net, he has developed The PrayerLife Study and Seminar, which were the basis for Paul's new book published by NavPress titled: A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World. This book consists of thirty-two chapters, organized into six parts. They are as follows: * Introductory material (Preface, Introduction, Chapters 1-2) * Part 1: Learning to Pray Like a Child (Chapters 3-8) * Part 2: Learning to Trust Again (Chapters 9-11) * Part 3: Learning to ask Your Father (Chapters 12-18) * Part 4: Living in your Father's Story (Chapters 19-25) * Part 5: Praying in Real Life (Chapters 26-32) Paul shares what he has learned over a lifetime of pursuing God in prayer. Much of what he shares is rooted in concrete e

I hate praying. I don't think it works and I think it's foolish. But I read this book anyways (because I owed my wife) and I have been forced to rethink my prior position. There is a lot of honesty in this book about why praying is so difficult, and for me, that gave it a lot of credibility. Paul Miller articulated a lot of my cynicism and frustration with prayer (both corporate and individual), and gave me reasons to question my outright dismissal of God as a personal God. I'm not totally convinced (Hell will freeze over before I start praying for parking spaces), but this book challenged me, at the least, to attempt to re-establish a personal relationship with God. If you're a gung-ho Christian who has the world figured out, you'll hate this book. If you're a frustrated cynic like me, I would heartily recommend it.

So many times I have gone to a book on prayer looking for encouragement in praying only to come away overwhelmed with all I am not doing in prayer. Miller's A Praying Life is different. This book increased my desire to pray and helped explain to me why prayer is often something I am tempted to abandon. The first part of the book gently calls the reader back to childlike trust in God, pointing to this sort of faith as the prerequisite for real relationship with God. Parts two and three explore the issues which hinder the praying life. These chapters were particularly helpful in that they showed that the reason we don't pray is not usually busyness or laziness. Instead, we do not pray because of wrong thinking about God, about our expectations of God, and about ourselves. These chapters are designed to undo some of the bad thinking in our lives which leads to a weak prayer life. Parts four and five are much more personal and practical, as Miller attempts to lead the reader to rediscover the joy of a praying life. Miller shares in these chapters particularly his own personal prayer journey and how his life and the lives of those he loves have been shaped by prayer. There are numerous practical tips in the latter chapters that are very helpful to anyone seeking to grow in prayer. This is a rare book, for it addresses both the internal motivations of prayer and the outward practice of prayer. I don't need a pep rally, I need practicality. Yet at the same time, while I need practicality, I also need to understand the foundational reasons why prayer sometimes malfunctions in my life. Miller's book does an excellent job of addressing both of these needs.

This book is an easy, encouraging read which makes me WANT to pray without feeling guilty about what a loser I am. Paul Miller's openness about his own life and struggles makes him feel like a friend in my home rather than an intellectual writer who has arrived at greatness and is telling me about it from a distance. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to be engaged in prayer but feels discouraged, distant, confused, too tired or bored with the whole idea. The author doesn't make claims to fix your prayer life in 30 days but rather to point you to the One to whom you pray for a life-long conversation with Him.

This book is different. This book just might change things. Within the first few chapters, actually within the first few pages, I could tell that Paul Miller was describing something that I had never experienced before. First, he honestly and precisely identifies the barriers to prayer - a short attention span, guilt, inconsistency, and weak attempts to follow a formula that would somehow make my prayers acceptable to God. Yet his winsome way of presenting these problems are not a condemnation of our failures, but are actually an encouragement not to give up. Somewhere in the middle of the book, it begins to dawn on you that a relationship with God that is guided by prayer just might be attainable. Then Paul introduces a simple way to keep track of the many prayer stories that develop as we carry on an intimate conversation with a God who wants us to know and love him. If you are searching for meaning, read this book. If you are jaded in your Christianity or prayers, read this book. If you want to free yourself from praying "correctly" and learn to pray honestly, read this book. If you are too busy to read anything else this Summer - read this book.