A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
More than 300,000 copies sold! Now updated and expanded!
Prayer is hard. Often, unless circumstances demand it—such as an illness or saying grace before a meal—most of us simply do not pray. This kind of prayerlessness can leave us with a distressed spirit and practical unbelief characterized by fear, anxiety, joylessness, and spiritual depression.
A Praying Life has encouraged thousands of Christians to pursue a vibrant prayer life full of joy and power. A life of prayer invites you to a life of connection to God. When Jesus describes the intimacy that He seeks with us, He talks about joining us for dinner (Revelation 3:20). This book reminds readers that prayer is simply making conversation with God a rhythm of life.
Now with added chapters addressing prayers of lament and further guidance for using prayer cards, Paul Miller invites you to foster prayer that regularly hopes, trusts, and expects God to act. Learn to develop helpful habits and approaches to prayer that will enable you to return to a childlike faith and witness spiritual growth today!
“This book will be like having the breath of God at your back. Let it lift you to new hope.” —Dan B. Allender, PhD, author of Bold Love
Top Highlights
“In naive optimism we don’t need to pray because everything is under control, everything is possible. In cynicism we can’t pray because everything is out of control, little is possible.” (source)
“So don’t hunt for a feeling in prayer. Deep in our psyches we want an experience with God or an experience in prayer. Once we make that our quest, we lose God. You don’t experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person.” (source)
“Anxiety wants to be God but lacks God’s wisdom, power, or knowledge. A godlike stance without godlike character and ability is pure tension. Because anxiety is self on its own, it tries to get control. It is unable to relax in the face of chaos.” (source)
“If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise, then he’s not going to do everything I want because I don’t know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take time to do all this. When we put all these things together —God’s sovereignty, love, wisdom, and patience —we have a divine story.” (source)
“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, realizing that we can’t even walk through a mall or our neighborhood without the help of the Spirit of Jesus.” (source)
Honest, realistic, mature, wise, deep. Warmly recommended.
A book on prayer that actually makes you want to pray!
Prayer, the concept and the practice, exposes our core doubts and desperation for God. Paul Miller captures the promise of prayer as a gift that connects us to the heart of the Father and as a path for transforming the world. Paul’s honest struggle with living a life full of prayer and his childlike delight in hearing the heart of God invite us to gratitude and call us to speak boldly to our God. This book will be like having the breath of God at your back. Let it lift you to new hope.
A Praying Life is a deeply moving testimony to God’s power in prayer. Paul Miller shares his life and biblical wisdom to instill in us, his readers, a “heart that becomes a factory of prayer”—that is, a passion to speak to God honestly and in a way that will change our life and the lives of others for whom we pray.
If Jesus or Jesus’ saving grace is just an abstraction to you, Paul Miller will be a great help in making his love a living reality to your heart.
Paul Miller refuses to separate the spiritual life from the rest of our daily living. In A Praying Life, he shows the difference that constant communication with Christ makes in the everyday experiences of life, especially the life of the family. Reading this book will help you make prayer a more important part of your own life story by integrating prayer into the daily routines of life.
This is as fine a book on prayer as you will ever read, but it is so much more. It is the story of our struggle to actually live like we believe that our heavenly Father really does love us. If we did, nothing could keep us from being committed to the day-by-day hard work of prayer. Paul Miller exegetes our struggle in a way that is convicting, insight giving, and encouraging. This is a book on prayer that actually makes you want to pray!
In my library, I have perhaps twenty different volumes on prayer, but none captured my heart or propelled me into fresh communion with our Father as much as A Praying Life. Finally, a book that applies the radical implications of the gospel of God’s grace to prayer! With childlike wonder, sage-like wisdom, and heartfelt candor, Paul shows us that to pray is to see Jesus more clearly and meet him more regularly in every single aspect and moment of the day. Thanks, my friend, for calling me back to what really matters.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater works; prayer is the greater work.” Paul Miller’s superb book calls us back to this “greater work,” reminding us of the joy we find in our Lord’s presence and equipping us with practical insight on how to recapture the intimacy and power of a praying life.
Product Details
- Title : A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
- Authors:
- Miller, Paul E.
- Powlison, David
- Publisher: NavPress
- Publication Date: 2017
- ISBN: 9781631468810
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