Rich Complexity

Faith, God, Prayer, Waiting 0

If Jesus were a magic prayer machine, he’d have healed this woman’s daughter instantly, and we would not have discovered her feisty, creative spirit. Likewise, Jesus’ ambiguity with us creates the space not only for him to emerge but us as well. If the miracle comes too quickly, there is no room for discovery, for relationship. With both this woman and us, Jesus is engaged in a divine romance, wooing us to himself.

The waiting that is the essence of faith provides the context for relationship. Faith and relationship are interwoven in dance. Everyone talks about how prayer is relationship, but often what people mean is having warm fuzzies with God. Nothing wrong with warm fuzzies, but relationships are far richer and more complex.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 190-191

Answered Prayer

Faith, God, Prayer 0

When we turn to God in faith, we release anxiety. We remind ourselves that God knows the desires of our hearts and knows, too, what is best for us. No prayer goes unanswered. No request goes unfulfilled — although the answer may not come in the form that we think we desire. God knows everything that we need upon our spiritual path. Knowing this, we do well not to let ourselves be too concerned by our prayers not being answered the way we think they should be. We should affirm that God is answering our prayers even when no answer is immediately apparent to us. God’s timing and our timing may differ. We do well to defer to God who has in mind the harmony of the whole of which we are a part. There is no limit to the good that God can accomplish.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 219-220

Thriving in the Desert

God, Growth, Prayer, Trials 0

God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden. Here’s how it works.

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 is God’s best hope for the creation of an authentic self.

Desert life sanctifies you. You have no idea you are changing. You simply notice after you’ve been in the desert awhile that you are different. Things that used to be important no longer matter….

The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town.

You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God. When driving, you turn off the radio just to be with God. At night you drift in and out of prayer when you are sleeping. Without realizing it, you have learned to pray continuously. The clear, fresh water of God’s presence that you discover in the desert becomes a well inside your heart.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 184-185

A “Yes” in Disguise

Faith, God, Guidance, Prayer 0

In cozy retrospect, it is often very clear that the “no” that we received was actually a form of spiritual protection, not merely a deliberate and flippant thwarting of our will. When we receive a “no” from God, it is often actually a “yes” in disguise. Instead of focusing on what we cannot have, we need only turn our attention toward that good which God is moving forward in its stead.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 176

Wisdom

God, Guidance, Prayer 0

Without realizing it, we are operating out of an Enlightenment mind-set that denies the possibility of an infinite God speaking personally into our lives. That’s why I prefer the biblical term wisdom to our more common term guidance. Guidance means I’m driving the car and asking God which way to go. Wisdom is richer, more personal. I don’t just need help with my plans; I need help with my questions and even my own heart.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 145

Ask

God, Prayer 0

All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God. But that is not the only reason he tells us to ask anything. God wants to give us good gifts. He loves to give.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 134

The Divine Dance

God, Prayer 0

Prayer is strikingly intimate. As soon as you take a specific answer to prayer and try to figure out what caused it, you lose God. We simply cannot see the causal connections between our prayers and what happens. But don’t forget this isn’t just true of prayer. All the best things in life have no visible connections. For example, selfless love, love that gets no credit or payback, is completely irrational to our intellectual elites because there is no visible connection between what love gives and what it gets. . . .

The inability to see the connection between cause and effect is intrinsic to the nature of prayer because it is the direct activity of God. Trying to dissect how prayer works is like using a magnifying glass to try to figure out why a woman is beautiful. If you turn God into an object, he has a way of disappearing. We do the same thing when a spouse or a friend consistently treats us like an object. We pull back. . . .

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 parking places, pajamas, poured milk, and Pathfinders. No one works like him!

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 128

A Moment of Incarnation

God, Prayer 0

Prayer is a moment of incarnation — God with us. God involved in the details of my life. Another author of an otherwise excellent book on prayer said that prayer was mainly about us being with God and not about God answering our prayers. As an example he mentioned that “mothers in the days of high infant mortality used to pray desperately that their children would not die in infancy. Modern medical techniques have put an end to those prayers in the West.” Maybe. Or maybe modern medical techniques were developed in the West because young mothers in the West were praying for the lives of their children.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 125

Healing

Acceptance, God, Healing, Prayer 0

I began to believe that God hears every prayer and that healing is not necessarily a matter of receiving a physical cure. It may mean that you discover, as I did, that you have a great deal more courage in you than you ever knew about.

— Caroline Myss, quoting “Ann,” Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, p. 104