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
What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his. I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover. I move from being an orphan to a child of God.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 125-126
Often, our deepest dream is an unspoken dream. We are unable to articulate it for fear that we are asking too much. God, listening with ears of the heart, is able to hear our unspoken prayer. Hearing this soul prayer and acting on it, God often seems to catch us by surprise. We do not expect to be taken as seriously as God seems to be taking us. When the Universe opens a door or two for us, we shy away.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 149-150
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.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 121
Majesty and humility are such an odd fit. This is one reason we struggle with prayer. We just don’t think God could be concerned with the puny details of our lives. We either believe he’s too big or that we’re not that important. No wonder Jesus told us to be like little children! Little children are not daunted by the size of their parents. They come, regardless.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 116-117
God is for all of us and for all of our most complex transactions. Dependency upon God is not childish. It is childlike — and we all know how quickly children can grow and transform. When we make ourselves childlike in relation to God, we open ourselves to similar growth and transformation. It is a paradox, but in striving to become as little children, we also become more fully adult. We open ourselves up to the root word response in the word responsible.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 141
As soon as I begin simply asking for help, I have become like a little child again. I’ve stopped becoming cynical. Oddly enough, my prayer is answered almost immediately because in the act of praying I’ve become like a child. The cure for cynicism is to become like a little child again. Instead of critiquing others’ stories, watch the story our Father is weaving.
To hear a good story, we need a simple, childlike wonder…. The cynic is never fooled, so he is never delighted.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 86-87
When you stop trying to control your life and instead allow your anxieties and problems to bring you to God in prayer, you shift from worry to watching. You watch God weave his patterns in the story of your life. Instead of trying to be out front, designing your life, you realize you are inside God’s drama. As you wait, you begin to see him work, and your life begins to sparkle with wonder. You are learning to trust again.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 73
If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You’ll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But if, like Jesus, you realize you can’t do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray.
Time in prayer makes you even more dependent on God because you don’t have as much time to get things done. Every menute spent in prayer is one less minute where you can be doing something “productive.” So the act of praying means that you have to rely more on God.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 49
Don’t be embarrassed by how needy your heart is and how much it needs to cry out for grace. Just start praying. Remember the point of Christianity isn’t to learn a lot of truths so you don’t need God any more.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 41