Getting to know Him
In the best book on prayer I have come across, A Praying Life, Paul Miller writes, "When we have a praying life, we become aware of and enter into the story God is weaving in our lives. . . . Prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center. . . . We are actors in his drama, listening for our lines, quieting our hearts so we can hear the voice of the Playwright. . . . 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. . . . I often find that when God doesn’t answer a prayer, he wants to expose something in me. Our prayers don’t exist in a world of their own. . . . As I watch God’s stories unfold, I watch for his little design touches, his poetry" …
After a while of this you’ll find, as Miller found and I have found: "I didn’t learn continuous prayer; I discovered I was already doing it. I found myself in difficult situations I could not control. All I could do was cry out to my heavenly Father. It happened often enough that it became a habit, creating a rut between my soul and God. Jesus’s 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. . . . Jesus is engaged in a divine romance, wooing us to Himself."
All you have to be is desperate without Him | Andrée Seu
World
Last December, trying to be on time to Nassia’s preschool Christmas party in Philadelphia, I asked the Lord—out loud, so my granddaughter would hear—for a parking spot. After 15 minutes of circling I had to resort to the multi-tiered garage: $8. "You didn’t come through, God," I complained inaudibly. He said, "Child, you asked for a parking place and I gave you a parking place. You’re the one who has a hang-up about $8."
I realize the anecdote casts me in an unflattering light, but actually it represents progress for me. I never used to ask for parking spaces, ostensibly because it’s a petty, non-kingdom-minded request, but really to protect myself, and God, from looking bad. Not to harp too much on the divine dispatching of cars, but that is after all the locus classicus of the prayer issue—just how involved does God mean to be in our lives?
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