I am reading what is, so far, a fantastic book by Paul E. Miller called A Praying Life this week. It has brought about considerable conviction for me in regard to my inner life with God. I am a pastor and have walked with God for most of my life. I learned to pray from the earliest days of my life and have parents who modeled prayer for me. Yet, if I am honest, I find prayer to be an enormous struggle at times. I have many doubts about the effectiveness of it, about whether I am doing it the right way, about if I properly balance asking for things selfishly v. asking on behalf of others, even about what is and is not okay to ask for. My desire to control things runs so deep in the dark recesses of my heart that I try to control God through praying the "right way" and for the "right things". Truthfully, my underlying interest is getting prayer to work for me.

As we have gone through the book of Nehemiah for the last 13 weeks, we have repeatedly drawn attention to Nehemiah's character as a leader with a profound prayer life. The example he offers us in Scripture has served to rebuke and challenge me. I see how he led from a place of intimacy and dependence on God and the results are hard to argue with. My anemic prayer life has been exposed. In a predictable twist, as I wrestled with the "why" of my own struggle in this area, I brushed off praying about it and instead bought a book about prayer. And no, the irony of that is not lost on me.

In some measure I have been conformed to the world, I must admit, in that, at least functionally, I think prayer is silly and a last resort for the desperate and helpless. I have an easier time trusting myself to do something than trusting God to do something. I guess I am right that prayer is for the desperate and helpless among us... I am just foolish enough to think that doesn't describe my condition when all evidence suggests that I am, at my very best moments, desperate and helpless. I got a book to read about prayer, because I can read and gather knowledge while avoiding addressing my heart, rather than going to God in prayer and allowing him to reform my heart. God knows I am desperate and helpless and I know it too. I guess there is just a discomfort when we both come to know that we know, because at that point it has to be dealt with.

In His classic kindness and grace, God has allowed my chosen means of avoiding this root issue, a book, to be a means by which he has revealed my own heart to me... So, I thought I would attach this chapter,  "Understanding Cynicism". I guess I am taking a chance that some of you have some of the same things holding you back in your prayer life and I thought this may be of some help at least identifying why entering into communion with God is so hard at times.

He starts this chapter by saying:

"The opposite of a childlike spirit is a cynical spirit. Cynicism is, increasingly, the spirit of our age. Personally, it is my greatest struggle in prayer... When I say that cynicism is the spirit of the age, I mean it is an influence, a tone that permeates our culture, one of the master temptations of our age."

I think he is right and my hope is that some of you may read this and see yourselves in what he is talking about, that it would expose your own heart the way it has mine. Seeing the subtle and destructive nature of cynicism and how it affects so much of my thinking is an important step for me in the journey to overcome cynicism, rather than yield to it and even find humor in it. Instead, my prayer, and I am fighting to believe this could actually happen, is that we would be a people who repent and follow Jesus out of cynicism and into hope.

Download Understanding Cynicism

Again, that is A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller. This book is altogether helpful and I would commend it to you all.