God uses our prayers to change things, but the right prayers come just from being with him. One prayer rightly prayed is worth far more than millions of words that don’t come from fellowship with him.
More than anything else in Miller’s book, this has made me want to pray. My life can be hectic, and adding prayer as one more thing seems to make life more stressful, not less. But when we approach prayer as a way of spending time with our loving Father, it becomes something that brings calm and confidence in the midst of busyness.
I love how he describes this combination:
Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life [because if you love people you will be busy!]; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love… By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.
How to Pray Tip #4. Don’t look for a spiritual solution to a practical problem.
I want to make sure you read point #1. The root of most of our prayer problems is spiritual. We are idolaters, worshiping the wrong things. Unless God changes our heart, we’ll never be able to fruitfully change our habits.
But we aren’t just souls; we’re embodied creatures, which means that as much as we desire to pray, without a plan, it’s not likely to happen.
In this way, praying is a lot like spending time with my wife and kids or going to the gym. I legitimately want to do these things. And I enjoy them more than most other activities. But without a plan, the time in my day gets eaten up really quickly. So I carve out time to be home with my family—not because I need the discipline to overcome prayerlessness. Quite the opposite, the desire fuels the discipline.
