I found this very helpful!! Didn't love every single chapter, but found lots of help and encouragement and insight from several parts. #1 realization-I need to approach praying from a place of helplessness.
Many quotes I love:
--"...quiet cynicism or spiritual weariness that develops in us when heartfelt prayer goes unanswered. We keep our doubts hidden even from ourselves because we don't want to sound like bad Christians. No reason to add shame to our cynicism. So our hearts shut down" (14), which leads to...."Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts. It was easier on our faith NOT to pray. After only a few minutes, our prayer is in shambles. Barely out of the starting gate, we collapse on the sidelines--cynical, guilty, and hopeless" (15). Having a strong prayer life requires MORE FAITH. I want that faith.
--"We are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. But prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time. Ever bone in our bodies screams, "Get to work." When we aren't working, we are used to being entertained... When we slow down, we slip into a stupor." I want to recognize this barrier to prayer and overcome it.
--On *knowing* that God is my Father, who is accessible, that I have an intimate relationship... but not praying like it: "Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don't. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help" (17). "Many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God....prayer is the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center" (20).
--"Since a praying life is interconnected with every part of our lives, learning to pray is almost identical to maturing over a lifetime....So don't hunt for a feeling in prayer. Deep in our psyches we want an experience with God or an experience in prayer. Once we make that our quest, we lose God. YOU DON'T EXPERIENCE GOD, YOU GET TO NOW HIM" (21).
--the solution to cynicism above: "The Praying Life.. Gives Birth to Hope" "Many Christians give in to a quiet cynicism that leaves us uknowingly paralyzed. WE see the world as monolithic, frozen....[if God controls everything,] what's the point [in praying]? Because it is uncomfortable to feel our unbelief to come face-to-face with our cynicism, we dull our souls with the narcotic of activity....Because my Father controls everything, I can ask, and he will listen and act. Since I am his child, change is possible--and hope is born" (23). OH, TO LIVE IN THE BELIEF OF THOSE LAST 2 STATEMENTS.
--"The praying life...becomes integrated" "The quest for a contemplative life can be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. IF we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart" (23).
--"We have an allergic reaction to dependency, but this is the state of the heart most necessary for a praying life. A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer" (24).
--"We know that to become a Christian we shouldn't try to fix ourselves up, but when it comes ot praying, we completely forget that...we don't just come as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up. Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the non-personal, nonreal praying that you've been taught" (32).
--"The kingdom comes when Jesus becomes king of your life. But it has to be YOUR LIFE. You can't create a kingdom that doesn't exist, where you try to be better than you really are. Jesus calls that hypocrisy--putting on a mask to cover the real you" (33).
--"Many Christians pray mechanically for God's kingdom (for missionaries, the church, and so on), but all the while their lives are wrapped up in their own kingdom. You can't add God's kingdom as an overlay of your own" (34).
--"...my inability, my mindepression, was my door to God. IN fact, God wanted me depressed about myself and encouraged about His Son. The gospel uses my weakness as the door to God's grace. That is how grace works" (57).
--"You don't need self-discipline to pray continuously; you just need to be poor in spirit" (65).
--"I discovered myself praying simple two-and three-word prayers, such as TEACH ME or HELP ME, JESUS. The psalms are filled with this type of short bullet prayer... Scripture takes the pressure off because we don't have to know exactly what we need....[for example,] 'Lead me to the rock that is higher than I' (Psalm 61:2)" (65-66).
--"Ironically, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since the Fall, evil feels omnipresent, making cynicism an easy sell. Because cynicism sees what is 'really going on,' it feels real, authentic....'I know that I am not alone in my struggle with cynicism...It just feels like we can't find the joy in things, like we are too aware to trust or hope'....Cynicism creates a numbness toward life...The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaged, loving, and hoping...We've moved..to a..detached age...'But that's a double-edged sword. It protects you from crushing disappointments, but it paralyzes you from doing anything.' To be cynical is to be distant...cynicism actually destroys intimacy...Cynicism begins...with naive optimism, or foolish confidence.....'I make the jump from optimism to darkness so quickly because I am not grounded in a deep, abiding faith that God is in the matter, no matter what the matter is. I am looking for pleasant results, not deeper realities'...In naive optimism, we don't need to pray because everything is under control. In cynicism we can't pray because everything is out of control, little is possible" (79-81). "Instead of naive optimism, Jesus calls us to be wary, yet confident in our heavenly Father. We are to combine a robust trust in the Good Shepherd with a vigilance about the presence of evil in our own hearts and the hearts of others. The feel or a praying life is cautious optimism--caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption. Cautious optimism allows Jesus to boldly sent his disciples into an evil world" (84). "Cynicism looks in the wrong direction. It looks for the cracks in Christianity instead of looking for the presence of Jesus. It is an orientation of the heart. The sixth cure for cynicism, then is this: develop an eye for Jesus" (96).
