A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World »

Paul Miller is director of seeJesus.net, an organization that develops interactive Bible studies for small groups. He is the author of Love Walked Among Us (NavPress), The PrayerLife Study , The Person of Jesus , an interactive study of the wonder of Jesus and his love. He also travels widely and teaches Jesus Weekends, Person of Jesus seminars, and PrayerLife seminars. Paul and his wife, Jill, have six children and live near Philadelphia.

In fact, prayer is so hard that most of us simply do not pray unless an illness or a public setting, such as saying grace at a meal, demands it. Prayerlessness is rooted in a core unbelief that can shape our lives, even as Christians. Because of prayerlessness, our lives are often marked by fear, anxiety, joylessness, and spiritual lethargy.

If prayerlessness marks your life more often than not, then this book is for you. Basing his text on the popular PrayerLife seminar, which has encouraged thousands of Christians to a vibrant prayer life, Paul Miller writes to the heart of the matter. This is, indeed, the book for any Christian who wants to know the joy and power of a vibrant prayer life.

Foreword 9

Introduction 11

1 "What Good Does It Do?" 13

2 Where We Are Headed 19

Part 1 Learning to Pray Like a Child

3 Become Like a Little Child 29

4 Learn to Talk with Your Father 37

5 Spending Time with Your Father 43

6 Learning to Be Helpless 53

7 Crying "Abba" - Continuously 63

8 Bending Your Heart to Your Father 69

Part 2 Learning to Trust Again

9 Understanding Cynicism 77

10 Following Jesus out of Cynicism 83

11 Developing an Eye for Jesus 95

Part 3 Learning to Ask Your Father

12 Why Asking Is So Hard 103

13 Why We Can Ask 113

14 How Personal Is God? 119

15 What Do We Do with Jesus' Extravagant Promises About Prayer? 129

16 What We Don't Ask For: "Our Daily Bread" 141

17 What We Don't Ask For: "Your Kingdom Come" 149

18 Surrender Completely: "Your Will Be Done" 155

Part 4 Living in Your Father's Story

19 Watching a Story Unfold 165

20 A Father's Love 173

21 Unanswered Prayer: Understanding the Patterns of Story 179

22 How God Places Himself in the Story 189

23 Praying Without a Story 195

24 Hope: The End of the Story 205

25 Living in Gospel Stories 211

Part 5 Praying in Real Life

26 Using Prayer Tools 221

27 Keeping Track of the Story: Using Prayer Cards 225

28 Prayer Work 235

29 Listening to God 239

30 Prayer Journaling: Become Aware of the Interior Journey 249

31 Real-Life Praying 257

32 Unfinished Stories 263

Acknowledgments 269

Notes 271

About the Author 279