A Praying Life and a Listening God

How God Used Paul Miller (and David Powlison) to Help Me Pray

Greetings, everyone. I missed May’s book of the month post due mostly to the workload of the class I mention at the start of this article. So here is May’s book review a week late. I still plan to write a book of the month post at the end of June (probably on Bobby Jamieson’s new book on Ecclesiastes, which is excellent). Thank you for reading. As always, feel free to comment and share. Blessings.

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Last week, I completed my first class with CCEF (the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation). It was an online class made up of lectures given by the late David Powlison, one of the most significant voices in the biblical counseling movement. If you’re unfamiliar with biblical counseling, it is an approach to counseling that takes 2 Timothy 3:16 to heart. It believes that all of Scripture is profitable for all of life. Even the really hard, really messy stuff - the big sins and the big sufferings. The class was called Dynamics of Biblical Change, and I believe it will be more impactful to my life and ministry than any class I took in seminary.¹

While taking this class, I was also going through Paul Miller’s A Praying Life with a brother in my church. This was my second time reading it, having gone through it two years ago shortly after my brother died. The book was a comfort in that season. It powerfully reminded me that I was God’s son in the midst of one of the most significant sufferings I could ever face. But I was processing a lot at that time (obviously) and the movement towards a “praying life” didn’t quite take, despite my being convinced that Paul Miller’s approach to prayer was…well…the Bible’s approach to prayer.

Yet as I read the book again over these past few months, I was struck by how much overlap there was between Paul Miller’s teaching on prayer and what I was learning from David Powlison in my biblical counseling class. Both were graciously challenging me - and I realize how incredibly basic this is going to sound - to relate to God as if he actually exists and is who he says he is. Both Powlison and Miller were teaching me that real change - the heart transformation that I long and ache for - will not happen apart from doing relational business with God. I must go to him. Speak to him. Bring my sorrows and sins to him.

These two men, from different angles, were saying functionally the same thing. And probably because I am dull of hearing, God in his good providence brought these two voices together into my life at the same time. One to help me see the Bible’s glorious insights into the messy functioning of my own heart (Powlison) and one to help me more honestly and genuinely bring my heart to the God of the Bible (Miller).^⁠²

Praying Like a Child

A Praying Life is the best book on prayer I’ve read. Paul Miller wisely shows how Western cynicism suffocates prayer. He teaches us how to keep an eye out for the Lord’s work in our lives while still holding high the ultimate authority and revelation of God’s Word. He offers powerful illustrations of prayer in his own life, letting us in on how conversation with the living God sustained him and his wife through years of significant hardship. For those who need it, he walks us through his prayer card system.

But for me, the real beauty of A Praying Life is how Miller reminded me of our Savior’s clear teaching to pray like a child. He lays this foundation in Part 1 of the book and everything else in A Praying Life is built on it. Praying like a child, of course, is not easy as it requires admitting my own neediness. My helplessness and weakness. It also means bringing my real self and what’s really going on in my heart to him. This is exactly what David Powlison was calling me to do in his class - to bring the things really going in my thoughts and emotions to the Lord. That requires an honesty that can be painful. “The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask,” writes Miller. “The real you has to meet the real God. He is a person.”^⁠³

This is where going to God as a child is key.^⁠⁴ If you’ve been blessed with kids, you know how in their younger years they are constantly asking you for things (and I mean constantly). They have unshakable trust in your ability to protect and care for them. They come to you with their short, babbly sentences, bringing you every little thing that pops into their brain. 0% of their thoughts are centered on what they sound like. They are simply going to mommy and daddy with everything.

That, says Miller, is how to approach God in prayer. From the tiniest of requests like a parking space to the biggest of our sufferings and sins, from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys, we bring our rambling thoughts, musings, worries, pains, and joys to our heavenly Father who delights to hear our hearts. No posturing. No pretending. Just children speaking to our Father who loves us.

I want to remind you that we live in a universe with a real God who really hears our prayers and really answers them. He does so in his ways and in his timing. But make no mistake - he responds. He hears. You and I live in a world under his loving care. And because of the blood of Christ, we get to go boldly with every thought and care every single day to the God of all grace and all authority and ask him for his help. If you need a nudge in that direction, A Praying Life is a beautiful push out the door.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon. As of the publishing of this email, Amazon has the book on sale on Kindle.

As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a small commission from purchases. This is a free-to-you way of supporting this newsletter. If you use these links to purchase the book, thank you.

1. That is not intended in any way to diminish the significance or importance of my seminary degree. I have an MA in Biblical and Theological Studies from Phoenix Seminary and I’m extremely grateful for the education I received there. I am not knocking seminary. I believe most pastors and vocational ministry leaders should go to seminary. But that’s an article for another time.

2. To drive His point home even further, shortly after finishing the book and towards the end of my class, I “happened” to read the Foreword of A Praying Life - something I typically don’t do since a forward is basically a lengthy endorsement. Most books list the name of the person who wrote the foreword on the front cover, but NavPress apparently decided it made more marketing sense to put Tim Keller’s brief endorsement on the front cover instead (I can’t say I blame them).

So who wrote the foreword of A Praying Life? David Powlison.

3. A Praying Life, Miller, pg. 21. Bold added for emphasis.

4. Don’t be fooled by the “as a child,” “like a child,” language. You are God’s child. When you go to God in prayer as a child, you are not playing a character like an actor or putting on a mask. You are living in reality. You are God’s child. He is your Father. The cynicism of adulthood, as Miller explains in Part 2, steals away our ability to see this. Much of Christ’s ministry in the Gospels is teaching us to reclaim our identity as children.