A Praying Life

19. Prayers do not happen in a vacuum, God is working a story and even our prayers for others should transform us

because he is a loving father, concerned with all aspects of our life

20. A Father’s Love. Earthly fathers imperfectly model our heavenly father, as we imperfectly seek the best for our children God perfectly seeks that which is best for us.

As a father who knows better than us, he may put us through difficult times for our good

21. Desert, God seeks to give us that which is best, which is himself. Putting us through the desert forces us to him rather than settling for the lesser things of the world.

Chapter 19 - Watching a story unfold

Our prayers are part of the larger work that God is doing in our lives and others lives.

Our Prayers Shape Us

God is doing more than answering prayers

We live in an era of the customer support desk

We have problem and we give the problem to the company support desk

the better ones provide a quick and adequate solution to our problem

The bad ones require us to pester them over and over till we finally get a manager

to return our defective Television

How astonished would we be if the manager decided it would be better for us to keep the defective television

How astonished would we be if the manager decided it would be better for us to keep the defective television

It

That yes, he could authorize a replacement but that it wouldn’t be in your best interest right now.

No, what we expect is for the manager to do everything to fix the problem as we see it.

Points in Book

Points in Book

although we might have a dialogue we never anticipate or accept that we ourselves may need change.

the last thing we want is to bring the support desk into our life

The goal, is that they will solve the problem and be out of our lives when they are no longer needed

We look at the problem as isolated from the rest of our life and we like it that way

isolated from the rest of our life and we like it that way

It is not like this with God

God is doing something much larger than answering prayers

With God

Our prayers are to change us (even if we are praying for change in others)

When we pray for other

Prayer should change how we see other people

to see them as people

With our children especially we can see their problems as things to fix

prayer shifts our view to see them as people that need to grow in faith

We want to see instant results

We should see our own sin

rather we should be patient in prayer as we

to pray for the sin in another life should expose the same in our own hearts

If we see sins in our children

It should reveal sins in our own hearts

Prayer in Parenting

God is doing more than Answering our prayers

Paul Miller notes that the importance of prayer in parenting is often understated

Prayer draws God into our lives

we believe that with the right principles and environment in place we can insure that our kids turn out right.

It changes the Prayer (or ought)

or we see that our children will is bent to evil we simply overpower their will with ours in the hope they will conform to us

even prays to change the heart of someone else ought to change us.

but the goal is not that our children conform to our will, it should be to see them in our heavenly fathers will

Praying for others hearts or sin issues

And we are completely incapable of changing our children hearts

We are to see them as a person, not a problem to be solved

We can do a lot to change the exterior

Not to be negligent in training our Children, but the cure for their heart cannot come from the parent

How the sins manifest themselves

Love informs our prayers, and our prayers shape how we love

But we cannot do the work of the heart necessary to purify our children from sin

Prayer relies on God to make a change, yet informs us how to enact our wills in subjection

I can see this strongly in my own parenting of my children

(Emily had a bent for the love of things, their response was to pray while removing temptations when possible)

Particularly some of our adopted children that arrived with some extremely bad habits

Prayers are to expose our own hearts

My children are lyers

It is never one way

In the early days I was bewildered by the lying because it had become so pervasive that my children lied even when it didn't’ help them

If our prayers our genuine for another persons sin, we should be convicted of the same

Most children start lying to get out of trouble or to get something they want

Prayers are always two way

With mine it had become such a part of their life that they barely considered telling the truth

even If we are speaking to God about someone else, there is likely something we are to grow in

And although their lying is much less now, they are still little lyers

Prayers exist in the Larger Story of what God is doing

they no longer lie in every situation as a matter of habit

in our lives

Our discipline has changed their behavior

in others lives

but the root sin in the heart is unchanged

Parenting and Prayer

I have seen something similar with the Anger in Leyiah

Creating the perfect environment is not sufficient to remedy the problem of sin in our children

As parents we cannot change our children’s hearts

We change the child by dominating his/her will

we don’t carry the power to defeat sin

We must be convinced that we parents cannot change our children's hearts

Son on the one hand Paul Miller says parents error in thinking they themselves can change their children’s hearts

We fail to repent of our sins in the face of our children’s sins

But the error in the other direction is to say they will never change

Self-willed children

We have moved to an extremely passive parenting

My child is what he is and so we might as well get used to it.

self-willed

We make excuses for the child behavior since we are hopeless it can change

Angry

Modern psychology fuels this

Paul miller categorizes the two approaches as Despair & Demanding

Deceptive

The demanding parent sees the control in their own hands

“I have the power, I am in control”

The focus is on the other person and how they need to change

It also seems that we become the standard when this is our model

Role of prayer is simply one more weapon in the toolbelt

The parent who has given in to despair

NO power, completely out of conrol

Focus on how the other person can’t change

Prayer has no role as I've given up

UNTIL YOU ARE CONVINCED YOU CAN’T CHANGE YOUR CHILD’S HEART, YOU WILL NOT TAKE PRAYER SERIOUSLY.

OR I can’t do anything about their before so I should give up on hope of it changing

What Paul Miller refers to as “Good Asking” is the prayer centered model

Passive parenting

here, we see God as having the power and being in control.

Nothing seems to work and so hope of change is diminished

The focus is not on the other person but on God and his presence and starting with my own need to change in light of that

“UNTIL YOU ARE CONVINCED THAT YOU CAN’T CHANGE YOUR CHILD’S HEART, YOU WILL NOT TAKE PRAYER SERIOUSLY”

The role of prayer is central, asking God to do a work and surrendering to it

If you are on the road of Good Asking, you have also given up- but in a good way. You’ve given up on your ability to change other people. Instead, you cling to God and watch him weave his story.

When we “give up” we are not giving up that a person will change, we are giving up on our ability to change them

Both of these wrong attitudes have a low view of God’s power

Goals for our child is to be attached to our child’s faith, not accomplishments.

Ch. 20.

Ch. 21

Guatemala

“Was this a name-it-and-claim-it prayer? No, it was actually a powerless prayer. I prayed because I was weak. I wasn’t trying to control God. I certainly wasn’t in control of Emily. I was simply praying God’s own heart back to him. I couldn’t imagine him not answering such a prayer.

But remaining fully confident in God’s abliity

and meanwhile being changed ourselves so we are better able to see and nurture the work God is doing in their life

“My two prayer requests - for her relationships with her earthly father and her heavenly Father - were closely connected a breakthrough in one led to a breakthrough in another. As I watch God’s stories unfold, I watch for His little design touches, His poetry.”

The most noticeable difference from the Demanding model and Good Asking is in the kind of change we are hoping to see

God had delayed the answer to the prayer for 5 years, but His timing and manner were perfect.

As demanding parents we may start off with what we say is a desire to see our children grow more Christlike

but the truth is that the priorities are our priorities and not Gods

Broken Images of God

We are fallen broken images of God our Father. We know when a father is flawed, we know how a true father should love.

We begin to spend more time and more resources trying to change things that personally irk us or annoy us than to see our children grow in faith

Ch. 21 Unanswered Prayer

How have you seen this play out in your own life? Do you feel that your parenting is an outflow of your own obedience to your heavenly father or a desire to change your children into your own image?

Understanding the Patterns of Story

Do we look to see the story that God is unfolding through our prayers?

God Our father

Jill had prayed daily for the protection of her daughter

As parents, we understand that things take time

Her daughter, Kim, was born with lots of problems

We would like our children to have good jobs

but we understand that our 3 yr. old lacks the proper skills to secure a good job

and we understand that as life unfolds for our children the opportunities to grow and develop those skills will come

We understand that just because our 4yr daugher is carrying her baby-doll by the neck does not mean she is going to be a failure as a mommy.

Yet often we become impatient with God

Why hasn’t he fixed this problem yet

But as our heavenly father , he is working things out in their proper timing

developing us, others, and our children according to his perfect timeframe

When God delays an answer to prayer, it is his love as our Father

As parents, we understand that our children do not know what is best for themselves

Problems and disorders continued

Our children often ask for things that we do not believe is best for them

As loving parents, we give them what we believe is best for them

If we give in simply because we are sick of the whining

then we are actually loving ourselves more than our children

We want peace and quiet, and we are willing to withhold the best from our children to get what we want

But although we may frequently fail to do what is best for our children

Due to ignorance

selfishness

lack of resources

We know our heavenly father has no such limitations

He always knows what is best for us

There is nothing he has withheld from us, he has given up himself for us

He is God and has all resources at his disposal

So if God is keeping something we desire from us, it is for our Good

perhaps we simply are not ready for it

My wife tells me that for years she desired to be married

Yet God had kept her from any such relationship

but it wasn’t until she was finally broken and gave up the ideal of being a wife and mother,

but it wasn’t until she was finally broken and gave up the ideal of being a wife and mother,

that a week later I was interested in her and we started dating and married within 7 months

Perhaps the thing we want is not actually good for us

We might desire a certain career path

and God keeps us from it knowing it would draw us away

or a certain person as our spouse

But God knows that person would be a terrible helper

As parents, we know that discipline and hardship can be good for our children

She prayed for her daughter to be safe from harm

In the book, Paul relates the story of his daughter being benched for an entire season of field hockey

yet her daughter was a harmed child

He didn’t like seeing the hardship but he also recognized that it would do more to grow and mature her faith than success.

There becomes a divide between Hope and Reality

So if we know these things as parents to our children

The Desert

Coping with the Gap

And we know that God is a far more capable and loving Father

Denial - doesn’t face reality. Insist God has healed yet die from Cancer

Determination - Make it happen through any means possible

Money, time, other people, prayer

Despair - Give up on hope, it is what it is and will not get better

We know that we can trust him through the hard times

Example: Abraham lived in reality, knew he was without an heir

How has a flawed imperfect father helped you to see the perfect love of our true heavenly father?

But still believed and had hope in the promise

The Desert

Sarah tried determination to bring reality up to the hope with Hagar

Unanswered Prayer

The Desert

Understanding God as our Loving Father is critical to understanding why God does not always answer prayer

Most biblical figures had times in the desert

God is not a disconnected help desk worker trying to fix your problem so you will go

Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Hezekiah, Jesus, Peter

He is a loving Father and every part of your life is being worked out for your good

God’s

Life in the desert

Paul Miller tells us that prior to their Daughter Kim’s birth, Jill prayed continually that God keep her baby from harm

We do not know when it will end (The Israelites were days from the promised land for 40 years)

The prayer she prayed was , a psalm of God’s promise to keep his people from harm

What she was praying was not simply her own desires, she was praying to God for that which he himself had promised

The experience is customized for all of us

The result was a child born with severe disabilities

The heart of the desert experience is the Father turning his face away (at least seemingly)

Thriving in the Desert

Jill had Hope in a promise that her daughter be kept from harm

All God’s children are taken through the desert.

It is a cure for our wandering hearts

It breaks our wills, we stop fighting

The things (other than God) for which we live life start to die.

Our idols are starved

It brings a sense of helplessness

This is crucial to the spirit of Prayer

Face to face with our own inability to live

Have joy

do anything of value

Life is crushing

The suffering burns away false selves of cynicism, pride or lust

It changes us, often without us noticing

things that were important fade

The true thirst is revealed

A thirst for God

We cry out to God so often that the window of communication blossoms

God’s gift through the desert is his own presence

“You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God?

The desert Blossoms

Example: the humbling experience of raising Kim

The hard times pushed the family closer to Christ

Kept from Harm

God answered the prayer in a larger way although it seemed like the prayer had gone unaswered.

God had protected them more from harm by allowing Kim to be disabled.

God does act on our behalf in prayer, weaving his story.

Colossians 4:2 ESV

2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

:

To be watchful keeps us looking for how God is unfolding his promises

Thankfulness that everything we receive is a gift.

But the reality was a daughter that had been badly harmed from birth

The resulting divide between hope and reality is what we will call the desert

So what do we do when the reality of our situation is far from that in which we have hope? Perhaps it even seems to be moving further away from hope.

The tension between hope and reality is unpleasant

We desire to fix it

Sometimes we have a number of coping mechanisms to try to resolve the problem ourselves.

som

One such wrong method is Denial

We simply alter our perception of reality align with our hope

Believing we have been cured of cancer while it continues to destroy our body

insist a child has been born again when they are obviously living for the world

Another is shear force of will or determination

I WILL FIX THIS

I will use all my resources to change my reality

But the truth of the matter is that if God intends us to be in the desert we will not be able to take ourselves out

The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert despite only being a matter of days walking from the promised land

Lastly, we may turn to despair and give up on Hope

The other thing

Have you ever found yourself trying to resolve the tension between hope and reality by resorting to denial, determination, or despair?

Learning to live in hope despite circumstances

We have many examples of those who lived in hope despite circumstances

Abraham lived in the reality of his old age and Sarah’s barrenness

Yet he also lived in hope

Romans 4:18 ESV

18 In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”

Romans

iii. not that he always did it perfectly

He and Sarah try to close the gap themselves when Sarah offers Hagar

Sarah had also given up hope that she would conceive,

she laughed when the Angels said she would conceive in a year

David lived years with the promise that he would be king

yet the reality was he was a hunted fugitive running from his life

David had the opportunity to change the reality himself

Saul twice was given into his hand

Had David killed Saul he could have had a clear path to the crown

But he would not sin by killing God’s anointed

He held on to the Hope that God would fulfill His promise without him sinning

God takes all he loves through the Desert experience

Because he is a loving father that knows what is best

But the experience is unique for all of us. He gives each of us individually what is best

He desires for us to grow and mature

It cures our wandering souls

it is easy to find satisfaction in the world when things are going well

The desert experience starves our worldly idols

We find ourselves unable to be satisfieds

Life in the desert

We do not know when it will end (The Israelites were days from the promised land for 40 years)

The experience is customized for all of us

Thriving in the Desert

Thriving in the Desert

All God’s children are taken through the desert.

It is a cure for our wandering hearts

It breaks our wills, we stop fighting

The things (other than God) for which we live life start to die.

Our idols are starved

It brings a sense of helplessness

This is crucial to the spirit of Prayer

Face to face with our own inability to live

Have joy

do anything of value

Life is crushing

The suffering burns away false selves of cynicism, pride or lust

It changes us, often without us noticing

things that were important fade

The true thirst is revealed

A thirst for God

We cry out to God so often that the window of communication blossoms

God’s gift through the desert is his own presence

“You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God?

The desert Blossoms

Example: the humbling experience of raising Kim

The hard times pushed the family closer to Christ

Kept from Harm

God answered the prayer in a larger way although it seemed like the prayer had gone unaswered.

God had protected them more from harm by allowing Kim to be disabled.

God does act on our behalf in prayer, weaving his story.

ESV

2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

To be watchful keeps us looking for how God is unfolding his promises

Thankfulness that everything we receive is a gift.