Wow! I could just fill the blog today with quotes from this amazing, yet wonderfully simple book on prayer, Paul Miller's, The Praying Life. I will roll out a few today but start with this one on how we ask God for things.
" Christians rush to 'not my will, but yours be done' without first expressing their hearts [Luke 22:42]. They submit so quickly that they disappear. Overspiritualizing prayer suppresses our natural desire that our house not be burned. When we stop being ourselves with God, we are no longer in real conversations with God." Paul Miller, The Praying Life, 122He then wraps up this discussion on asking by stating, "Desire and surrender are the perfect balance to praying."
Believing in the sovereignty of God can sometimes squash our desires in our prayer lives and as Miller points out, the result is that we don't have real conversations about what we want with God. Desire and surrender are the perfect balance, but let us not forget desire in the equation. Let us not think that if we honestly bring our needs and wants to God that we are being selfish. Because when we bring desires to God we are laying them down, placing them as His feet and then trusting that His way, His plan will be better than ours.
So today, what is something you want?
When you think of that, then think and act, how can I have a real conversation with God about that want, laying it down before Him, surrendering that real, honest want knowing that talking to Him is the act of surrender.
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