Quotes on Prayer

I taught on prayer this past Sunday during the Sunday school hour. Here are the quotes I used from Paul Miller's book A Praying Life. 

Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the center is like making conversation the center of family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like to trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it (pg 20). 

Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary. Money can do what prayer does, and it is quicker and less time-consuming. Our trust in ourselves and in our talents makes us structurally independent of God. As a result exhortations to pray don’t stick (pg. 16). 

If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else- a lack of discipline or too many obligations (pg. 59). 

American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray. 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. Every bone in our bodies screams, “Get to work.” When we aren’t working, we are used to being entertained. Television, the Internet, video games, and cell phones make free time as busy as work (pg. 15).