"A Praying Life" (chapters 10-11)

A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

By Paul E. Miller

 

“Following Jesus Out of Cynicism” - Chapters 10-11

 

1. Be Warm but Wary

• We cannot be naively optimistic or cynical. We must be trusting and yet discerning.
• As Jesus put it, we must be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”
• Avoiding cynicism does not mean abandoning discernment.
• But, being aware of evil does not mean that we distance ourselves with an ironic, critical stance.
• We are to combine a robust trust in the Good Shepherd with a vigilance about the presence of evil in our own hearts and in the hearts of others.
• The feel of a praying life is cautious optimism—caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption.

 

2. Learn to Hope Again

• Cynicism kills hope. Prayer feels pointless, as if we are talking to the wind.
• Jesus brings hope, not cynicism.
• Hope begins with the heart of God. As you grasp what the Father’s heart is like, how he loves to give, then prayer will begin to feel completely natural to you.
• “Behold, I make all things new.”

 

3. Cultivate a Childlike Spirit

• Cynicism arises in a heart of self-reliance. Hope grows in a heart of dependent trust.
• We must cry out for grace like a hungry child.
• When we ask for help, we’ve become dependent like a little child again. This brings us out of cynicism.
• “Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted…”

 

4. Cultivate a Thankful Spirit

• Begin each day by thanking God for his grace given the previous day.
• Nothing undercuts cynicism more than a spirit of thankfulness.
• We realize that our whole life is a gift.
• Thanking God restores the natural order of our dependence on God. It enables us to see life as it really is.
• Thanksgiving rejoices in God’s care, replacing a bitter spirit with a generous one.

 

5. Cultivating Repentance

• Cynics imagine they are objective observers on a quest for authenticity.
• They feel deeply superior because they think they see through everything.
• “Seeing through everything” eventually results in seeing nothing.
• While claiming to “see through” other’s facades, cynics lack purity of heart.
• A significant source of cynicism is the fracture between my heart and my behavior.
• I continue to perform and say Christian things, but there is a disconnect between what I present and who I am.
• My empty religious performance leads me to think that everyone is phony.
• Adding judgment to hypocrisy breeds cynicism.
• All sin involves a splitting of the personality—“double-minded.”
• We present one thing but in reality are something else.
• Repentance brings the split personality together—becoming single-minded. The real self and the public self are the same, no facades.
• Cynicism focuses on the other person’s split personality and their need to repent. It lacks the humility of removing the speck from our eye.
• A cynical perspective causes us to see ourselves and others through blurry spectacles. We don’t see ourselves or others accurately.
• While attempting to unmask evil, cynicism can create evil.
• By cultivating a lifestyle of repentance, the pure in heart develop integrity, and their own fractures are healed.
• By beginning with their own impurity, they avoid critical cynicism.

 

6. Developing an Eye for Jesus

• Cynicism looks in the wrong direction. It looks for the cracks in Christianity instead of looking for the presence of Jesus.
• The cynic looks for the hypocrisy and evil in others.
• The childlike, dependent spirit looks for the evidence of Jesus’ work in others.
• We need to ask, “Where did I see Jesus today?”
• Instead of looking for faults, we look for evidence of Jesus’ grace—we hunt for the difference between what others would normally be like and what they had become through the presence of Jesus.
• When we look for the evidence of Jesus in others, we find it in the mundane encounters in life.
• Instead of focusing on other people’s lack of integrity, on their split personalities, we need to focus on how Jesus is reshaping the church to be more like himself. We need to view the body of Christ with grace.