This next post in our series of questions and answers with speakers at our 2011 Conference for Pastors features Paul Miller, author of A Praying Life.
Your father, Jack Miller, is well-known for his impact as a pastor, evangelist, missions organizer and author. What impact did he have on your life, especially as regards living a life of prayer?
I watched my dad become passionate about prayer during my teenage years. He learned it when he was a professor at Westminster Seminary from watching ministries in Europe, particularly Francis Schaeffer’sL’Abri in the late 60s. When Dad and I started World Harvest Mission in 1983 that became an important part of the DNA of our work. So the value and power of corporate prayer came from my dad.
The other thread from my dad was his emphasis on the gospel as something that Christians need to believe, that our weakness is the door to grace. I simply took that insight and applied that to my prayer life.
Your book, A Praying Life, talks about cynicism in prayer. How would you describe the problem of cynicism, and what is your advice to those who are struggling with it?
Cynicism is my biggest struggle in prayer. It is a quiet, cold rationalism that dulls the soul and just kills your walk with God. It is hard to even identify or name our cynicism because it just feels like being realistic. It says things like, “What good does it [prayer] do?” or “It [the answer to prayer] would have happened anyway.”
I think we are particularly susceptible to cynicism in the Reformed world because we are an intellectual world. We are rightly concerned about our ideas being correct, but we don’t always pay attention to our heart being correct.
I think without a doubt that the principal cure for cynicism is to become a little child and learn to cry out for help—to realize that I am a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a lost son.
One other cure for cynicism is purity of life. Any time there is a miss between how we present ourselves as Christians and what we are really like when no one is watching, that opens up a door for cynicism. So a lifestyle of repentance and confession goes a long way to cure cynicism.
