Pray Big: Paul Miller

Hey, before we dive into today's episode, we want to invite you to an exclusive Art of Marriage preview event on November 1st.

Yep, you heard that right. Family Life is releasing an all-new version of our flagship marriage study, Art of Marriage. You will get previews of the sessions, exclusive marriage teachings, and hear from us as well as other teachers.

And you can sign up in the show notes or on familylife.com slash coming soon. We hope you'll join us. How did we become prayerless as a church over the last 50 years? There's a great question. You know, I think it is just our self-sufficiency.

I mean, money does what prayer does, but you are in control, and it does it faster, and you don't need God's permission. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.

This is Family Life Today. You are a prayer warrior. Why do you say that? Nobody prays like you.

Oh, I don't feel like that at all. You pray in the morning. You pray in our bed every night before we go to sleep.

You walk up to strangers in airports and lay your hand on their shoulder and say, can I pray for you? I'm not kidding. That's great.

It is awesome. I'm intimidated. You are. I mean, in a good way.

You've never said that. I feel like I walk around with Jesus. You're just such a... I love it.

I love it. It's because I'm so desperate and I feel so broken. I can't do anything in and of myself and I need Jesus for it.

But I also think it started when our kids were little and I felt like I can't do this. And so I would be praying, as Paul said, pray without ceasing. I'm like, oh, that's why. When you're desperate, you begin praying without ceasing. Yeah, you do.

You really do. And it inspires me to do the same thing. And I think we now have another prayer warrior in the studio today.

Paul Miller is back. The book we're going to talk about today is A Praying Church. It's so good.

Oh, it's awesome. And it isn't just about church. It's about prayer and husbands and dads and moms and wives. But Paul, you are a prayer warrior. Would you agree?

I would say that, like Anne was saying, you know, it's because you're aware of your weakness. You know, it's that like, I can't do life on my own, which is Jesus of Nazareth. You know, like, you can actually sort of put the two parts of Jesus' interior life together. On the interior, you have John, the Gospel of John, where he continually says, I can't do anything without my Father. And then what does that look like on the outside is the Gospel of Luke, which is his life of prayer. Yeah, even the fact that before he picked his disciples, he spent the night. Yeah. And we read that and we're like, prayed all night? Yeah.

How can you do that? Yeah. It sounds like you do that. Yeah. No, I don't pray all night.

But if I ate too much and I'm up in the middle of the night. So that's not, that's kind of the flesh making space for the spirit to work. Yeah. Well, as I picked this up in your subtitle, I mentioned it last time, Becoming a People of Hope in a Discouraging World.

You mentioned at the end of our last episode, how important prayer is in the world we're living in right now. Wealth, discouragement. Chaos.

Chaos. I mean, again, it's always been that way. I mean, it isn't like it's something new, but it feels heightened in our day. Maybe because the internet, everything's right in front of us. You know, news across the world. The second it happens, we hear about it. Where, you know, we've grown up in decades before where it was hours or maybe days before we heard things like a shooting in a school somewhere.

Now it's right in front of us. So it feels like the world is spinning out of control. So you write a book that says, okay, if the world is discouraging, how can we be people of hope? How does prayer fit in that? Well, maybe just even go back a step and say, how did we become prayerless as a church over the last 50 years?

There's a great question. You know, I think it is just our self-sufficiency and our relative wealth. I mean, money does what prayer does, but you are in control and it does it faster and you don't need God's permission, you know?

And so all of that leads to us just being reliant on management and just the busyness, the noise of our culture. Like you took almost every aspect of American culture and it just kills the spirit of prayer. I remember watching an interview with a woman who was from the Middle East, became a follower of Jesus, was persecuted over there, almost killed. Her dream was to come to the United States to live, to get away from the persecution. And after she had been here a year, she said to her husband, I need to move back. And he said, why would you say that?

And she said, because I'm falling asleep here. The American church has fallen asleep. And it's exactly, I think what you're just saying, our self-sufficiency. And I think that God sent the pandemic and the decline of attendance of the church and the loss of so many youth and sort of the increasing aggressiveness of the culture as he's humbling the church. And I do think it's beginning to learn to pray and it's really saying, Jesus, we can't do life without you. And the trick is, you know, one of the problems with, I'm going to call it Pietism.

Pietism is the kind of the beating heart of Christianity, but it tends to focus on me and my personal prayer life and my spiritual life, how I'm doing. And we've lost that sense of how to pray together as a community. So it's one thing to learn to be dependent individually, but when you begin to learn to pray together and think of the family, when a family can begin to pray together or the parts of the family, when I can close a conversation off with one of my kids, hey, can we just pray together about this or just where you turn conversations into short prayer times, you know, where prayer begins to seep into all the structures and the fabric of how you do life as a family together. And that's when the Spirit begins to work in amazing ways. And as you say that, I would encourage listeners. I remember saying to our kids, let's pray.

When they were in high school or middle school, you know, and they give me the groan, like, right. And I would become discouraged. And then they would think, should I not pray?

Do they think I'm done? And so I would encourage you as a listener, if you're saying to your family, let's pray, pray anyway. And if your kids are going through difficult times, we want to rescue them out of their difficulties, and yet when our kids are in difficulties, they would come to me and say, Mom, will you pray for me? Yeah.

And so I don't think we should be fearful when they're going through difficulty, because that generally drives us to our knees. Yeah. And you really have to have the right goals as a family. I mean, Paul has two metrics for the church, Paul the Apostle. They're all over his writing, and they are faith and love. And they're real metrics for Paul. He measures them.

He talks about them. He prays for them, you know, and they're the only things I want with our kids. Like, I don't care what school they get into.

I don't care how much money they make. All those things that just as a parent has to die. I mean, you need the fire of Jesus to clean that up. You know what I mean?

Because it's just, it's not, you know, none of that lasts, you know, they'll just end up being mean and fighting one another, and they'll reenact Cain and Abel, you know? Well, it is interesting what you said about, I've seen it in our family, the dependents. Yes. We become independent.

We, and again, there's nothing wrong with wealth and having nice things, and living in this country is great. But think about this. It just hit me in when, uh, when our boys were real little and we wanted to get them a, what are they called? Power Wheels? Power Wheels.

For Christmas. One of those little self-driving battery-powered, they're real popular now, but they were sort of new then. This is eighties? Yeah. Yeah. Late eighties. We didn't have enough money to buy it.

It was like a couple hundred bucks. And we're like, we can't get this. And we thought we'd be able to do this. So what did we do? We prayed.

As a family. And we asked for a miracle. And I don't remember how we got 200 bucks, but it was out of nowhere. And I remember we got a check in the mail and we were thinking, I can't even remember, but it was almost exactly how much that little Power Wheels cost. And then our boys saw this and it was like, look at what God did. Here's what I just thought of Paul, when you were saying, here's how we live. You know how we would do it today?

Right? Pull out your credit card. That is what we would have done today. We didn't even have a credit card then. You know, it was like, who gets credit cards? Only the really wealthy people. Now everybody, so now it's become our God.

It's like, hey, we can go get that Power Wheels right now. Can we afford it? No, but nobody can afford it.

So we'll pay, you know, $10 a month for 50 years. But it's like, this has become the replacement of God. I don't pray about it.

I just go swipe a card. Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's like, we are independent, not dependent. We were going to Africa on a mission trip, four of us with our family. Our other kids were in college and I think we had to race $15,000. Nope, I know exactly what it was.

Oh, you do? What was it? It was $12,000. It was 4,000 times. Oh, that's right. No, it was 3,000 times four of us. Yes.

So Ann and I are in our two middle school. Yeah. And I'll never forget, Paul, I go into a room the night before I'm going to preach the next morning and we have to have the money turned in on Monday. And this is Saturday night. And I get on my knees at their bed and I say, guess what, guys?

I got to be honest. We're not going to Africa. We don't have the money.

We need $12,000 and we have zero. I think we had had some. I think we had a couple of hundred, but nobody, you know, and I never forget telling them.

I just want to, I felt like I had to be honest. Like, guys, God hasn't provided and you know what? Maybe it's not his plan for us to go.

We're not going to go. And I'll never forget, I preached that next morning at church and Carl Kremes came up. I'll never forget his name. I know Carl.

He's a good friend now. He walks up and he goes, Hey man, so how's it going raising money for the Africa trip? I go, well, got to be honest with you, Carl.

I told my sons last night, we're probably not going. He goes, what do you mean? I go, you know, we need 12 grand and didn't happen. So I had to be honest as a dad and say, sometimes, you know, he goes, Oh, you're going. I go, no, you know, I hope we can go.

We got like another day. And he goes, no, you're going. I go, thanks for saying that. But no, he goes, open your mail.

Like, what are you talking? He goes, you sent me the letter. I sent you a check. I go, thanks, but we need 12 grand. He goes, you're going.

Carl gave us $12,000. And again, I, we were sitting here going, you know, our boys probably will never forget that moment. Yeah, that's great.

Because God answered. And you, you talk about in your book, big prayers. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty big. Yeah. You know, let me flip that though and think of pray small, you know, and sometimes when your, your faith is weary, it's just good to do these sweet little prayers. Like I was out to breakfast with one of my sons and their family and their three little kids and Seth handed me, I think we had gotten them little toys, like Slinky's, you know, these, you know, it got tangled in one minute. And I, so Andrew's pretty good. I said, Andrew here, you know, can you untangle this? And Andrew couldn't untangle it. So I said, Seth, let's pray. And so I prayed that we could untangle the Slinky and I, this prayer did not have much faith in it because I had 50 years of failure. And the thought came to me out of the blue, just grab a good part of this Slinky and keep turning it.

And I did it and it, and I couldn't even look down. I was so fearful because this just, you never, you just, you don't untangle Slinky's, you know, and it untangled, you know, I handed it to, I was just, it was just like, oh wow, God hears me. That's why I love that, that God cares about the little things because he loves us. The things that we care about, he cares about. I mean, Paul, are you going to tell a story?

I was going to share, I guess this is like answered prayer story time, but our oldest son had ADHD and he was struggling in school. I felt horrible for him to watch him struggle so much. And I was afraid how he was feeling about himself. I could see him drawing inward and I remember saying, Lord, I think this is ridiculous. You've made him, you've knit him together. You love him.

I don't see the point of this. And so I'm going to pray until I hear from you. I'm going to fast and pray. And I just like to hear what you're doing or maybe just heal him. I don't know. And so I get to day seven and I haven't eaten anything.

And I have a seven day fast, seven day fast. That's great. But I'm like desperate again, like I need to hear. I don't understand.

I'm hurting for him so much. And I happened to be in Exodus and I was at Exodus where Moses is refusing to go speak to the Pharaoh for God. He's like, I can't do it. I can't even speak is what Moses says. And so then God answers him and he says, did I not make the mute? Did I not make the blind? And I stopped there and like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And it, I felt like the spirit was saying to me, I've made CJ exactly the way I want him to be. I'm not surprised what's going on. And you don't think I know?

Trust me and just walk with him and love him and encourage him. That's all I needed. Yeah. You know, and he still struggled, but for me it was like, God knows. Yeah.

And he has a plan for him. Yeah. You've probably felt that with Kim. Yeah. Many, many times. Many, many times.

Yeah. Well, I mean, when you said Paul, pray small and we got to still talk about pray big. But, uh, I mean, I haven't shared this story in so long. In fact, we wrote a parenting book a few years ago and one of my buddies said that hamster story better be in your parenting book.

And it wasn't. I'm like, how did I write a book and I put this in? But our middle son, Austin, we had a little hamster and Austin's what? Six years old.

Six. Yeah. And that hamster little things, right? Yeah.

They're the worst. But he loved it. And it got out and it got lost in the house somewhere.

They always do. And it's gone two weeks. We're praying every night and we know he's dead. He's in a, he's in a heater vent somewhere in our house dead. Cause he hasn't been around three weeks.

You got to face reality, right? Yeah, exactly. So Austin's like, dad, we got to pray for hamster to come back. And I'm like, okay, little guy, go ahead and pray. And I'm just laying there like, whatever. And I'll never forget.

He goes, God, we pray you bring hamster right back into this bedroom right here, right now, tonight. And I'm literally falling away there. Like I'm not, I'm looking to see like the faith of a child.

Like he doesn't know reality. And I'm not kidding. I hear this. And I'm laying on the bed and I look down and Austin goes, look, there's hamster. Oh yeah.

Our kids are screaming with joy. I'm looking at God like, he's alive. You answered this little guy's prayer. And I was just, just this moment of, you know what?

Why not ask? Yeah. Whether it's a little thing or as you write in the book, a big thing. What do you mean by pray big?

You know, if that same power that raised Jesus from the dead, which is spiritual power, which is the capital S, if God continually wants to reenact the resurrection in our lives, then you can pray in context of the power. It's kind of like dumping a massive engine into a little go-kart. You know, build a bigger car. You know what I mean? Pray big. You know what I mean? Oddly enough, I do my biggest praying big when I'm at my weakest.

Because why not? You know, it's like your back is to the wall. Your weakness and your inability and whatever it is, it opens the door to whatever God might do. You know, and so your imagination, if you develop a life of prayer, your imagination grows. Your sense of expectation grows. You begin to think, why not?

And then you begin to act big. So, it's really believing that's behind it. And the problem with our prayerlessness, if I had to say one big word, is unbelief.

You know, it's just. Well, it makes me think of Matthew 21. When Jesus answered and said to them, truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and cast in the sea, it will happen. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. Most of us read that and think, what does that mean, Paul? You know what I do, what I love to do with that text in our prayer seminars, is I love to read those texts and say, okay, what, come on, honestly, what's your reaction to that? And I'm trying to pull out cynicism.

Yeah. And I will say, now, what does a child, if you read that to a child from a Christian home, a five or six year old child, what will they say? They will not be cynical. They will simply say, ask, you know, and obviously there's footnotes to it. You know, but we, we tend to make the footnotes big, broad headlines.

And the headlines is ask and I'll do beyond. Can I tell a quick story on this? That I think it keeps people from praying is they don't realize the story complexion to how God answers.

Like the gospel is a story, you know, and he, the spirit is crafting stories in our lives. It actually goes back to Kim, but Kim, who has autism, would wake up at like 4 a.m. and pace upstairs. And she would get out of bed and flip on the hallway light and run back to bed, stay in bed for five minutes, go out, run to the hallway, flip off the light. And this would just cycle. And I could just tune it out. You know what I mean?

I'm a guy. It's just, you flip it off, head under your pillow, you're good. And Jill would tell Kim to get back in bed. It was, it was two, it was a floor away and a couple doors. So she had to tell pretty loudly. So she'd yell at Kim, you know, it's kind of like the Flintstones where you're, you know, and then when we would have devotions, Jill would go down on the first floor. I would have my devotions on the second floor. So this is years ago before we were praying together and Kim would start pacing.

Jill would hear her and she would yell at me to yell at Kim. It wasn't really like a really spiritual time. Do you think this is during your prayer time? Yeah, yeah. This is really, this was during our prayer time.

And I do like to point out that I was more the assistant yeller, but I was. Anyway, and one morning I just said, you know what? I should go up and pray with Kim.

I just, you know, for, for no other reason that I was halfway through writing a book on prayer. And so, and Jill saw me got in and out of bed and, and she said, Paul, what are you going to do? Go yell at Kim.

And which was kind of odd because we always yelled long distance. And I said, no, I'm going to pray with her. Yelling hasn't worked for 10 years.

And I thought we should try to pray. Only took 10 years to figure it out. She starts laughing. I mean, this is 4 a.m. She's, she's laughing. She's like, what, 10 years?

What do you mean it's been 20 years? And so anyway, I go up and pray with Kim. I just put my hands on her.

Nothing deeply spiritual. I just pray that God would quiet her heart because I could just feel her kind of her body kind of shaking underneath the covers. And something happened, not in Kim, but in me.

I, and I didn't hear anything. I just, when I, the prayer was all of 10 seconds. And then I went downstairs and I knew something at the end of that prayer that I hadn't known when I started the prayer. And it was that fire again. It was that I had underestimated Kim's ability to grow spiritually and to own her own behavior. And I recognized the spirit's fire when that, you know what I mean?

I knew it immediately and I was convicted by it. I said, you know, I have to put time. And this thought grew. So I would, I would go about once a week ago and pray with Kim. And then in March of the next year, the middle of March, I could tell you the date, her pacing stopped and it was stopped because we moved.

The trucks across, there was a meat factory across the street and the diesel trucks would wake her up. But think of, remember, man, think how small my prayer was. It just, I wanted to just have a quiet. I mean, I had nothing and God's answer, this is what the beyond all we ask and imagine get, you know, kicks in. God had something much bigger on my, and he kind of, he just tapped my shoulder.

I couldn't forget this thought. So I started having devotions with Kim and we would read the Bible together and then she would pray on her speech computer and I would do the dishes. It was a little bit of, so I was trying to have 50% obedient and she would have a one sentence prayer. And I, she, I kept thinking, you know, I really should sit down with her while she's praying. And honor her praying and just, and not just do devotions. And I sat down and her prayers just blossomed.

She just, this Thanksgiving poured out. And then I thought, I'm going to stop teaching. I'm going to stop writing books.

I'm going to stop all my outward, all my new material writing because I need to train Kim. So I told that to our church. I was the center of the, of the Sunday school program.

I said, I'm dropping out. I, Kim is, we're just dumping her in Sunday school and she's not learning. And so we went, they found a furnace room, an empty room next to the furnace room in the basement.

And I and one, and then another kid we picked up, I began to teach them. And all these are all these Jesus patterns kicking in. Like every, each one of them is this, these J curves, like the Philippians 2, you know, have this mind in you, which is in Christ going lower, like stopping my teachings, stop, you know, going down to the furnace room instead of having a bunch of people, you know, and writing a new book, I'm going to shut down. You know, it's, I call it saint work, you know, the hidden work, all fueled by prayer. And it all started with pacing, pacing and yelling. And then saying, you know, this ain't working. Yeah.

Why don't I pray? Last little thing. My wife then, after I'd been doing this for about a year and a half, said, you know, I think I could write, take your curriculum, your Bible studies and rewrite them for adults with intellectual disabilities. So she did that.

And we just saw them. We created a Bethesda ministry, hundreds and hundreds of kids now with intellectual disabilities across America are doing these Bethesda studies. So it all started with this little, so prayer is like this little seed that goes in the ground and God delights in it. And then he does something beyond all that we can ask or imagine.

So it was pray small and God does big and beyond all that we can ask. Yeah. And I tell you what, you know, talking to you the last three sessions about this, I just want to say to a husband or a wife or a mom or dad who's saying, I don't know what to do. Pray.

Yeah. I'm losing my marriage. I'm losing my feelings for my husband. Pray.

My son walked away. My daughter, I mean, again, Paul, three days, all I'm sitting there going, we don't do that. We, and we do all the other things we do are good. Get to a marriage conference, get to church, get to a therapist.

Those are all wonderful. And if we pray, we pray one day and we quit or two days or three days. No, be persistent. You said patience, persistence and watch.

Yeah. Here we are talking about for three days. We haven't really prayed.

Maybe we should pray. You know, one of the guys I led to Christ as a Detroit lion ended up on ESPN and last year when Damar Hamlin. Was he the guy that prayed? That's Dan, my buddy. That was amazing.

That was the first time that that happened on that. And what did Dan say? We won't get into it, but Dan said before he prayed, he goes, everybody's saying we should pray for Damar. Why don't we just do it?

And he could have lost his job. But, you know, Dan inspired me. I texted him right away and we got him on and he talked about it here. But I just thought, man, we're talking about this and we're encouraging husbands and moms and dads to pray. Let's pray.

Yeah. Paul, you start and I'll end it. Father, I pray that you would send your spirit into the families across America, into the husbands and the wives and all the messed up broken relationships that so many here who are our listeners are dealing with. I pray that you would send a spirit of prayer, which is the praying spirit of Jesus. I pray that once again, the church would become a praying temple, a house of prayer, that we are the body of Christ, that we would become the praying body and people would see you do beyond all that we can ask or even imagine. And Lord, I pray for the listeners that are just struggling.

They're wondering like, does this even work? Father, I pray that you would show them that you love them, that you hear them, that you see them, that you're more concerned about their kids and their welfare or their marriages. Lord, you care more about that. And so, Father, I pray for protection over these families from the enemy, from the culture. I pray that you'd put a hedge around their homes and their hearts, Father, that we would cling to you, that we would love you. And Lord, for those that feel like, I don't have time to pray, you're always here. We think all the time, so may our thoughts become prayers, our worries become prayers, that then you would guard our hearts and minds in you, Jesus, as you say, if you're anxious, come to me.

So Lord, I pray blessing upon these families. And Lord, we've talked about praying small and praying big, and I know often I sometimes hesitate because I have little faith, not big faith, a little faith. And yet you say, all we need is faith of a mustard seed, tiny faith.

And I know there's a husband that's like me or a wife that just doesn't know. And I pray you give them mustard seed faith to pray right now and say, God, heal my marriage and start with me. And Lord is such a great reminder that Paul gave us today and in his book that when we pray, the spirit of God is released and Jesus is magnified and power. The power of God is made known in us and through us. And so we're asking for the power of God to change us and change our marriages and change our families and change this nation. And it starts with us. So God changed me so that we can have an impact right where you put us in our neighborhood.

And that can impact the world. So we ask you for a revival that starts in the fire in my own heart that you do as a result of us asking you to do it. And we love you. And we pray in your son's name, Jesus. Amen.

So what are your thoughts after talking to Paul Miller? I'm so inspired. Are you?

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I didn't know what you were thinking. I was literally, God was speaking to me through him to inspire me to be a praying husband. I'm not saying we don't pray.

Yeah, we do pray. But I'm often sort of apathetic and letting you lead and you are a prayer warrior. And I'm like following. I'm like, quit that.

I'm going to step up. That's what I felt like. I think in our family, as our kids were growing up, I would feel like everybody's rolling their eyes when I would say, let's pray. You know, and it just reminded me like, you can never pray enough. You know, pray without ceasing, pray all day about everything.

Yeah. And we said it in the interview, but if you want to see God change your marriage, pray. You want to see God change you, pray. And I'm not saying don't act on it as well, but it was just a reminder. God works through prayer and it doesn't guarantee you're going to get everything you want.

But if you want a different life, there's a lot of things you can do and they're all important, but the most important thing you can do, I think, is get on your knees today and ask God, talk to God about it. And like you said, be patient, be persistent, and then watch. And I just, I know a lot of you, I know so many of you do pray. I have an ask for you that are listening for your friends. Like, will you pray for family life? Become our partners in prayer because we want to change the world.

Yeah. Pray that God would use family life and family life today to literally lead people to Jesus. That's what it's all about. And we need you to be partners with us and asking God to do that because He will. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Paul Miller on Family Life Today. You know, I'd love that too.

What Ann was talking about. Would you partner with us in prayer so that people will come to know Jesus? As we've heard, prayer ignites the power of God Himself, so your prayers don't go unheard by our King. There is so much spiritual treasure to be found when you mine it in prayer. I love our time today. I loved hearing from David Ann Wilson and Paul Miller himself. He's written this book called A Praying Church, Becoming a People of Hope in a Discouraging World.

And we're living in a discouraging world. And so this book is going to be our gift to you when you partner with us financially. So you can partner in prayer and partner with us financially as well. And we want to give you a copy of Paul's book when you do.

So how does that happen? Well, you can go online to familylifetoday.com or you could give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. How do you navigate tough times and find hope in the midst of life's trials?

It's a common question and a common experience amongst Christians. Well, tomorrow David and Wilson are going to be in the studio with Eric and Erica Rivera to talk about just that. We hope you'll join us on behalf of David and Wilson. I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.