Book Club Questions for A Praying Life

1.Miller says that most Christians are embarrassed about their prayer lives. Were you relieved or unsettled to read that admission from an author writing a book on prayer? What does your reaction tell you about your own assumptions?

2.He argues that prayerlessness is rooted not primarily in busyness or laziness but in unbelief — a functional sense that prayer doesn't really work or matter. Do you agree with that diagnosis? Where do you see it in your own life?

3.Miller uses the image of a child freely and constantly talking to a parent as the model for prayer. What would have to change in your view of God for you to relate to him that way?

1.Miller describes watching his daughter Kim (who has severe autism) and learning from her unself-conscious neediness. What did that image open up for you about what God might want from us in prayer?

2.He distinguishes between feeling needy and being needy. Most of us are genuinely dependent on God but don't feel it. What has numbed you to your own neediness — comfort, competence, routine, or something else?

3.Miller writes that the main barrier to prayer is our desire to be in control. Where in your life right now is the illusion of control most firmly in place — and what would it look like to let that go in prayer?

1.Miller identifies several reasons people don't pray: it feels one-sided, we get distracted, we are too busy, and we don't believe it works. Which of these resonates most with your experience — and which one have you been least honest about?

2.He points out that we often do not pray because we are actually trying to be good without God — performing Christianity rather than depending on God. Where do you see this pattern in your own life?

3.Miller describes the "divided self" — the gap between what we know we should do and what we actually feel. How do you typically handle that gap? Do you push through with discipline, give up, or something else?

1.Miller identifies several qualities of children that make them natural pray-ers: they ask without shame, they live in the present, they don't hide their emotions, and they persist without embarrassment. Which of these qualities do you most lack in your own prayer?

2.He draws a contrast between a childlike heart and a childish heart — one grows in trust through difficulty, the other becomes entitled or demanding. How do you distinguish between the two in practice?

3.Miller argues that cynicism — which he calls "the adult disease" — is the greatest enemy of childlike prayer. Where has life trained you to be cynical, and how has that cynicism affected the way you approach God?

1.Miller describes prayer as "talking to God about what we are doing together" rather than a separate religious activity we perform. How does this reframing change the way you think about when and how to pray?

2.He encourages readers to bring the events of their actual day into prayer — to pray about what is actually happening rather than what seems properly spiritual. What happened in your life this week that you have not yet brought to God?

3.Miller talks about the importance of bending your will toward God's rather than simply presenting your wish list. What is the difference between surrender and passivity in prayer? Have you experienced that difference?

1.Miller's prayer card system is deliberately simple — physical cards with specific people and situations written on them. What is your immediate reaction to this idea? Freeing, tedious, helpful, or something else?

2.He argues that writing prayers down helps us pray with specificity rather than vagueness, and specificity leads to seeing answers. Think of a prayer you have prayed vaguely for years. What would it look like to make it specific?

3.Miller shows that keeping a prayer journal allows us to track both our prayers and God's answers — and that looking back often reveals patterns we would otherwise miss. Have you ever done this? What did you discover (or what do you think you might discover)?

1.Miller argues that most of us are living inside a "smaller story" — one focused on our own comfort, reputation, or success — and that this small story makes prayer feel unnecessary or disappointing. What is the dominant story you are living inside right now?

2.He uses the analogy of watching a movie: if you walk in during the middle, you misread everything that happens. How does coming in "late" to God's big story — not understanding creation, fall, redemption, and restoration — distort the way we read our circumstances?

3.Miller writes powerfully about how suffering is the primary context in which real prayer develops — that comfortable lives tend to produce thin prayer lives. Has this been your experience? What difficulty has most deepened your prayer?

1.Miller says that unanswered prayer is not an anomaly — it is part of the normal Christian experience, embedded in how God works. How does that statement land for you? Does it relieve you, frustrate you, or both?

2.He talks about the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18) — Jesus telling us to pray and not give up. What do you think Jesus meant by persistence? Is it about changing God's mind, or something else?

3.Miller identifies three possible responses to unanswered prayer: giving up, becoming bitter, or persisting in faith. Which is your default response? What has shaped that pattern in you?

1.Miller pushes back against the "name it and claim it" approach to prayer while also pushing back against a fatalistic "whatever will be, will be" approach. Where do you tend to land on that spectrum — and why?

2.He argues that bold asking and humble submitting are not in tension — that Jesus himself modeled both in Gethsemane ("let this cup pass from me... yet not my will but yours"). How do you hold those two together in your own prayers?

3.Miller says that "thy will be done" is not a prayer of resignation but a prayer of trust — a declaration that God's ways are better than ours even when we can't see it. How does your heart actually respond to that idea?

1.Miller argues that prayer is not just personal and private but has a cosmic dimension — we are engaging spiritual realities that are larger than our individual situations. How does this expand or change your understanding of what prayer is for?

2.He talks about intercessory prayer — praying for others — as one of the most significant and neglected forms of prayer. Who are you currently interceding for? What does that intercession actually look like?

3.Miller writes that loving people means praying for them — that intercession is one of the most concrete acts of love available to us. Is there someone in your life you say you care about but have never seriously prayed for? What is the gap between your concern and your prayer telling you?

1.Miller argues that one of the reasons prayer feels one-sided is that we have not learned to listen — we treat prayer as a monologue aimed at God rather than a dialogue with him. Does prayer feel like a conversation to you? What would help make it more two-directional?

2.He places Scripture at the center of how God speaks — not as a way of limiting God but as a way of anchoring what we hear in something reliable. How does regular reading of Scripture shape and filter your sense of what God might be saying to you?

3.Miller describes the practice of "praying the Psalms" — using the words of the Psalms as your own words to God, even when they don't match your feelings. Have you tried this? What happens when you pray words you don't fully feel yet?

1.Many people find corporate prayer — praying out loud with others — more uncomfortable than private prayer. Why do you think that is? What fears or self-consciousness arise when you are asked to pray in a group?

2.Miller describes the way corporate prayer can easily become performance — people speaking at God for the benefit of the people in the room. Have you experienced this? How do you guard against it?

3.He argues that one of the greatest gifts we can give another person is to pray for them by name, specifically, regularly — and to tell them we are doing it. Who in your life needs to know you are praying for them?

1.Miller ends the book not with a triumphant account of a perfect prayer life but with an honest picture of ongoing struggle and ongoing grace. Does that ending encourage or disappoint you — and what does your reaction reveal about your expectations?

2.He talks about the cumulative effect of years of prayer — how looking back, you can see that God has been answering and shaping even when it didn't feel like it in the moment. Have you had a moment of looking back and recognizing that God was working in ways you couldn't see at the time?

3.Miller describes a praying life as ultimately about a relationship, not a record. At the end of the book, how has your understanding of what prayer is for changed or deepened?

1.Which chapter or section of A Praying Life was most significant for you — the one where something genuinely shifted? What was it about that material that broke through?

2.At the beginning of this study, how would you have described your prayer life? How would you describe it now? What has changed — even slightly?

3.Miller's central diagnosis is that prayerlessness is rooted in unbelief — we don't actually believe God is present, good, and responsive. Has that diagnosis proven accurate in your case? Where has your unbelief been most exposed during this study?