A Praying Life by Paul Miller
Week 7: Chapters 9–11 — A Story That Is Too Small / Suffering and Prayer
Read Chapters 9–11 of A Praying Life ("Living in the Story" through "Spending Time with God").
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Miller shifts here from technique to worldview — arguing that our prayer problems are often story problems. We are living inside a narrative that is too small to generate real faith.
Discussion Questions
6 questions1.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?
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