Here’s the second book on our reading list! We first encountered Praying like Monks, Living like Fools, written by Tyler Staton, from a recommendation of a friend. Tyler is the lead pastor at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon, and he serves as the national director of 24/7 Prayer in the USA.

As before, this review will mostly be an outline of the book with some particularly convicting quotes, and will hopefully be a good review & resource for those who’ve read it before. But if you haven’t read it yourself, then stop here and order your own copy from Amazon (I don’t get any money from this link, so this is an unbiased review) and read it first!

This book will powerfully motivate you to pray more, to believe in the power of prayer, and to see God’s heart to connect with us through prayer. If you’re like me and you know you should pray more but have a hard time praying consistently, then this book is a great place to start!

Chapter 1: Holy Ground

• “What do you think God would do in the lives of your unbelieving friends if you spent every day this summer walking a circle around your school in prayer for them?”

• “Even in a very busy, very distracted world, people still make time for what really matters to them.”

• “Prayer can’t be mastered. Prayer always means submission. To pray is to willingly put ourselves in the unguarded, exposed position. There is no climb. There is no control. There is no mastery. There is only humility and hope.”

• “What if I actually strip away the music and the community and the sermon, strip away all the noise of my familiar faith expression? Left with just me and God, what if I discover there’s actually not much to just me and God? Prayer means the risk of facing silence where we’re addicted to noise. It’s the risk of facing a God we’ve mastered talking about, singing about, reading about, and learning about. It means risking real interaction with that God, and the longer we’ve gotten used to settling for the noise around God, the higher the stakes. What if it’s awkward or disappointing or boring, or what if God stands me up altogether?”

• “Before we can have faith that God will answer a given request, we simply have to learn to trust the character of the God we’re talking to. In my experience, trying to will faith into the equation doesn’t make the possibility of silence any less terrifying, but trusting the character of the listener certainly does. Trust allows us to say, “I don’t understand what God is doing right now, but I trust that God is good.”… Jesus hasn’t revealed a God we can perfectly understand, but he has revealed a God we can perfectly trust. Trust is the certainty that the listening God hears and cares.”

• “God is looking for relationship, not well-prepared speeches spoken from perfect motives. God listened to overreacting rage, dramatic despair, and guileless joy, and he called David a man after his own heart. When it comes to prayer, God isn’t grading essays; he’s talking to children. So if God can delight in prayers as dysfunctional as the ones we find wedged into the middle of the Bible, he can handle yours too without you cleaning them up first. If the Bible tells us anything about how to pray, it says that God much prefers the rough draft full of rants and typos to the polished, edited version.”

• “But in a world that for the most part rejects him, ignores him, and chooses any distraction over him, imagine how much it must bless the heart of the Father to hear, “I want to be with you. I choose you, God, over every other option.” Prayer is about presence before it’s about anything else. Prayer doesn’t begin with outcomes. Prayer is the free choice to be with the Father, to prefer his company.”

Chapter 2: Be Still and Know

• “In the fall of humanity, we mastered the art of hurry. “And so we end up as good people, but as people who are not very deep: not bad, just busy; not immoral, just distracted; not lacking in soul, just preoccupied; not disdaining depth, just never doing the things to get us there.” says Ronald Rolheiser.”

Chapter 3: Our Father

• “Eve didn’t only forget who God is; she lost her own identity as well. When she imagined God as something less than “Father”, she in turn imagined herself as something less than “daughter.””

• “To call someone a saint is not to necessarily call them good; it is only to name them as someone who has experienced the goodness of God. We recover our sainthood simply through adoration. When we remember who God is, when we experience his goodness, we recover our own identity as well.”

• ““Hallowed be your name” is a longing to see God here and now, to know his presence in the midst of this mess. They (Paul and Silas in prison) start to sing as a way of praying, “Where are you, God? We want to see you. You are the loving Father. You promise to be a shelter in chaos, the calm in the raging storm, freedom for the captive! So be who you say you are. Show yourself here.”… It’s defiant adoration.”

Chapter 4: Search me and Know me

• “Sin is shorthand for any attempt to meet our deep needs by our own resources. The instinctive human response to sin is hiding… It’s that sin inhibits us from doing what we were made to do best - love - to receive love and give it. Why does sin interfere with love? Because, as Eugene Peterson defines it, “Sin is a refused relationship with God that spills over into a wrong relationship with others.” Sin is always personal, and it’s always against God.”

• “The entrance back into the full, free, abundant kind of life God made for us is guarded. Adam and Eve left the garden walking east, but they don’t go alone; God goes with them. He’s not lowering the standard of holiness, but he is coming after us. The biblical story isn’t one of a compromising God; it’s one of a pursuing God.”

  • “Scripture presents God with a deeper, more personal, emotional response to our condition. The author of Hebrews describes Jesus’ response to sin as empathy: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet he did not sin.” The Greek word translated in the NIV as “empathize” is a compound word sympatheo. It is a combination of the Greek word pascho, meaning “to suffer” and the prefix sun (“with”), wuch like we used the prefix co- in English. This word, translated literally, means “co-suffer.” That’s how Jesus deals with our sin. He suffers with us - suffers the consequences of our thoughts, actions, and disordered desires; suffers the subtle agony of hiding and pretending and presenting a preferred self that traps us in perpetual insecurity; suffers the estrangement from God we willfully choose by “managing” a sin pattern we’ve grown tired of confessing rather than bringing it into the light of his inexhaustible love.

    “Our intuitive assumption is that we are closest to God when things are going well. Jesus is by my side, present and helping, when I’m living wisely and virtuously, keeping in step with his mission in me and in the world. The author of Hebrews says the exact opposite. Jesus is nearest to us in “our weaknesses,” not our strengths. Our hearts, corrupted by sin, are like the poles of a magnet that push away, ever resistant to grace. Jesus’ heart, uncorrupted, works exactly the opposite way. He is drawn to our sin, not intellectually like a mathematician who has worked this equation in a thousand different ways and knows that grace is the only solution that satisfies the variables. It’s instinctual. From his gut, his primal instinct, Jesus wants to run to us in our weaknesses, to meet us there.”

• “Confession is how we turn to him, look him in the eye, and acknowledge his presence here with us, not to judge, but to rescue.”

• “Ever wonder what made David a man after God’s own heart? That’s the phrase inscribed on his tombstone. But read his bio. He was also a liar, manipulator, adulterer (maybe rapist, depending on how you weigh the evidence), and a murderer! So what about his life made his heart like God’s? Only this - the psalms he authored were peppered with personal confessions - honest, unfiltered, raw nakedness before God. He was a long way from perfection, but he refused to hide. When he realized he was naked, he didn’t pick up fig leaves; he ran to the Father.”

• 👉 “The desperate need of our time is not for successful Christians, popular Christians, or winsome Christians; it’s for deep Christians. And the only way to become a deep Christian is through the inner excavation called confession.”

• “When we come in and out of God’s presence in gathered communities with our deepest needs and secrets hidden, we are essentially saying, “Jesus’ victory is not enough. It’s not enough for me. Not enough for this. I just need more time. I can sort this out on my own.”

• “Brennan Manning wrote, “Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded… We are, each and every one of us, insignificant people whom God has called and graced to use in a significant way… On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.” It is not by our gifts, insights, ideas, or qualifications that God is determined to heal the world, but by our scars. By his wounds we are healed, and by our wounds the healing is shared.”

• “Confession is two parts: searching and naming. Searching is God’s part; naming is ours. Still your body and mind. Wait in silence, opening yourself up to the Spirit of God, releasing every possible interference. Then pray the words of David, restated as an invitation, “Search me, Lord, and know me.” Wait. Pay attention to what may come up. Note how God begins to reveal you to yourself. Confess.”

Chapter 5: On earth as it is in heaven

• “Why were you created? The biblical answer is “to rule.” And this is not a manipulative, power-hungry sort of “rule.” It’s an imago dei (image of God) kind of authority, ruling on earth as a direct reflection of God’s Trinitarian character. Human beings were made to be intercessors participating with God in lovingly overseeing the world, set apart, bearing God’s authority to rule in selfless love… At the close of the Gospels, after Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, he sums up his victory in the famous words, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” God won our authority back. He restored the very position for which you and I were created. He stepped into the tension we feel all the time and cut a way through. He made us intercessors again.”

• “Jesus is very plainly telling his disciples, “Until now, you’ve never really prayed, not like I designed it. But when I go to the Father, you’ll discover prayer in my name.” The ancient phrase “in my name” means “under my authority.” To pray in Jesus’ name means to pray with recovered authority. He won back on our behalf the authority we were created to carry and lost. “In Jesus’ name” was never meant to become just a fitting tagline at the end of the prayers of experienced Christians. It’s the exercise of Jesus’ victory. To pray is to experience the very same access to God the Father that Jesus has.”

• “Here’s the best part of the whole story, the bit that really blows my mind. God doesn’t need intercessors managing his creation. He’s not overwhelmed by all the responsibility of overseeing the world. He’s all-knowing, all-powerful, and completely outside of time. He’s got this. God doesn’t need intercessors; God chooses intercessors. We dream of a God who brings heaven to earth; God dreams of praying people to share heaven with. Again, I’ll pose the simplest question: If God gave you everything you’ve prayed for in the last week, what would happen?”

Chapter 6: Daily Bread

• “Ronald Rolheiser, professor at the Oblate School of Theology, bluntly states, “To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less… Only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart.”

• “Why is God so bent on asking? If he knows what we need before we ask him, why does he want us to ask him? I believe there are two primary reasons for God’s insistence on hearing us say what he already knows we need: relationship and empowerment.”

• “Communication is essential to relationship - particularly because asking insists on vulnerability. When you ask anyone for anything, you risk rejection or at least disappointment. Until we ask God for something, he can’t disappoint or surprise us. We cannot build trust with God without asking. We can’t relate to God if we never ask. Without asking, God is something less than a free, relational Being. He is a machine delivering on our desires, maybe even before we become conscious of what we want. Asking is the means by which we build the relationship with God he designed us to enjoy.”

• “In fact, Jesus said the opposite: “Whoever is least in my kingdom is greater than those who came before me.” To put the sentiment bluntly, “You are greater in God’s eyes than Moses because you carry Jesus’ authority when you pray.””

• “Dallas Willard writes, “God’s ‘response’ to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do.””

Chapter 7: The Middle voice

• “In ancient Greek, the language of the original New Testament, there’s a third way of speaking - the middle voice. “I take advice.” The middle voice means, “I am an active participant, but the action did not begin with me. I am joining the action of another.” …

  “Eugene Peterson, whose work is instrumental in defining these terms, writes:

  ““Prayer and spirituality feature participation, the complex participation of God and the human, his will and our wills. We do not abandon ourselves to the stream of grace and drown in the ocean of love, losing identity. We do not pull strings that activate God’s operations in our lives, subjecting God to our assertive identity. We neither manipulate God (active voice) nor are manipulated by God (passive voice). We are involved in the action and participate in its results but do not control or define it (middle voice). Prayer takes place in the middle voice.”

  “The middle voice means I am an active participant but the action began with another.”

Chapter 8: Laboring in Prayer

• “Moody’s life and ministry is a compelling exception to the rule. His entire evangelistic strategy was prayer. That’s it… When he died, 96 of the names on that list had become answered prayers. A 96% success rate in prayer is not bad. I’d take those odds any day of the week. But it gets better. At Moody’s funeral, the four remaining names were each in attendance. Those four friends were, independently, so moved by the memorial service that they all came to faith - at his funeral. So just for the record, how did a shoe salesman with a fifth-grade education become one of the most influential evangelists in recorded history? Prayer.”

• “God is jealous. He’s jealous for relationship. He jealously longs for every last soul because he created each one individually and uniquely. He jealously longs for every ounce of his creation. As Abraham Kuyper so startlingly put it, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’””

• “Prayer is slow and unglamorous and it sometimes requires labor pains, but prayer is also a means to the joy of new life.”

Chapter 9: Ask, Seek, Knock

• ““Prayer is not begging God to do something for us that he doesn’t know about, or begging God to do something for us that he is reluctant to do, or begging God to do something that he hasn’t time for,” writes Eugene Peterson. “In prayer, we persistently, faithfully, trustingly come before God, submitting ourselves to his sovereignty, confident that he is acting, right now, on our behalf.””

• “The final word Jesus speaks in the parable doesn’t come in the form of a promise but a challenge: “I tell you, [God] will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” In the story, even Jesus admits that most people lose steam in the long journey of asking, seeking, and knocking. He promises a good ending, so good in fact that it’ll redeem not just the distorted creation as a whole but every moment of suffering from every individual life - none of it will have been wasted. But Jesus asks us, “When the time for that full and final redemption comes, will I find men and women of faith? Will I find any who haven’t lost heart along the way? Any who have trusted me and my promises enough to keep praying in the face of waiting and disappointment?””

• “In that grief counselor’s office that day, I made my decision. I chose trust. Not a trust that God willed Helen’s cancer or death, but a trust that God is good, that God is present in our suffering, and that God will make all things new.”

• “CS Lewis names this choice as the great defiance from which redemption springs: “Our [Satan and his minions] cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.””

Chapter 10: Rebellious Fidelity

• “Dietrich Bonhoeffer once offered a famous piece of advice to a young couple on their wedding day: “Today, you are young and very much in love and you think that your love can sustain your marriage. It can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.” Prayer is about love, and that means it cannot be sustained on fluttery feelings, good intentions, and spontaneous moments alone. It needs a container, something like the fidelity of a marriage, a set of practices or rituals within which that love can grow, mature, and blossom… And just as old couples grow more like each other through years of companionship, we grow more like Jesus over hours of conversation, years of companionship.”

• “A daily prayer rhythm is about fidelity. It has absolutely everything to do with love and absolutely nothing to do with legalism. Jesus’ personal discipline was always about freedom and life. When he rolled out of bed and made his way alone to the Mount of Olives to pray, it was love that drove him there, not a spiritual scorecard. For Jesus, being with the Father was his deepest desire, the source of identity, and only way to true life.”

• “God is not taking attendance or issuing grades. This is about love. To order your day according to intimacy with God is the lived intention to keep him as your first love. Commitments, not feelings, are how we show our love.”

• “Something sets the daily rhythm of your life. Something marks the passage of time. Whatever that something is, you owe it to yourself to think hard about these questions: Is it making me whole? Does it love me or want to control me? Is it concerned for my deepest well-being or is it trying to sell me something? Is it shaping me into the best version of myself or is it frothing up my selfishness? Is it leaving me alive or is it leaving me exhausted? Because whatever is at the center defines you and forms you into its image.”

• “It has been said that, in times of chaos, we do not rise to the occasion; we fall to the level of our training.”

• ““Thank you, God, for overdoing it.” That’s dayenu. And in thirty seconds or thirty minutes, that’s how we pray gratitude. This is such a small, manageable shift that will bear extraordinary fruit.”