[A PRAYING CHURCH] 13. How Not to Get Weird

Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

In this episode, Paul Miller, Jon Hori, Bob Allums and Liz Voboril talk about "How Not to Get Weird" with prayer.

"Jesus talks about the danger of weird praying in the Sermon on the Mount. He warns against going to a street corner and announcing your prayer. His antidote is 'go to your closet' -- and I do think your closet is a good check on your integrity. Private and public prayers should mirror one another. When you pray better in public than you do in private that opens the danger to your prayers becoming presentations."

"Good comedy functions prophetically, and there are so many Hollywood prayers that mock phony Christian syrupy dramatic prayers."

"Anytime there's a miss between the outer and the inner, Jesus calls that hypocrisy. Nothing upsets him more. If you're bad on the outside and bad on the inside, he's fine with that, he'll go have dinner with you. But when you're bad on the inside and trying to look good on the outside Jesus retches. Any time we add drama to prayer, or we over spiritualize prayer, or we don't have love with prayer, we send a double message that's disorienting to people and they should be disoriented because that's not the way life should be."