Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton

Author:Tyler Staton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2022-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Waging War against Control

It’s not all flowers and unicorns though. The “daily bread” variety of prayers is also a battle cry, a declaration of war against one of the soul’s fiercest enemies—control. Regardless of Enneagram number, Myers-Briggs type, stage of life, or upbringing, everyone wants control. Every last one of us lives with the insatiable desire to get control over our own lives, an inescapable attraction to that original lie, “You can be your own god.”

Like every variety of fallenness, control is a good desire that is out of order. Control is a surface-level symptom of a soul-level desire for fruitfulness. We want to live consequential lives. We want to make a marked difference in the world, to matter in both a personal and profound way. But when we clinch our jaws and put that desire into action, we end up exhausted and overwhelmed. The millennial generation, of which I am a part, is the most socially conscious, globally minded, justice-oriented generation in recent memory. We are also the most mentally ill and chronically unhappy. We are a generation of people doing exactly what we want with our lives, channeling our energy freely into chosen pursuits for global good, and yet we are completely overwhelmed, utterly exhausted, and chronically anxious. Those are the symptoms of a good desire out of order.

Many have a subconscious, internal monologue that goes something like this: I want to live a fruitful, meaningful life, but I’m just not sure I can trust God. I can trust him as my answer to the big theological questions, but I’m not sure if I can trust him with my dreams, my hopes, my plans. I can trust him ultimately, but I doubt I can trust him immediately. So, I’m white-knuckling my life with everything I’ve got—micromanaging my surroundings, my perception, my next step.

When we trust God with our worldview but not our current experience in the world, we are falling victim to the lure of control. How many of us are exhausted, overwhelmed, and chronically anxious because we’re trying to satisfy good desires by the wrong means?

Luke’s record of the Lord’s Prayer is shorter, pithier than Matthew’s. In Luke’s recollection, which includes only five petitions, “daily bread” is the central, third request, the hinge on which the whole prayer turns. “Daily bread” is the heartbeat at the prayer’s center.8

Jesus teaches us to include the phrase “give us” in our prayers. Daily, as we ask, he weans us off our addiction to independence, our insistence on living under the illusion that what we most deeply desire we can feed ourselves all on our own. Our requests are not the spoiled whining of a child or the shaking change cup of a beggar. Daily bread prayers are a daily reminder that we are not in charge, not in control.

Prayer replaces control with trust. A God-given desire is only fulfilled by God-given means.

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