Chapter 4 Discussion Questions

Chapter 4:  When Prayer Dries Up

1.  Barnes maintains that one of the reasons for our thirst or longing for God is that our prayer lives have dried up.  Is your prayer life healthy?  Have you ever experienced a “dried-up” prayer life?

2.  This seems ironic:  (p. 55):  “When we believe our prayer life has dried up, there is only one thing to do:  pray about it.  There simply is no alternative but to remain in the desert places when we are led there, including waiting out the long dry spells when we are doing nothing but wandering around in the wilderness of our own prayers.”  How can we summon the energy to pray about our dried-up prayer life? 

3. p. 56:  “God brought us into this place (the desert) for a reason – the same reason we are always led into the wilderness; to learn that our thirst is for a God we do not control….  Somewhere along the way, as I trudged through the arid season of praying, I became more focused on longing for God than on understanding him.” What does longing or thirsting for God feel like?  Barnes maintains that 100% of us are thirsting for God. you think that 100% of us look like/live like we are longing or thirsting for God? 

4. Barnes discusses three “levels of gratitude:”  (pages 56 – 60)

Level 1:  having a grateful heart, i.e. giving thanks for our blessings

Level 2:  giving thanks in the face of great crisis or loss

Level 3:  Being thankful for God alone;  “the discovery that he alone is enough.  Not our experience of him. Not our blessings from him or our knowledge about him. Just him.” (p. 57)

Barnes explains that it is this third level of gratitude that is the only thing that will get us through “the dark night of the soul.”  Discuss this idea.  How does one reach level 3?

5.  Read the last paragraph on page 63.  Are you at a point where you are ready to “give it all back,” and to proclaim that your thirst is always, only, for God alone?  Pray together as a group that each person’s attachments to worldly pleasures may decrease, and that their longing for God may increase.