Praying the Bible: Book Review

July 15, 2015
by Tim Challies

Excerpt: This book is premised on the existence of a very common problem: That prayer is difficult. “I maintain that people—truly born-again, genuinely Christian people—often do not pray simply because they do not feel like it. And the reason they don’t feel like praying is that when they do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things.” I would guess that this resonates with you and that many of your prayers feel just like that. The repetition in your prayers can lead you to assume that your prayers are meaningless and having no effect. When you are bored with your prayers you stop praying. When you stop praying you feel like a spiritual failure and count yourself a second-rate Christians. It’s a familiar downward cycle.

Now the problem here is not with praying about the same old things. We have to pray regularly and repetitively about certain matters—personal holiness, family members, our church families, our unsaved neighbors and relatives, financial care and provision, health and safety, and so on. “The problem is not that we pray about the same old things; rather, it’s that we say the same old things about the same old things.” The problem, then, is one of method.

Full review

(I just ordered it- here on Amazon)