A Praying Library

I've been writing about prayer over the past few weeks. Here are some books that have been shaping my thoughts and habits in prayer.

Too Busy Not to Pray: This was the first book I ever read on prayer. I've read it a few times since then, and if you are just starting out on your journey into wanting to pray, or wanting to want to pray (smile) you should start here. Some of the chapters include: Heart-building Habits, Prayer Busters, The Hurt of Unanswered Prayer, The Importance of Listening.

"From birth we have been learning the rules of self-reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seated values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. To people in the fast lane, determined to make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption." (9)

Can I get an OUCH!

Praying the Scriptures: Another IVP gem. This book walks you through different ways to use the scriptures in your prayer time, and it gives you several handy dandy appendix's in the back to point you to some good scripture to start your praying. The opening quote from the book is, "One of the greatest attractions of praying the Scriptures is that it is not boring."(17) To be quite frank I agree with him wholeheartedly! This book helped me go from prayer being something I knew I should do to something I wanted to do. It infused my time in prayer with depth and enjoyment.

Using God's word when I'm praying also helps jump start my conversation with God. It keeps me grounded and focused on God's heart for me and for what I'm praying about. I love praying out of the psalms (which the book offers a whole chapter on) and I spend a lot of time praying in Colossians 1. 

The Papa Prayer: I read this book of Larry Crabb's just this year and it changed the way I pray considerably. The main point of the book is that the church needs to stop seeing prayer as a means to get God's stuff, and start seeing it as mainly a means to relationship with God. He also calls for us to shift our prayer energies away from intercession (asking for things) to relationship (getting to know God better). He uses a model of prayer using the word Papa as an acronym. P: Present yourself to God w/out pretense. A: Attend to how you are thinking of God. P: Purge yourself of anything blocking your relationship with God. A:Approach God as the "first thing" in your life.

“The true center of prayer, its real point, is relating to God. When we restore relational prayer to its rightful place, then petitionary prayer is restored to its rightful and powerful place, as an expression of our love for God, not as the chance to get whatever we want for ourselves.

But we don’t naturally think of prayer as an opportunity to relate with God. ...[And] if we keep on believing that prayer is more about getting things than getting God, not only will we eventually get thoroughly confused when prayer doesn’t ‘work,’ but talking to God will at some point feel boring as well.” (37)

The Voice of Jesus: I just started this book. Smith focuses on the art of discernment in prayer. (Is there anything that man can't write about!) So far I really like it, and I'm excited about the thoughts the book is drawing out of my mind about prayer and how I listen to the inner witness of the Spirit.

"The genius of the Christian life is the resolve, willingness and capacity to respond personally and intentionally to the prompting of the Spirit...As communities of faith,...we urgently need to develop our capacity to listen together to the witness of the Spirit" (16-17)