Prayer

I will pick up almost any book that can teach me something about prayer. This book challenged my thoughts and beliefs about prayer in so many ways, I may have to reread it in order to get the full impact of what the authors have shared.

W L Seaver has collected and compiled A W Tozer's writings on prayer and added his own thoughts to each chapter. Each chapter is a challenge in and of itself, one of the most important concepts is that we have to INTIMATELY know God for our prayers to have real conversation value. Our prayers also must be preceded and followed by complete obedience. One of the most significant changes to my prayer beliefs is that God has three answers to our prayers--yes, no, wait (or "I have something better"). That takes prayer down to a trite grocery list where we lay out our desires and then walk away from our prayer thinking we have connected with God. Nothing is further from the truth. For example (and this happened to me a couple of weeks ago), we go to church, see people we know, ask how they are doing, and walk away before getting an answer. We feel we have made a connection when we barely acknowledged the others. Too often our prayer lives are like this. And a conversation MUST include talking and listening. We HAVE to listen to God to be able to say that we have prayed.

Seaver pointed this out with a quote that is older than Tozer--

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, the He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you conquer them, talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, you instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others.

If you pour out all you weaknesses, needs, and troubles there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration they say what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved, conversation with God.

Francois Fenelon

This is a five star book that I cannot recommend highly enough. It can change your life.

My thanks to Moody Publishers for allowing me to read and review this book