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Opening to God: A Guide to Prayer

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This is an excellent book which I would reccommend to any Christian who wants to develop a more meaningful prayer relationship with God. I've read numerous books on prayer, but this one far outshines any of the others. Concise and practical, it is also very understandable and readable for the average layman. If you want to learn how to greatly improve your prayer life, snatch this one up!

Opening to God is about just that, opening to God's will and his movements within the soul and in the world. It is a very practical guide to discernment. I have used it with high school students who sometimes found the vocabulary and some concepts beyond them, and it is not full of poetic glimpses of the Divine mystery. It is a well grounded and faith filled view of how the Christian can faithfully seek the will of God.

This introduction to prayer is just over 100 pages, but the book is still brimming with insight. The writing is natural and enjoyable. So much so that I present an outline of the book in quotes:

Chapter 1: What Prayer Is

"Hearing or listening is a good metaphor for prayer. The good pray-er is above all a good listener. Prayer is dialogue; it is a personal encounter in love."

Chapter 2: The "Irrelevance" of Prayer

"If we try to determine its relevance, to justify it by showing that it is useful, it slips through our fingers...the experience itself is the only proof, the only justification."

Chapter 3: The Relevance of Prayer: Discernment

"Similarly, in our relationship with God the signs or touchstones of mature love are instinctive judgments about what would please him, instinctive sensitivity to the quiet word or small gesture which anyone except a lover would overlook."

Chapter 4: Are There Techniques of Prayer?

"We have been discussing various techniques for coming to attentive quiet before the Lord. Not all of them are prayer proper--i.e., a personal encounter with God in love--but they are a normal prerequisite for prayer."

Chapter 5: The Active Purification of the Soul

"The problem is not too many loves, but the fact that our loves are in conflict, are eccentric, not centered and integrated. This is the root problem for every pray-er, whether married or celibate. We can have many loves in our lives, but only one center, one sun around which all our loves are satellites."

Chapter 6: The Ways of Prayer of Beginners

"We may say that meditation is not properly prayer in the sense we have defined it (a personal encounter with God in love)--but, because love depends on knowledge, meditation on the scripture is an essential first step to genuine prayer. Thus it is the principal activity of beginners when they come to pray."

Opening to God: A Guide to Prayer

This wonderful little easy-to-read guide is designed to assist the "devout pray-er" listen to the voice of God by moving beyond recited prayer to conversation and more importantly the Listening side of conversation. Thomas Green, S. J. has written many books designed for different stages of the journey of the pray-er (his term and spelling).

Based on the writings of Ignatius Loyola and St. John of The Cross the series is both inspirational and approachable.

The foundation of this one is that God does 95% of the work in the conversation and that our part is to be open to his voice in our lives.

There is enough here for people in any stage of their faith journey, but it is also a wonderful gateway to his other books written for the more mature pray-er.

I should just buy a dozen of these books at a time. I keep giving them to people who ask about growing closer to God through prayer. A wonderful resource for beginners and a refreshing look at prayer for "seasoned" prayers.

This book is really great. It will open your heart to GOd. God is great! Thomas Greene opens our minds and hearts.