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154 of 171 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow - A Praying Life for me, April 24, 2009
This review is from: A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (Paperback)
This book is different. This book just might change things. Within the first few chapters, actually within the first few pages, I could tell that Paul Miller was describing something that I had never experienced before.
First, he honestly and precisely identifies the barriers to prayer - a short attention span, guilt, inconsistency, and weak attempts to follow a formula that would somehow make my prayers acceptable to God. Yet his winsome way of presenting these problems are not a condemnation of our failures, but are actually an encouragement not to give up.
Somewhere in the middle of the book, it begins to dawn on you that a relationship with God that is guided by prayer just might be attainable. Then Paul introduces a simple way to keep track of the many prayer stories that develop as we carry on an intimate conversation with a God who wants us to know and love him.
If you are searching for meaning, read this book. If you are jaded in your Christianity or prayers, read this book. If you want to free yourself from praying "correctly" and learn to pray honestly, read this book. If you are too busy to read anything else this Summer - read this book.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prayer + Life, September 23, 2011
This review is from: A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (Paperback)
What a neat book. Who's it for? Well, anyone who wants to make prayer a bigger part of their life. Those who have trouble praying on a consistent basis, or those who want to feel more connected with God through prayer will also enjoy this book. And how does the book accomplish these lofty goals? Well, I could break down each chapter, but in a nutshell, it suggests re-framing how you think about your relationship with God, goes on to discuss the barriers to praying, and then gives you simple tools and ways of praying that he has found help people learn to pray. So that's the basic "framework" of the book. Woven into these subjects are various stories, many of them from the author's family, which to me, gave the book a "real-world" feel to it. When you have trouble praying consistently like I do, the last thing you want is a book giving you a long list of ideas that have no practicality in your day-to-day life. Not here, in fact I feel like the subtitle of the book summarizes this book the best - connecting with God in a distracting world. Don't have time to pray or want a fresh look at things? Check it out, you'll probably be surprised how much more you can learn about something that you've been doing for a long time. I also liked The Prayer Project: How Each One of Us Can Make The World a Better Place to Live - In a Few Minutes a Day.
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69 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best Books I've Read on Prayer, May 11, 2009
This review is from: A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (Paperback)
So many times I have gone to a book on prayer looking for encouragement in praying only to come away overwhelmed with all I am not doing in prayer. Miller's A Praying Life is different. This book increased my desire to pray and helped explain to me why prayer is often something I am tempted to abandon. The first part of the book gently calls the reader back to childlike trust in God, pointing to this sort of faith as the prerequisite for real relationship with God. Parts two and three explore the issues which hinder the praying life. These chapters were particularly helpful in that they showed that the reason we don't pray is not usually busyness or laziness. Instead, we do not pray because of wrong thinking about God, about our expectations of God, and about ourselves. These chapters are designed to undo some of the bad thinking in our lives which leads to a weak prayer life. Parts four and five are much more personal and practical, as Miller attempts to lead the reader to rediscover the joy of a praying life. Miller shares in these chapters particularly his own personal prayer journey and how his life and the lives of those he loves have been shaped by prayer. There are numerous practical tips in the latter chapters that are very helpful to anyone seeking to grow in prayer.
This is a rare book, for it addresses both the internal motivations of prayer and the outward practice of prayer. I don't need a pep rally, I need practicality. Yet at the same time, while I need practicality, I also need to understand the foundational reasons why prayer sometimes malfunctions in my life. Miller's book does an excellent job of addressing both of these needs.
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