The Prayer Project: A Book Review

 One of the purposes for my blog is to help  Christians strengthen their relationship with God. I will do this occasionally through reviewing and recommending books that have either helped me, or contain great principles for cultivating intimacy with God. An important way to get to know God is by spending time with him. This is essentially prayer. The Prayer Project by Becka Goings is a great resource for learning how to pray and ultimately how to grow closer to God.

The purpose of this book is to encourage believers to make their lives a prayer project--to continue to grow in their prayer lives.  The book teaches the basics of prayer and is aimed at those who don't pray, but even if you have a strong prayer life , you can glean many insights from this work. It is concise, clocking in around 175 pages, but touching on almost every aspect of prayer you can think of. There are even prayers for the reader's spiritual and prayer growth at the end of each chapter. The strength of this book is its demonstration on why it is important to pray in the first place. According to the author, prayer is "conversation with God" and "intimacy with God Almighty" . Thus, a person cannot merely pray at dinner, during church service, or just with other Christians and expect to know God intimately. God wants alone time with us and our full and undivided attention. The Prayer Project aptly describes the reason why he desires such alone time with us:

" If you spend no personal time with God, you cannot say you know Him personally. We have friends, but there’s always that one friend we tell our secrets to.  The one we confide in; the one we’re real with. God longs to be this Friend." (19-20)

Thus, getting to know God personally requires personal,  private time with him.

  Another plus of this book is that the author gives examples of why God may delay an answer to prayer or even reject a prayer. Sometimes he requires we wait for a season so that he may test our faith or force us to seek him more deeply.  Other times he simply says no because we do not pray according to his will, or have the wrong motivation for asking (James 4:2-3). The flip side to this principle reveals the surest way to get an answer to prayer. Pray God's will.  Pray Scripture.  Because Scripture is God's word it is his will. The author emphasizes if believers pray Scripture, they will have power in their prayers and see tremendous growth in their lives.

  Overall, this was a wonderful book to read, well written and  filled with spiritual wisdom.  I highly recommend it. Make your life a prayer project.

Knowing God Intimately: An Introduction

  

   To the Christian God has many hats.  He is a master, friend, brother, father,  husband. These are more than just roles or descriptors of human relationships. These names reveal important aspects of who God is and what he does.  He gives life, he rules by nature of his sovereignty,  he tells us of his affairs, his son calls us brethren, and,  he jealously and passionately loves us (see 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Timothy 6:15, John 15:15, Hebrews 2:11, Deuteronomy 4:24 & Exodus 34:14 ). Because God  is infinite and is the source of all relationships, he can be all things to us at once; He can rule us as a  master but love us as affectionately a father his kids or a husband his wife. Like eating a  layered cake, we can experience and taste all the flavors of God simultaneously. Yet in order to even be allowed to partake of this cake, we must first acknowledge he is our master.  Jesus, the Son of God,  says "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me " (John 14:6) . It is only when we admit that Jesus is Lord, God, master, that we can have a relationship with God the Father and have him become all things to us .

   Some refuse to acknowledge there is a  God at all, let alone that he is master.  Others intuitively know he should be their master but are afraid to approach him. What they are afraid of , and rightfully so, is his great holiness. God has expectations for us---laws for us to follow. He gave us a conscience and we know it is wrong to do things such as lie, steal, kill etc. (Romans 2:15).  Because of his righteousness and holiness, God demands perfection and if you break even one part of his law, it is as bad as if you've broken all of  the law (James 2:10). Unfortunately, because our ancestors Adam and Eve sinned, we  have inherited this sin nature and are unable to walk perfectly before God ( Romans 5:12,  8: 7-8). However, God promised Adam and Eve he would give them a seed that would have ultimate victory over satan and death (Genesis 3:15).  Nearly 4000 years later, through Abraham and  the nation of Israel,  Jesus Christ was born.  He, the word of God, became a man order to live a perfect life in our steed.  God poured out his wrath against humanity onto Jesus and he resurrected him from the grave so that all who believe in him might be given a perfect nature and be resurrected to life. Thus, if you accept Jesus into your life, you can approach the throne of God with confidence  because your sins have been cleansed by Christ's blood ( Hebrews 4:16, Ephesians 3:12).  

    Despite this good news, there are Christians who have accepted Jesus as their Lord, yet do not know him as anything other than Master; they only scratch the surface of knowing God because they see him only through the eyes of fear.  It is good to fear God in some ways. After all according to a well known verse, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10 a). The Hebrew word used for fear is yirah and it literally means awe or "reverence". We are to fear God in the sense that we revere and respect him, rather than being terrified of him as if we were still unrighteous. In addition, we must realize the fear of the Lord is only the beginning of wisdom, meaning there is much more wisdom to be attained. God does not want us to merely reverence him but also to be fond of him; he wants us to get to know him informally, to have a sense of easiness around him as you would your parent, sibling or best friend. God wants you to adore him as a father, to curl up in his lap like a child ( Mark 9:36). As our husband he is fully committed to us and wants passionate love from us as revealed  through Ephesians 5:31-32 and allegorically through the Song of Songs. Thus, in order to know God truly we must move past the basic level of fearing him and become more acquainted with all his ways.

Throughout this blog, I will focus on revealing God as a father and husband because we find elements of him as friend, brother and master encompassed in these roles.  I have experienced these two realities regularly in my life and they are the most intimate pictures of himself he has given us.When this age is over we will experience the father and husband role of God more deeply than any other. Our eternal dwelling will be in our Father's house when we marry our Heavenly Groom (John 14:2, Revelations 19:7).   If you have never given your life to God, I invite you to do so now and if you are already a believer, who either is stuck with a frightening image of God or just want know him more deeply, I too invite you to the rest of the series.