For anyone who struggles to pray, Pete Greig’s new book offers an easy and approachable guide.
When I was six, I started praying in earnest for a snowspeeder. Every night after my parents said goodnight, I knelt beside the bed and prayed. A snowspeeder is a vehicle from the Star Wars movies, specifically The Empire Strikes Back. Imagine a sort of wingless jet with two laser cannons on the front and another on the back. Each night I explained in great detail why I wanted this machine and asked God to provide it. In the mornings I leapt out of bed and raced to my bedroom window, expecting to see a spaceship on the lawn.
Christmas morning I awoke to find a toy version of a snowspeeder under the tree, and I remember thinking either I had not been sufficiently clear with the Lord or that he was playing a genie trick on me because I hadn’t been specific enough. I wasn’t doing it right. Prayer worked, sort of, but it didn’t get me what I wanted. Not really.
I’ve been a minister for 20 years now, and I still find myself with some childlike apprehension about prayer. God has spoken to me often in prayer, has provided for my family, has done amazing, unexpected things that were more than I hoped for or imagined. But there were also times when I prayed and nothing came from it. Or I went to a corporate prayer time and experienced only immense boredom. Or I offered up deep, important prayers, especially prayers for the healing of loved ones, which were met with silence. And sometimes, like it or not, the thought of prayer fills me only with feelings of obligation and guilt.
So it was with some trepidation that I picked up Pete Greig’s How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People. I’ve read a lot of books on prayer. Some are deep and insightful and require a great deal of work to fully understand, ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2PxXa6K
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