Sunday, December 15, 2013

Pray the Scriptures - A Book Review

Pray the Scriptures is a book to help guide your prayer life.  If you've found yourself struggling around prayer, this is great book to pick up and try.  Kevin Johnson lays out 40 days of "lessons" around topics as varied as Jesus Your Shepherd (Day 1) to Love God, Love People (Day 11) to Abiding and Bearing Fruit (Days 39 and 40).  Each theme centers around a section of Scripture and Johnson writes a brief intro.  There are brief statements where you can respond to the Scripture in prayer.  Each day/chapter closes with several questions to guide reflection and discussion.  The Scriptures quoted in the book come from multiple translations so you have an opportunity to see different ways God's Word is expressed.

I think this is a great book for someone wanting to build a stronger prayer life.  Each day is fairly straightforward and doesn't take long at all.  It also revolves around some of the strongest themes in the Bible and that's a great intro into studying the Bible.  The book's layout also helps you journal your thoughts as you process what you're reading.  Praying the Scriptures is a great way to build a prayer life that's more than slinging requests at God.  This book sets up a "system" by which you can learn to listen to God's Word and hear His message for your life.  If you keep a notebook, you could easily complete the day's reading and record your answers elsewhere.  That would allow for multiple uses of the book and you would be able to see how your prayer life changes over time.  I also think the book could be easily used by a group as part of a Bible Study.

This is definitely a nice find and I'm glad to add it to my study repertoire.

My Score: 4.5 bookmarks out of 5.

Note: Bethany House gave me a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest review.

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