Read by Melcom
Second book on prayer that I've read this year.
Keller tries to write a book on prayer that comes at pray from a
theological, experiential and methodical angle. His theological
arguments center on how prayer is both a means of communion with God and
a call into existence of his Kingdom. How it's both a duty and a
delight. He explains how pray is a necessary component in all cultures
and why pray is an important aspect of a believers life no matter how
hard it is to form the habit of praying regularly. The second part of
the book delves into what is prayer and how Christians have unique
access to God because of what Christ has done for us. The third and
fourth part of the book on learning how to pray gleans wisdom from 3
great teachers in church history. Augustine, Luther and Calvin advices
that the heart needs to be reordered through pray, meditation on the
word and and an openness to be led by the Spirit while praying. Their
approach on how to pray is based on the Lord's prayer and they emphasize
that understanding the Gospel informs our identity and in turn our
prayers which then reorders our heart and mind. Prayer when paired with
the Gospel turns a conversation with God into an experiential encounter.
The last part of the book lays out some of the methods that can be used
when praying. Prayer is broken up into praise,confession and
supplication as an outline and examples on how to pray daily are
provided.
The book acted as good plumbline to evaluate my current pray life and to give me ideas on how best to improve it.
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