I was very excited to receive the book Transforming Prayer by Daniel Henderson, as I’ll admit, my prayer life could use some work. Throughout the years my prayer life has looked different at different times, sometimes searching, sometimes constant little prayers throughout the day, sometimes long lists of requests, you get the idea.
The little phrase on the front cover of the book, “How everything changes when you seek God’s face” pretty much sums up most of the book. The first 160 pages of the book are filled with stories of people whose lives have been transformed by this “new” way of prayer, as well as reasons why current common ways of prayer are inadequate. Finally, after 2/3 of the book are through, the author gets to his pattern for prayer (patterned somewhat after the Lord’s Prayer)—40 pages of discussion/ideas for this type of prayer. I did find some good ideas and a great description of how to pray using Scripture, which I’ll definitely incorporate into my life.
So. . .I didn’t love this book as I had hoped. It took a long time to slog through all the “front matter” before getting to the “meat” of the book. I’m afraid some readers may give up amongst all his stories of lives changed and never get to the part which could change their prayer lives. This being said, I didn’t totally dislike the book. I think it could be a good tool for a Bible Study-type setting—it would start good discussions about prayer and digging into the Word of God.
I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers as a part of their book review program.
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