Is your prayer life everything you want it to be

Jared Brock has showed us all how to revive our prayer lives in this delightful and informational book on how and why people pray. The title, “A Year of Living Prayerfully: How a Curious Traveler Met the Pope, Walked on Coals, Danced with Rabbis, and Revived His Prayer Life” (Tyndale, 2015), sounds intriguing, and maybe a little facetious – which is probably why I asked for a review copy- but this book turns out to be one of the most engaging books on prayer that I have ever read. Watch the trailer here

          

      This is an account of a personal journey, and a personal journey is what our prayer lives should be. Granted everyone isn't ready to journey to some of the places that Jared did, but we can live, and learn, vicariously through his adventures.

           

     Interwoven in the accounts of his frustrating, exciting and dangerous adventures in several different places (I’m not sure I would want to be in North Korea and defy a decree from the Supreme Leader; getting thrown into the Lion’s Den (metaphorically speaking) doesn't really appeal to me) are historical accounts of how greater pray-ers prayed and pray.

          

      Throughout his travels Jared asked people a simple question: what is prayer? And the responses were strikingly similar: to get closer to God.  Regardless of how people pray, or when, or where, or if they pray alone or with others, they are praying in the way that they feel will allow them to draw nearer to God. People use different prayer models, there are different types of prayer for different times of day or different seasons of the year. We pray to glorify God, to intercede for others, and in an attempt to grow the kingdom. And Jared does a wonderful job of showing us that prayer should be an essential part of our lives.

                Think you don’t know how to pray? Reading this book will give you some great ideas of how to get started. Think prayer’s a waste of time? There are some powerful examples of how effective prayer really is. Don’t have time to pray? Think again!

                A fun read, that will give you any number of ideas on how to strengthen your prayer life. And you don’t have to go to North Korea to learn how.

                If you would like to know more about Jared and his adventures, (and read a couple of chapters of the book) head to his website  . You can also follow on FaceBook

                Tyndale House Publishers provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for my review.       

                A definite A+