Book Review: Prayer

This book review was included in the September 2018 Meadowcroft Monthly. For an archive of all book reviews, click here.

Do you ever struggle with prayer? Yeah, me neither. But for those who do, Tim Keller’s 2016 book, Prayer, is a great read and a help.

Keller breaks the book up into five parts - Desiring Prayer, Understanding Prayer, Learning Prayer, Deepening Prayer and Doing Prayer. Keller’s goal was to “combine the theological, experiential and methodological” aspects of prayer in one book, noting that most books only treat one of the three.

The book is both convicting..”the infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life” and encouraging...”Prayer is the way to sense and appropriate this access and fatherly love, and to experience the calm and strength in one’s life that results from such assurance of being cared for.”

Those familiar with Keller's preaching and writing are aware that he does well at combining the theological with the practical. He highlights the need for confession and repentance by writing, “Counselors will tell you that the only character flaws that can really destroy you are the ones you won't admit.”

And what about when we struggle to pray? Keller draws from Puritan John Owen and says “Owen is quite realistic. He admits that sometimes, no matter what we do, we simply cannot concentrate, or we find our thoughts do not become big and affecting, but rather we feel bored, hard and distracted. Then, Owen says, simply turn to God and make brief, intense appeals for help.”

Keller even helpfully tackles the conundrum that prayer brings - if God is sovereign (in control), why is it imperative that we pray?

But think how practical this is. If we believed that God was in charge and our actions meant nothing, it would lead to discouraged passivity. If on the other hand we really believed that our actions changed God’s plan—it would lead to paralyzing fear. If both are true, however, we have the greatest incentive for diligent effort, and yet we can always sense God’s everlasting arms under us. In the end, we can’t frustrate God’s good plans for us (cf. Jer 29:11).

I’m happy to recommend this book, and as I looked it over again in writing this, I was freshly encouraged to put more of it into practice.