Now, I love reading theology books. I love the nuance and the precision that it takes to nail down and explain certain doctrines or ideas. Yet, when I look at some of my books, I sigh, because there is simply no logical way that I will ever actually read the whole thing; they are simply too long.
I also love prayer. Wait, no. That's not quite true. I love the idea of prayer, but the reality is often lacking. I lose my train of thought. Or what feels like forever to pray was really only a few minutes. Or I sort of repeat the same things that I normally pray for and feel really discouraged by the whole thing. Because of this, my prayer life suffers, and every sermon or biblical text on prayer feels like the condemnation of a shameful dirty secret: a Christian who can't pray!
If you just so happen to feel the same way, then I would highly (is there another superlative that makes it more forceful? If there is, use that) recommend Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney.
This book tackles a perennial problem, prayer. In a rather short book, only ten chapter clocking in at about 106 pages (including two indexes), Whitney packs a punch that, given the time it takes to read the book, should radically transform your prayer life. Now, before I start sounding like I'm selling a magic pill that cures cancer, let's break down the book:
Chapter one outlines the problem, and in chapter two Whitney gives the solution to a stale prayer life: praying through the Bible. in chapter three he gives the method for using the Bible as a guide to prayer (spoiler: it may not be just as you think). In Chapter four he deals a bit more with the method and chapters five and six deal with some good examples of praying through the Psalms and other biblical books. In chapter seven Whitney "forces" you to pray through a psalm, heavily suggesting that the reader stop reading until the exercise has been done. Chapter eight walks through common responses to his method. Chapter nine, barely a few pages, sums up the first chunk of the book before going to chapter ten, which covers historical examples of his method.
In my opinion, this book needs to be handed out to church members by pastors for free, until everyone in the congregation has at least one copy in each household. I cannot recommend this book enough for those who feel like their prayer life is stale, or even sadder, seemingly nonexistent. For those who will put in the work to actually practice this "revolutionary" method for rich prayers it pays dividends almost immediately.
The only real complaint that I have is that the book is too long. Whitney labors the point in a few places, seemingly repeating himself just to reach a minimum of pages by the publisher. This could have probably been an in-depth pamphlet and would have been just as eye-opening to read through.
Even with this minor thing, I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who may happen to read this!