Book Review: God's Book of Prayers

Great concept, eccentric delivery.  That's my take on the latest book I've reviewed.  God's Book of Prayers is founded on a simple, often overlooked idea: the Bible makes the best source for prayers!  It seems obvious, doesn't it?  When we talk with God, it's far better to start with His own words than coming up with stuff from scratch.  As E. M. Bounds wrote:

Prayer draws its very life from the Bible and has no standing ground outside of the warrant of the Scriptures. Its very existence and character is dependent on revelation made by God to man in his holy Word. Prayer, in turn, exalts this same revelation and turns men toward that Word. The nature, necessity, and all-comprehending character of prayer is based on the Word of God.

R. A. Torrey said it more succinctly:

The prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God’s listening ear.

So I love this author's idea: printing all of the prayers of the Bible, organized in categories.  But the way he organized and presented them seems a bit cumbersome to me.

Partly it's because I have the Kindle version.  A book like this would be much more useful in printed form.  (You can obtain printed versions, but they're on the expensive side.)

He gives a potpourri of personal advice and quotations from famous Christians about prayer (including the two I printed above).  They are helpful and succinct, but not particularly organized or thorough.

Then, for the Bible prayers themselves, he gives a rather unhelpful analysis of the number of times each word is used in a prayer.  What use is it to know that the fifth most common word used in a Bible prayer is "in"?

But on the whole, this is a good book, based on a great truth.  I pray it prompts more Christians to find and use the prayers of the Bible as their own starting points for communication with God.

Note: I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for writing an unbiased review.