Book Review: Prayer by Philip Yancey

I've been reading Prayer for at least six months and finally finished. I'd read two or three days in a row and then put it aside for a week or three. I didn't mean to do that, but that's how it worked out. And, thinking back, I probably benefitted from reading it this way.

Yancey didn't set out to create a "how-to" book on prayer, but, by not doing so, I think he actually succeeded in creating a how-to book better than the actual how-to books. He doesn't give you any step by step guidelines or Things You Have To Say when praying. He simply examines the issues he has - and they're the issues we all have - with prayer. His conclusions were very helpful to me in understanding prayer and how I go about talking with God. Most of all, I think he helped me overcome the worry that I was doing it all wrong, as if there is a right way to pray that can be laid out for every person and every circumstance.

It helped also to have read the book during a period when many of my prayers were answered in the way I had hoped (which has rarely happened before). Some of those prayers were big, some small, and some were just off-the-wall-can't-be-answered-type prayers God brought to mind while I lay awake at night thinking of everything from work to friends to the Cubs, who are beyond prayer. Maybe that's a sign that I'm finally learning to pray for the right things.

I didn't agree with everything Yancey said. I don't know that I disagreed with anything he said either. It's just that a few things were beyond my comprehension. And that's all right. What I did understand was helpful and, early returns indicate, life changing.