When I sat down to write this review was the first time I actually saw the sub-title for this book, "A Call to a Spiritual Reformation." Maybe that explains why it made me feel like a ping-pong ball going back and forth from one chapter to another, and sometimes within a chapter. At one point, about halfway through a chapter, the author wrote, "And what does this have to do with prayer?" and I uttered a not very quiet "Amen." So let this be a warning before you pick this one up: don't expect a guidebook to learning how to pray. This is about much more than that, and sometimes the author cannot seem to decide if it's a book for scholars or a book for us ordinary folks who just want a better prayer life.
The author does discuss eight, if I counted right, prayers of Paul. And no, my prayers are not much like his. Only occasionally have I reached the sort of profundity that his do. This read did teach me how better to think about and thus word prayers like Paul's. I wish Carson had spent much more time helping me be able to do that instead of just asking again and again, "Do your prayers sound like this?" Perhaps I am just too practical, even too formulaic in my thinking, but certainly there are many others who just want a little more "how" discussion instead of just "what."
The most helpful chapters to me were the first where he does indeed give us a list of helpful hints and then the seventh—excuses given for not praying. Be careful of your toes in that one. I also found comfort and relief in the twelfth chapter in which he discusses the times that it seems our prayers are not answered, at least not in the way we would like them to be.
I found myself in other chapters wading through things I never expected due to the title of this book, and that left me aggravated more than helped. Sometimes it seems like Carson cannot decide whether to write about theology or practicality. Part of the problem is that his Calvinism, modern though it may be, creates paradoxes that non-Calvinists do not wrestle with, at least quite so much. Yes, I believe in the sovereignty of God, but my God—and the God I believe the Bible shows us—is so powerful He can give us freewill in its greatest sense and still make His will come to pass. So I pray, even trying to change His mind occasionally, because I believe my prayers will make a difference—HE said they would. Carson stops every so often to wrestle with things like that and it gave me motion sickness, going back and forth from subject to subject.
This writer has a reputation for scholarship and good writing and he certainly deserves it. I will probably use quotes from this book on my blog's "Thirty Second Devo" entries. But if you pick this one up, you have my permission to skip ahead every so often to find what truly helps you.
Praying with Paul by D. A. Carson is published by Baker Academic.
Dene Ward
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