How to pray

We have just started up a Prayer Ministry at the church, which we are both involved in, and it has made me think a bit more about prayer and what it is all about.

I’ve also revisited Philip Yancey’s book and am slowly reading my way through this on the Tube (when I have the space!).

In the review of this, in Christianity Today, another book was mentioned which has also captured my attention a little bit and I would like to read in the future; “Knocking on Heaven's Door” by David Crump.

The reviewer says:

“Crump offers a radical affirmation of the centrality of the Cross to Christian prayer. Powerful prayer, he says, is not prayer that leads to bodily healing and riches. Rather, the Bible's model of powerful prayer is Paul's petition, in prison, that we "may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."

[…]

Perhaps the implications for us are this: without dissenting from the notion that prayer can make a difference in human events, we can, as Crump suggests, affirm that the essential shape of our prayer is cruciform. When we suffer, a miraculous answer to prayer is not out of the question, but our hopes for a miracle ought to be secondary. The primary hope with which we pray, in our sufferings and our darkness, is the hope of the Resurrection.”