Whenever I recognize that my prayer life isn’t what it ought to be, I tend to turn to books on prayer that can help reignite it. Honestly, my prayer life is never what it ought to be, but I don’t recognize this as often as I should! One favorite book on prayer is Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact Leaders by David Earley (2008).

I’ve read a number of Andrew Murray books over the years (though I just realized I’ve never reviewed any), and of course there are so many of his to choose from. Offhand, I can’t think of any distinctive features that set one apart from another beyond the insights that come out in the form of quotations, though the man’s undeterrable focus on prayer and his trust in God is admirable. Just a taste from any of his books is enough to move you closer in your relationship with God.

This book is broken down into the following eight chapters:

1. The Secret of Believing Prayer
2. The Cure for Unbelief
3. Prayer and Love
4. The Power of United Prayer
5. The Power of Persevering Prayer
6. The All-Prevailing Plea
7. The Holy Spirit and Prayer
8. Christ, the Intercessor

Perhaps the most insightful portion of this book (beyond the quotations I’ll share shortly) was Murray’s emphasis on perseverance in prayer, something that we think shouldn’t even need to exist. If God loves us and He wants to give us good things, then why doesn’t He just answer when we ask? Why must we petition day after day for something, sometimes for years, with nothing but silence in response to this particular request? Murray answers this in Chapter 5 with a development on God’s longsuffering towards us, but I actually like better his answer in Chapter 7. He writes that there are three main stages of growth in the Christian life, and these stages relate to our three stages of growth in prayer:

1. “That of the newborn child with the assurance and the joy of forgiveness” where our prayer is simply, “‘Father’…childlike and trustful.”
2. “The transition stage of struggle and growth in knowledge and strength” where our prayers are those of “conflict and conquest…crying day and night after Him.”
3. The final stage of “maturity and ripeness” where our prayers live out the promise of “‘whatsoever ye will.’ He hands over the keys of the Kingdom.” (63-64)

This process is ongoing, and I hate that after more than 30 years in the Lord, I’m still stuck in the transition stage of struggle and growth. Knowing that others struggle with prayer as much as I do is little consolation.

This book contains a number of quotations that I really appreciated, and in fact, I’ve already shared a few of them with friends. I’ll close with these three, and I recommend the book for the recalibrating effect it might have on your own prayer life.

The interdependence of prayer and faith:

There can be no true prayer without faith; some measure of faith must precede prayer. Yet prayer is also the way to more faith; there can be no higher degree of faith except through more prayer. (20)

An explanation of fasting:

Prayer is the one hand with which we grab the invisible; fasting, the other with which we let loose and cast away the invisible. (22)

A warning against the idea that we can clean up ourselves before play and thereby fool God:

Life is a whole and God judges the pious frame of the hour of prayer according to the ordinary frame of the daily life—of which the whole of prayer is but a small part. The tone of my life during the day, not the feeling I call up, is God’s criterion of what I really am and really desire. (31)

©2022 E.T.