Let’s be honest, prayer is difficult! We start praying but before long we get distracted by the to-do list for tomorrow. We aren’t sure how to pray for a situation so we pray that God would bless, be with and go before someone, but what do we mean by that?
Prayer isn’t easy and often our prayers can deal mostly with material or surface level things (monetary struggles, difficulties at work, health, etc.), but should we stop there? How often do we actually get down and wrestle with the deep spiritual matters in prayer?
Alistair Begg has written a great book about prayer and that was released today!
Pray Big is a short but helpful book that focuses on how the Apostle Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus. Our prayers, our private conversations with God, reveal what is in our hearts. This book will help us know what to pray for and to understand why Paul prayed for the things he did for the church in Ephesus. Prayer is so important, Begg puts it this way
“If Jesus Christ, who was set on a mission that changed not just world history but all of eternity, took time to pray, what of us? If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, knew that he needed to pray, what of us?”
In this book, Begg takes the reader through two prayers of the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians. It challenges us to see the depth of our prayers, it will challenge us if we have a lack of understanding of the power of God and it will convict us to commit to pray more. If you feel as if your prayer life is drying up, if you feel discouraged, if you feel like you need a little bit of encouragement in the area of prayer; pick up this book here and give it a read!
Paul’s prayers are very deep and they are a joy to study because they teach us how to pray, what to pray for and who to pray for. But if we want to be able to pray like Paul, then we need to know what Paul knew. If we want to pray the way that he did, then we need to understand what it is we are praying for and who it is that we are praying to.
“The reason that Paul bows his knees before the Father who is in heaven and prays in this way is because he wants to show the Ephesians that this is what really matters. And so spiritual matters are what the focus of our prayers – not the entirety, but the focus – should be”
Alistair Begg picks our five qualities that Paul prays for the Ephesian church:
1. Pray for focus
2. Pray for hope
3. Pray for riches
4. Pray for power
5. Pray for love
If we understood these and incorporated them int our prayers for our church family, for our family and for ourselves then we would be greater witnesses of our Great God, better worshippers of Him and better churches who care for each other in all areas of life.
This book will encourage and challenge us to consider how we pray and give us teaching from the Bible to help us pray better and bigger.
This books will change the way you pray, not because Alistair Begg wrote it, but because he takes you to Scripture. It is a blessing that we have the Bible in our own language so that we can learn about God and His plan and we can learn from Paul how to pray for our churches, for ourselves for our loved ones. But most importantly of all this book, by teaching us about Paul’s prayer, teaches us about the Great God that we pray to!
Rating 4/5
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher at Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world. He graduated from theological college in London and served two churches in Scotland before moving to Ohio. He is married to Susan and together they have three grown children.
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