From the Book Description

Does God answer your prayers? Would you like to have more power in your prayer life? My P-R-A-Y-E-R Journal will help you develop a more powerful, disciplined prayer life on the order of the first-century apostles and Church. You may ask, “Is that possible?” Many miracles were accomplished by God through the disciples in the first century. Can God do the same in the twenty-first century through you? Could you pray with such intention to glorify God?

My Comments

I am struggling with this review. I wanted so much to love this book but I didn’t. The book is supposed to be a daily journal, using PRAYER as an acronym (praise and thanksgiving, repentance through confession, ask [for needs of others and self], yield to the father, examine and reflect). So, each day the reader is to read the scripture and quote guides and then write our her prayer response. At first glance, this looks like the My P-R-A-Y-E-R Journal would be a great prayer guide but unfortunately, it fell short.

One of the issues is the fact that only the Kindle version is available for review. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful to the publisher and the BookLook Blogger’s review program for making a copy available to me for review. And in truth, I already have a prayer journal, so it didn’t affect me too much. However, I can see how it would be a problem for others, especially those who are new or unsteady in their prayer life because having to use the Kindle and a separate notebook is a little cumbersome. Ideally, the book would be more effective it was a paperback copy with lots of writing space included.

The other issue is that apart from the preface, which reminds the reader that prayer is nothing without scripture, there is no clear direction or oder to the book. Each page has a space for the date, and then under each letter of the acronym there is a scripture quote (and I am assuming that the bound version of the book has space for writing but I’m not sure). To me, these scripture verses seemed randomly chosen with no theme or purpose in mind. And maybe that was intended. However, it made no sense to me and I didn’t find the verses helpful at all.

Finally, my last problem with the book is that the book did not live up to the book description. I have a regular prayer life and I know that God can work miracles and answers prayers. I have seen it in my own life. I know how to use pray and how to use the scriptures to develop a powerful prayer life. But, if someone new to prayer or someone struggling with prayer read the description and then picked up the book, he or she would be left without guidance. Apart from a couple of sample pages on how to use the pages, there is no real guidance to help the reader actually use the included scriptures to build “a more powerful, disciplined prayer life on the order of the first-century apostles and Church.”

Some people may find the various scripture quotes helpful starting points for prayer, but overall I am not a fan of the book. I give the book two (2) stars.