7 Ways to Pray: Time-tested Practices for Encountering God [9780281084968]

Expand the description and scroll down to view the Preach magazine review.

For Christians, prayer is the main way we communicate with God - but what can we do when we struggle with the question of how to pray or feel our prayer lives are lacking?

7 Ways to Pray explores how by looking to ancient prayer practices of Christianity, we can find fresh ways to relate to God today. Discovering these tried and tested tools will not only strengthen our relationship with Him but will bring us joy, contentment, growth and transformation.

With warmth and encouragement, Amy Boucher Pye takes us through seven ways to pray to God: praying with the Bible, receiving and extending forgiveness, practicing God's presence, listening prayer, the prayer of lament, praying with the gospels imaginatively and the prayer of examen. Guiding us through their history, she shows us how easily we can make these prayer practices part of our lives and use them to grow closer to God.

Along with prayer exercises to help us engage directly with God, there are questions for individual reflection or small-group discussion, making Seven Ways to Pray perfect to use as a family, in churches or with friends.

This is a book for anyone who has ever wondered how to pray or is looking for ways to revitalise their prayer lives. It will give you an understanding of some of the oldest prayer practices of Christianity, and equip you with the tools you need to renew and refresh your relationship with God.

Come along, and discover 7 Ways to Pray.

PREACH REVIEW:

I love prayer. As a card-carrying charismatic, there’s nothing like waiting on God with others, listening to what he might say, and hearing him speak. But I’m a massive extrovert so in general my prayer times are loud, energetic, and lively. There’s usually coffee and a guitar involved too.

Of course, there are many different ways to pray and we kid ourselves if we think we’ve got prayer nailed. This book is brilliant at sharing a range of different ways to pray: from the thoughtful Examen to the imaginative Entering the Story method, or the contemplative Lectio Divina to the collaborative Listening to God, the seven chapters cover very different approaches.

Amy writes in a way which is deep and wide, saturated in scripture and church history, but also accessible to a reader who perhaps is just starting out on their walk with Jesus and this thing called prayer. Amy writes from the heart: her own passion for prayer pours out through each page, and it is really helpful to see how some of the different techniques have had an impact on her walk with Jesus.

The book would be a fantastic resource for a small group course on prayer – I found myself wanting some questions at the end of each chapter for this context actually, and I think this is something which the Church Big Read (www.thebigchurchread.co.uk) has taken up with Amy. Great news!

This book has offered me some new techniques for my own prayer life, as well as some tweaks for my current practice. I commend it to anyone who wants to go deeper in prayer, and wants to teach others how to do so too. 

Review by David Sims for Preach magazine, Issue 31. David Sims is vicar at St Thomas Church in Aldridge and co-author of an intergenerational Bible journal called Creation to Crib. You can find him causing holy mischief on Tik Tok @tiktok_vicar or Twitter @davidjamessims.

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AUTHOR: Amy Boucher Pye is an author, speaker and retreat leader. She is the author of the award-winning Finding Myself in Britain (Authentic Media, 2015) and The Living Cross (BRF, 2016), and has written Bible reading notes for over a decade. She writes for Our Daily Bread Ministries and runs the Woman Alive book club. She holds an MA in Christian spirituality from Heythrop College, University of London.