Book Review - "How To Pray" by Pete Greig

The subtitle of this book is 'a simple guide for normal people' and the book delivers on this. It is full of profound yet straightforward advice written in a very accessible way. Pete Greig was founder of the 24/7 prayer movement, which began in a church in Chichester in 1999. Many churches and groups have benefited from the wisdom passed on by Pete as to how to run a 24/7 prayer room and in previous books he has written the story of 24/7 ("Red Moon Rising" and Dirty Glory"), which I would recommend to anyone who has been involved in 24/7 or would like to be. He is also author of the fantastic "God on Mute", a book on the difficult topic of unanswered prayer but in this new title, for the first time he has written on how to pray in terms of a regular, daily prayer time. The book gives a simple model for our prayer times based on the word "PRAY" as an acrostic - Pause, Rejoice, Ask and Yield. Some aspects of this are

refreshingly simple - yet something that many of us don't do, for example being still before God and pausing before we get to our lists of concerns - and his advice and anecdotes are very helpful. Others seem a bit daunting such as contemplative prayer (which comes under Yield) yet Pete insists this is not an optional extra but essential if we are to go deeper with God.

I have personally found this book to be extremely helpful in terms of fine tuning my 'quiet time' and having more quality time with God and I feel there is a lot of scope to continue to grow. This is a book I will return to again and again as I learn to go deeper in new ways and I would recommend it to everyone. The book retails at £13.99 but we currently have it on offer at £9.99.