It’s often said that prayer is one of the great privileges of the Christian life. When you stop and think about it, talking to God, well, it’s an incredible claim.

Of course some would say that’s just deluded. Maybe others would call it egotistical or individualistic. Others still (and perhaps especially those coming from a religious perspective) might label such a definition as offensively simple.

Of course Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 seem to kick some of that into touch. He teaches us to pray, saying “Our Father…”. One of the outrageous claims of Christianity is that it’s possible for us (yes, even messed up, self-obsessed, apathetic us) to approach the God of the Universe as a loving Father, if we’ve become united with the Father’s Son, Jesus Christ, through faith.

And yet even when the stupendous, smack-between-the-eyes reality of that hits you afresh, sometimes with prayer we just don’t know where to start. Our personal prayers can become dry. We suffer from mental drift. Perhaps it all seems slightly repetitive.

That’s why the ‘5 Things to Pray For Your Church’ series seems so brilliant. It’s both so simple and yet so obvious, and yet there’s not heaps of books like it.

Sure, there’s books like the Valley of Vision, which serve you up with some meaty pre-written prayers to ‘pray along’ with. Likewise, I’ve been really helped by Andrew Case’s Water of the Word which is a collection of prayers particularly for husbands. And then there’s Don Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation, which I found to be eye-opening in its challenge to pray in line with God’s own purposes and promises in Scripture. But with this book, you’re actually given a guiding day-by-day hand to help you think about what it is you could pray. Author Rachel Jones does this by modelling a pattern of listening to God’s word and then suggesting things to speak back to God in response. It is praying saturated in Scripture, yet nonetheless heartfelt and earthed.

The format of the series is that on each double-page Rachel focuses on a particular passage, which in turn provides an overall theme. In this book these are all related to health of a church (e.g. using our gifts, or holding to truth, or giving generously). Rachel then unpacks each passage/theme into 5 short pray-able nuggets (hence the title!). Rather than putting these in the form of verbatim prayers, these take the form of a brief paragraph in which Rachel provides some ideas (helpfully often quite specific) of what it might look like to pray in line with that particular Bible passage. Personally, I like that because it still leaves it up to me to phrase and express my prayer to God according to my own personality and vocabulary. You could even use a journal to do this if you’re that kind of person!

And though the book is wonderfully small and thin, it isn’t one you’ll want to finish quickly. That’s not the point. Neither is it an in-depth explanation of prayer (although Carl Laferton’s brief introduction is pretty handy). It’s more of a guidebook, to be taken slowly, a resource to accompany you as you get on with praying.

Practically, given there’s 21 of these passages/themes, I guess an obvious way to use this resource would be to take one passage/theme per week, and then from Monday to Friday to read one of the 5 ‘nuggets’, spending a couple of minutes each day praying for your church. There’s even space on each double-page to jot down particular people on your mind that week. And, honestly, if you did that each week for twenty-one weeks then I’m pretty confident you won’t be regretting parting with the very affordable £2.69 that it currently costs to get your hands on it. Not only that, but we trust God will have answered those prayers according to his purposes too!

So if you feel like your prayer life could do with a bit of support, a bit of inspiration or input, then you’ve only got the price of a pint to lose: get this book and give it a go. I’d imagine it would also be great to give away to a church small group, or perhaps to some of the leaders in your church as they consider what it looks like to partner in prayer for the church.

And when your twenty-one weeks are up (or however you manage it), Rachel has also written ‘5 Things to Pray for the People you Love’, as part of the same series, so you don’t have to stop there!

*****

Full disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of the book for free, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review!

“I believe this book can improve your life.”

Admittedly it’s quite a bold sentence to begin your own book with, but that’s what writer Tim Challies chooses to go with as he invites us into Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity. 

You may be forgiven for raising a sceptical eyebrow or two. After all, we’re talking about productivity here! ‘Improve’ seems a subjective word at the best of times, but applied to a realm often associated with task management and to-do lists? Well, it just seems a bit over the top.

And yet by the end of Do More Better, I challenge you not to be inspired to try and do life differently. In fact, more than just wishful thinking, I think you’ll actually be equipped to do life differently.

Of course on one level this book is completely inadequate to change your life. But the beauty of Do More Better is that the author recognises that straight-up. I’ll explain:

The concept of productivity seems to be one that divides people. Some people lap up new tricks and techniques to order their day and priorities, perhaps in the hope that they’ll become more efficient in the workplace, or they’ll be able to straddle the work/life balance that little bit better. Others seem much more sceptical. Isn’t it all just buzzwords and baloney?

However, before Tim Challies dives into any such practicalities, he begins with a ‘productivity catechism’, using the question and answer format to unpack an overall ‘foundation’ or framework, setting productivity within the context of what life’s all about. His point is that productivity cannot be considered as an end in itself. Rather, given we’ve been created by God for his glory and the good of others (i.e. we are not meant to be the star of our lives), then that must be the lens through which we understand productivity. Thus, these Christian convictions lead Challies to define productivity as follows:

 “Effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.”

In other words, it’s not only about what you do, it’s also about who you are; “productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose.” And whilst the rest of the book goes on to emphasise tools and systems, Challies is adamant that this prior foundation cannot be lost sight of. Only then does Challies go on to share his own methods for ensuring he effectively stewards according to the productivity definition above.

To give a bit of detail, essentially Challies’ method is as follows:

• Define your various responsibilities in life.
• State your personal mission for each of these areas of responsibilities.
• Select tools to enable you to effectively carry out the various tasks that you have in each responsibility. Here Challies advocates the importance of three particular tools:
  • A scheduling tool, i.e. a calendar
  • A task management tool, i.e. somewhere where you store your ‘to-do’ list, but broken into different projects according to each role of responsibility that you have.
  • An information storage tool.

Challies’ underlying rule for using these tools is: “A home for everything, and like goes with like.” In other words, everything needs a place to go, and you stick similar things in the same place. Just as all your keys might go in a key draw (and thus you never wonder where you put your keys), so all your information goes in the same place, all your appointments are put in the same tool, and all your tasks are kept together. And then within these tools, you’ll create more specific ‘homes’ (along this same principle of ‘like goes with like’) for each of the different projects in the various responsibilities you have. Follow?

• Collect your tasks. As tasks come up, add them all to an ‘inbox’ (i.e. a list) so none are lost.
• Get into the pattern of giving a daily and weekly slot to ‘Workflow’. Essentially this means using a small amount of time each working day to go through your task inbox and allocating them to the particular responsibility they are associated with, and then to the particular project within that responsibility. Add deadlines as necessary. Then spend time looking at up-coming tasks and deciding which to take on today. Challies commends three questions to focus this process:
  • What are the possible tasks for the day?
  • What are the necessary tasks for the day?
  • What time is available?

On top of this daily routine, Challies commends having a weekly version of this ‘workflow’ meeting which allows you to focus on the bigger picture and be mindful of the next 30 days or so.

1. For a start Challies is aware of the deceptive nature of our own hearts, hence the need to consider our own ‘idolatries’, i.e. the unhealthy influences and desires that may be motivating us, such as taking on too much on because we’re seeking to please people, or overworking to try and make a name for ourselves.
2. Likewise, his reference to embracing tension also reflects the important understanding that productivity is not about getting everything done, as ultimately we can’t see the future and there will always be unexpected turns. God’s sovereignty means we needn’t get angry or despair at this. As C.S. Lewis said: “The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions [of life] are precisely one’s real life.”
3. And then, whilst Challies generally advocates for “planned neglect,” (i.e. being content with saying ‘no’ to truly good opportunities out of an awareness of our own limitations and a desire to faithfully steward the various responsibilities we have prayerfully prioritised), he also acknowledges that, particularly as a Christian, there will be tasks which, whilst they don’t fit perfectly into any of our responsibility mission statements, we will yet still find time to do them out of a love for others.

It seems that there’s been a plethora of Christian productivity resources out recently. Tim Chester blogged about busyness just this week, and has also written a book on it. Matt Perman’s much-anticipated What’s Best Next came out about a year ago (check out my review) and though that’s a more substantial offering, I’d now happily suggest starting with Do More Better. 

Do More Better is currently available in paper, or in eBook forma  in PDF or EPUB formats. You can download it from the publisher, Cruciform Press, here.

Full disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of the book for free, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review!

Imagine if our lives were marked by contentment rather than coveting. Imagine if we gravitated towards generosity rather than grasping for more. Imagine if we felt peace about our finances, rather than anxiety.

That’s how Graham Beynon begins his new book, Money Counts. Instinctively it’s an appealing vision, but, as Graham acknowledges, that perspective on money often seems so far from the reality.

Of course, it doesn’t help that we’ve somehow made money a taboo subject in our churches. Early on in the book, Graham tells of an experienced pastor who shared that though he’d had people come and ask for help with almost every pastoral situation imaginable, he’d never had someone come and ask for help with how they handled their money.

Similarly, in my experience you struggle to find decent, simple Christian books looking at the matter of money. We don’t like talking about money, and so there’s not much writing or reading about it. And yet evidently our experiences would suggest we could do with some light on the subject.

That’s why Money Counts is such an important addition to The Good Book Company’s Live Different series. And rather than just filling a gap, it’s a brilliant read. It’s straight-forward and utterly readable, yet a thoroughly rich guide to getting our heads round money from a Christian perspective.

In fact the book’s strapline is a fair summary of the strengths of the book: ‘How to handle money in your heart and with your hands’:-

Firstly Graham recognises that ultimately money is a heart issue. He seeks to open up the Bible and illuminate the gospel, rather than simply give a few budgeting tips, money-saving tricks, or a prescriptive set of financial rules. And as he does so it becomes clear that the danger with money is that it can act as a wannabe god in our lives, holding out to us false promises of security and satisfaction.

Of course the problem isn’t that money is inherently bad, but that we let it sit comfortably on the throne of our lives, calling the shots on our desires and worries and ambitions. Yet Graham writes in a way that gently exposes the tug of war in our hearts and takes us back to the gospel and the goodness of letting God be our joy and comfort and King. He shows how the Bible engages with the allure of greed, as well as growing generosity in our hearts.

And yet, secondly, the book is practical too. Graham wants us to envisage how this issue ‘cashes out’ (boom boom), and so he gives personal examples, and at the end of each chapter asks practical, yet heart-engaging, questions. Likewise he doesn’t make assumptions about the financial situation of the reader, and the book ends with some useful appendices on debts, loans, mortgages and insurance, as well as a helpful list of ‘go to’ resources.

Along the way Graham unpicks much of the wrong thinking about money that can be associated with Christianity, whether it’s the untruth that Jesus promises financial prosperity, or the untruth that God is against money and simply favours poverty.

What I found particularly helpful is that the book prods those of us who have never really questioned our own approach to money. If that’s you, this is the perfect book. Likewise, if you’re finding yourself subtly consumed by wanting more, or constantly anxious about not having enough, this is a simple, solid and searching read.

Money Counts would also make for a great accompanying resource to a teaching series on money, or a book club, or even for a newly-married couple to read together. Likewise, why not chew it over as you begin a new year?

You can pre-order the book from its publisher here, ahead of its release in early Jan 2016.

Full disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of the book for free, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review!