When I’m feeling my own prayerlessness, one of the Bible passages that will often both convict and awaken me is the apostle Paul’s prayer at the start of his letter to the Ephesians. Thankfully I was given cause to dwell there again last week. It’s a corker. Take a look:

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.  (Ephesians 1:15-19, NIV)

Naturally it’s always encouraging to hear someone has been praying for you. But Paul goes a step beyond that because he tells these churches precisely what he’s been praying for them. When was the last time someone told you that? And that’s where things get surprising. In fact, it blows most of my usual prayer requests out of the water. At its heart it’s a prayer for a greater knowledge of God. As the translation above puts it, Paul prays that the Ephesians would “know God better”. Paul reveals that his priority for the Ephesians is they’d know God better and, crucially, that he is dependent upon God for that knowledge. As Tim Keller says in his recent book on prayer:

It seems that the apostle [Paul] does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself.

Of course, we’re often used to thinking about knowledge in purely factual terms. And I suppose sometimes we can be tempted to think about Christianity purely in that way too, as if it were all about gathering up Bible trivia. Don’t get me wrong. Knowing God is factual in one sense, in that we need to know who the one true God is, what he is like, and what he has done. You flick through the Bible and there’s a huge emphasis on knowing God truly, and holding firmly to that true knowledge. False-teaching and fashioning a god in your own image is a real possibility, if we’re to take the Bible writers seriously. And so if our knowledge of God isn’t grounded in his revelation in the Scriptures, then we’re simply playing with fire. But Paul specifically asks God that “the eyes of your hearts may be enlightened…”, not merely our brain cells. It’s more than knowing about God.

This knowing is relational and spiritual. The Bible is a relational book. After all, we call it God’s word because it is God communicating with us, and by nature communication is relational. The goal of relational knowledge can never be storing up facts, notebooks and folders as an end in themselves. Instead it’s the same as any relationship: the fruit of relational knowledge is responding accordingly to the person we’re knowing, be that in love, trust, obedience, following, listening, etc. In fact you see that in Ephesians itself: two of the big verbs that follow the emphasis on knowing (ch. 1-3) are walking and standing (ch. 4-6). Evidently knowing God and his plans is meant to take shape in a changed life.

…There is a sense in which these urgent needs are merely symptomatic of a far more serious lack. The one thing we most urgently need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better.

When it comes to knowing God, we are a culture of the spiritually stunted. So much of our religion is packaged to address our felt needs—and these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of our own happiness and fulfillment. God simply becomes the Great Being who, potentially at least, meets our needs and fulfills our aspirations. We think rather little of what he is like, what he expects of us, what he seeks in us. We are not captured by his holiness and his love; his thoughts and words capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too few of our priorities.

In the biblical view of things, a deeper knowledge of God brings with it massive improvement in the other areas mentioned: purity, integrity, evangelistic effectiveness, better study of Scripture, improved private and corporate worship, and much more. But if we seek these things without passionately desiring a deeper knowledge of God, we are selfishly running after God’s blessings without running after him.

(D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, 15-16.

Water of the Word is a collection of nearly 250 prayers, weaved from Scripture, put together to be prayed specifically by a husband concerning his wife. And if you’re someone who has been given the particular privilege and responsibility of being a husband, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t want it by your side. It’s a gem.

Reviewing a book like this is, on the one hand, a little strange. That’s because essentially it’s a book rammed-full of Scripture. As the author (or should that be editor) Andrew Case says, “if you like the Bible, you’ll like this book”. Fill it with the word of God and you can’t really go wrong!

On the other hand, I still want to publicly ‘review’ this book because it’s so excellent and so helpful. Case knows that it is easy to be a sleepy and lazy pray-er, and thus a sleepy and lazy pray-er for one’s wife. But he was inspired by George Mueller’s commendation to “pray Scripture” and so began to read the Bible seeking to pray it back to his heavenly Father about his wife. As a result, each page consists of one prayer, perhaps six or seven sentences long, and each rooted in a passage of the Bible. Case’s wording is deep and fresh, but the result is simple and brilliant.

Case writes in his preface that husbands have a model for such prayer in Jesus’ constant intercession for his bride, his people. So for husbands to love their wives “as Christ loved the church” (Ephesians 5:25) will involve praying for them. The title then comes from Ephesians 5:26, where Jesus is described as making his bride holy by “the washing of water with the Word”. Scripture is part of our God-given means by which we seek our wives’ spiritual well-being. And Scripture + Prayer = this book.

I’ve by no means used every page yet, but I’ve found Water of the Word to be a great aid to my own faltering prayer. Like the popular book, Valley of Vision, it’s just very helpful to be given good words to pray. And in this case all these ‘good’ words are essentially lifted straight from Scripture. So, very good! In particular, I’ve appreciated both the call of this book to not neglect praying for my own wife, but also its support in actually giving those prayers some substance.

As a husband learns to pray for his wife, he is acknowledging that ultimately his wife’s needs are bigger than anything he can meet, and vice-versa. What every person needs most is God, and so what better thing is there than to pray to God for someone. As such I’ll finish off with these words from Case:

Of what good is it to do everything for your wife but the best thing? To bring all kinds of earthly goods before her for substance and honour is commendable, but to what end if you do not bring her before God? Will lifting up her by words of kindness and compliment suffice if you fail to lift her up before her Creator with supplications and thanksgivings? Why should you praise her for her beauty when you omit to exalt her Father for such matchless handiwork? You are not enough for her. Your strength is not strong enough for her. You are powerless to change her heart. Therefore pray.

You can pick up a copy of Water of the Word from its publisher 10ofthose, here, for only £6.99, with free postage. And before you ask, yes, there is a wife’s version now available too.

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

How do you feel about reading a book on prayer? Part of me feels that’s the last thing I need: another excuse to get me off doing the one thing I seem to avoid: praying.

But when I dipped into this pocket-size offering by Michael Reeves, formerly of UCCF, now ‘theologian-at-large’ (a pretty cool title) at WEST, I was altogether refreshed and thankful for the privilege I have of speaking to my Father God. In short, I was eager to pray.

Reeves begins by laying his cards on the table early. He believes there is a prayerlessness prevalent in evangelical culture, and he wants that to change, and longs for this book to be something of a “tonic” to kick-start refreshed prayer lives. 

Reeves’ diagnosis of the problem is interesting. He thinks one of the key reasons we go wrong is because we think of prayer as another “thing” to do, which inevitably leads us to go down the road of searching for ‘prayer techniques’. Instead Reeves holds up John Calvin’s definition of prayer as “the chief exercise of faith” (Institutes III, 20). If this definition is fair (and it’s one that Jonathan Edwards echoed), and  Reeves comes back to it again and again, then consequently prayerlessness is actually faithlessness, or as Reeves puts it, “practical atheism”.

That said, Reeves is careful to say that it’s not that our prayer life dictates whether or not we’re really Christians. But our prayer life does reveal “how much you really want communion with God and how much you really depend on him.” It doesn’t determine our identity, but it does indicate how much of a “spiritual baby” we might be. Therefore, Reeves challenges, if you think you’re wonderful, take a look at your prayer life.

This might all sound a bit depressing, but Reeves knows where he’s going. Indeed, there are a few backhanded encouragements before we get there: firstly, we should expect prayer to be a struggle, for we’re creatures who are naturally lacking in faith; secondly, even someone like Martin Luther, whose legend often comes wrapped in hagiographical descriptions of mammoth prayer sessions, actually really struggled with prayerlessness. Prayerlessness is not a new problem, ultimately it’s a sinful human problem.

But that’s all well and good (or not, as the case may be), but are we simply being left to languish in our prayerlessness? Reeves’ ‘solution’, if I can call it that, is that we understand that if prayer is an expression of faith, the way to grow in it is to grow in faith. He cites Romans 10:17: “faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”. In other words, “faith – and so prayer – is birthed by the gospel”. As we set before ourselves Jesus Christ, then prayer will follow as the articulation of the Christian’s heart response.

So for the bulk of this short book that’s what Reeves seeks to do. When we wonder at Jesus, then we see the privilege of prayer. Part of that is seeing prayer as something Jesus did, and so loving the gospel means we “learn to enjoy what Jesus has always enjoyed”. Crucially and wonderfully this involves praying to God as our Father, for as Jesus teaches his disciples to pray “Our Father in Heaven”, he is simultaneously showing us the relationship He has always enjoyed whilst also sharing it with us. Reeves uses the startling phrase, “pray as if it were through Jesus’ mouth”, which seems a breathtaking way of describing the privilege we have of calling God Father.

Reeves then addresses the subject of when we pray, encouraging a mindset that expresses the privilege of prayer “at all times”. After all, the whole day is already God’s, so we don’t need to try and ‘fit’ God into each day. Reeves is not against set times of prayers and devotion, but he is certainly arguing for a perspective that sees all of life flowing out of our communion with our Father.

The later chapters quickly cover quite a bit of ground, touching on prayer as a sign of dependence (also about Christlikeness, for the Son was dependent on the Father), the precious role of the Holy Spirit in our prayers (“we can be real with our father, accepting our weakness, and simply stammer out our hearts”), God’s work to shape us in our prayer lives so we echo and share “God’s life and purpose”, as well as prayer as an evidence of unity. The lasting taste in the mouth is that praying to our Father God is a delight.

‘Enjoy your Prayer Life’ is worth getting your hands on. It’s definitely a ‘does-what-it-says-on-the-tin’ book. The bonus is that it’s also really short – many of the ‘chapters’ are only a couple of pages – but that means I was much more likely to read it, and it also meant I was more quickly left to actually pray. You can buy it for three squid from the publisher, 10publishing, here. Do it.

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