Name
Daily Talks with God Seasons of Prayer by Guideposts editors including Karen Barber

Prayer Category
meditation, how to pray

Description
Daily Talks with God: Seasons of Prayer, published by Guideposts Books, is written as a tool you can use in your daily prayer times to strengthen your communication with God. It has 52 sections, one for each week of the year. The entries begin with an intimate Scripture story that helps you imagine yourself as an eye witness to the example and teachings of Jesus on prayer. Each Scripture experience ends with a personal challenge to apply and pray this Scripture. Then, throughout the week, the book helps you continue a conversation with God on the theme of the week, such as The Holy Spirit. These daily entries include a brief Scripture passage, a prayer starter and a prayer closer.

Price
16.95

Purchase Link
shopguideposts.org

Review: I was invited to contribute to this book by the editors of Guideposts.  In this book, I used the Biblical accounts of what Jesus said, what he taught and what he did to create 52 lessons in order for us to we learn about prayer from the life of Jesus.  In each story, I imagined myself a character in the story and led the readers to feel and think what those around Jesus might have been thinking.  What surprised them?  What ideas were new and challenging?  What were they hungering for when they heard the teaching or witnessed Christ’s deeds?    How did it fit with or clash with their traditional thoughts on God and religion?

Here’s a sample passage based on Luke 6:12,13.  (Page 62,63)

After all of this troubling criticism, we’re not surprised when Jesus heads up a mountainside one evening and says He’s going to pray.  Jesus hasn’t told us exactly what He’s praying about, but we know that we’d be pouring our hearts out to God about how we’d been criticized for doing something as normal as eating.  We’d be begging God to either silence our opponents or get rid of them.  Hours pass and Jesus doesn’t return.  we finally fall asleep waiting .

We awaken as the sun moves over the crest of the mountain.  Has Jesus spent all night praying?  Soon we see Him coming down the mountain.  There are dark circles under His eyes tat tell us that He hasn’t slept.  We hold our breath, hoping Jesus’ prayers have been rewarded with a plan to silence  His opponents.

Jesus calls out.  “Everyone, come gather round. ”  We all obey and Jesus says, ” I’m choosing twelve of you to be apostles. ”

Our mouths fall open.  We turn the word apostle over in our minds… This is an incredible honor – and an enormous challenge.  We look around at the group gathered here, and we suddenly realize that the pool of candidates is not impressive…No wonder Jesus has spent all night in prayer we think.  He was asking God to peer into  our hearts so He ‘d know whom to pick.  Prayer was essential because Jesus is obviously choosing based on our potential, not based on what we’ve accomplished so far in our olives…The example Jesus gives us in this passage shows the crucial importance of putting serious prayer into our decisions.  It further zeroes in on how important it is to pray not only for God’s help but also for  the helpers God has chosen for us…

Added by Karen Barber on October 24, 2011