“Prayer is the church’s lifeblood because it’s the conduit to the Spirit continually renewing in us Jesus’ resurrection life. Prayer merely accesses the Spirit, who makes Jesus present. That’s why we go to church. To eat Christ. He’s the center. He’s everything”. – Paul Miller

If we can name one spiritual discipline that many Christians are struggling with, prayer can be on the top of the list.  As Dane Ortlund says, “The battle to pray is not mainly a battle against prayerlessness, but a battle against discouragement, cynicism, and unbelief”. 

Paul Miller has written two great books that will help us revive our prayer life. This month’s recommended book, A Praying Church is a sequel to the first book, A Praying Life. The former focuses on how to build personal prayer life, while the later book focuses on how we can build corporate prayer life. I would highly recommend reading both of the books, starting with the first book. As our church is called to be the “House of Prayer for all nations”, I believe that A Praying Church is the book that all of us in BIC should read, as it will help to fulfill the calling of our church. 

Books on prayer can err on two extremes: focusing too much on exegesis of the Scripture and not much practical applications or too much practical tips on prayer without deep exegesis of Scripture. I’ve found that this book is balanced in that it takes us deep into the inner workings of Pauline theology and how the New Testament speaks of the Spirit, but on the other hand it has a lot of down-to-earth, day-to-day, practical examples of what has worked (and hasn’t) in Paul Miller’s life and ministry. This book will definitely be a great help for us to learn the art of praying together and how we can be a blessing to others (including our families) when praying together with them. Personally, I have been blessed with plenty of examples in the book where the author uses Scripture in his prayer times with others.

Another thing I love about this book is that it is Christ-centered, and not “prayer-centered”. The author mentions that sometimes he gets irritated when people talk almost exclusively about the power of prayer or how amazing prayer is. He said in the book: 

“Prayer is the church’s lifeblood because it’s the conduit to the Spirit continually renewing in us Jesus’ resurrection life. Prayer merely accesses the Spirit, who makes Jesus present. That’s why we go to church. To eat Christ. He’s the center. He’s everything”.

Happy reading!