Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation

“Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation” by D.A. Carson, is a helpful corrective to much of what passes for prayer in the modern church. If you spend much time in groups that pray you understand the situation on the ground. Much of group prayer and, indeed, personal prayer is devoted to the non-spiritual self—call it iPrayer. Carson uses selected prayers of Paul from Scripture as a helpful measuring rod against which we can view our own prayers. This corrective is especially helpful, in fact the only reason it is helpful, is because Paul’s prayers are inspired (God breathed). Because Paul’s prayers are inspired, then learning to pray like Paul is not only spiritually helpful, it is spiritually essential.Carson does not attempt to cover every prayer of Paul, but the prayers he does cover, he covers in helpful, scholarly and biblically faithful depth. Carson is a scholar. But Carson writes with mind and emotion. Carson calls for a spiritual reformation of the church through prayer and yet Carson does not browbeat nor does he write to produce emotionalism on the positive side or guilt on the negative side. Instead, Carson faithfully exegetes the inspired text of Scripture faithfully, cogently and ardently.The Church is called to pray. Our interaction with our Creator is through prayer. Our Lord provided His Church with the pattern of prayer. And God provides us further direction through the prayers of Paul. If we choose not to follow the examples of Our Lord, and others, in Scripture, our prayers will be shallow, vapid, self-serving and empty. But if we choose to learn from the biblical record, our prayers will be faithful to Scripture, full of power because we are praying inspired Scripture and our prayers will be focused on the glory of God and much less focused on ourselves.This book is no less than a call to revival in prayer. May God use this book to drive people to the only God-breathed book—the Bible—to reform our hearts, to reform our prayers, and to reform Christ’s Church. Happy reading!

D. A Carson's rocking my world.

I've long been fascinated by Paul's prayers, by the differences in the ways he prayed and the way we pray, in the powerful possibilities if we prayed that way too. Carson unwraps the concepts behind each phrase and shows us just what could happen if we lifted our hearts from our mediocre prayer life and began to reach out to the Lord for the things Paul was reaching out for.

Very "meaty". Loved it. Unlike any other study on prayer that I have been through. Analyzes Paul's prayers in depth. Worth the time if you like deep material, others found it a bit much and had difficulty understanding the author. I don't think they really wanted to take the time to understand the author's points.

Excellent, obviously have not had time to read it all yet but a good start