Naked Prayers: Honest Confessions to a Loving Creator - Softcover

Measor, Mara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937498301 ISBN 13: 9781937498306

Publisher: Elevate Faith, 2015

Synopsis

"Mara Measor's Naked Prayers reads like a modern Psalter. Faith. Triumph. Doubt. Confession. More doubt. Celebration. Like King David of Israel, Mara sheds the thin veneer of a plastic faith and vulnerably reveals the honest rhythm walking with the Creator. If you want cliched and Christianeze answers to life, then this book isn't for you. But if you want an authentic and honest reflection on the valleys and mountaintops of the Christian journey, then you won't be able to put this book down."

Preston Sprinkle
Vice President, Eternity Bible College
Author of People to Be Loved

In Naked Prayers, singer-songwriter Mara Measor shares a series of authentic prayers through words, doodles and songs. Imagine the book of Psalms penned in New York City, that the writers liked to doodle, and that they had access to a professional Manhattan recording studio to lay down these songs of intimate meditation.

When starting a prayer room on her college campus, Measor encountered many students who would confess with dismay, “I’m not good at praying.” In this book Measor fights the notion of “bad prayers” by suggesting that prayer is simply about getting naked before God: no frills, no pretend, just honest confessions to a loving creator. Her doodles tell the story of an earnest sojourner following God through a big city, and her evocative songs take you along for the ride.

There are a million and one books on prayer floating around Christian circles, but according to Measor, “This is not a how-to-pray book, this is a how-I-have-really-prayed book.” Her prayers are honest and open; she celebrates her triumphs, laments her inadequacies, and cries out for help when everything turns dark.

Naked Prayers contains 86 prayers taken from 13 months of Measor’s life, and is framed by four stages:

Following God through making a home in NYC
Fretting about the purpose and direction of her life
Falling into a period of depression
Finding her way back to freedom

"Use these prayers in whatever way emboldens you to wipe the dust off your own mirror and get naked before your maker. May they welcome you into a quiet place where you have the freedom to be fully yourself before God."

About this title

About the Author

Mara Measor is a passionate singer, songwriter and actor guided by her Christian beliefs. With hundreds of music and acting appearances, she has made a name for herself in New York's prominent music and theater scene. But Mara isn't the product of a musical family. Instead, she is the youngest daughter of Hong Kong-based stock guru Tony Measor, a prominent figure in Hong Kong. Mara chose a career in the arts and is now a household name in Hong Kong, regularly speaking, singing or acting on the national stage.

Now graduated from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Mara has been devoting her talents and time to a new book and album project called Naked Prayers. This project stems from her many years of writing songs and keeping a prayer journal filled with simple yet expressive illustrations and heartfelt accounts of her personal highs and lows. Mara lives with her husband, Mark, in New York, New York, and frequently travels to Hong Kong to visit family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If I had to come up with an image that best captures my understanding of prayer, I would draw a person standing in front of the mirror, naked.

Most of us start our days by putting on clothes. Underwear, shirt, pants, a jacket. And then there's makeup for the ladies, hair gel (wax? pomade?) for the men. And then the smiles, the mannerisms that mark our carefully constructed individuality, the veneer required for our varied occupations, the endless other layers we protect, perfect, and puff ourselves up with.

I used to keep the layers on as I spoke to my maker. Fully clothed and carefully made up, I would ask him for a new sweater, a new pair of pants, or to fix a torn stitch in an old shirt. Sometimes I even pretended to be someone else beneath it all. Someone I imagined God would like to hear from, who knew all the right ways to pray and glittered with holiness. But I'm me. My sentences are not elegant; I like doodling more than doctrine; I am small and quite weak.

I knew God for many years before I began suspecting he might prefer that I speak to him as I was, oafishness galore. But during a year I spent in Ethiopia when no one else around me seemed to understand a word I said-I turned to God more and more. In a little town with only enough water supply for me to shower twice a week, my inner life thrived as my outer appearance floundered. I started to strip away the layers and really talk to my God. With honesty and simplicity, I told him about my hurts, my anger, and my desires, even the buried ones that took some deep diving. I looked into my mirror, naked, and talked to him about what I saw.

It was a grand experiment, and I wanted to see where it would go. So I started to write my prayers down. Maybe, over time, I would get a little older and a little wiser in the way I related to him. Maybe I could give him a little more room to relate back to me.

The year was 2012. I didn't know it then, but the journey that became Naked Prayers was about to begin. I was fresh out of college, full of ideas about who I was and what God wanted. Pain was not part of the picture.

I always thought having depression meant feeling a bit sad a bit too often. I learned better. Like those who have struggled before me and those who are struggling now, I watched my sunny world turn dark. Over the 14 months recorded in these prayers, as I fought to make a home in New York City and support my family in crisis in Hong Kong, I lost all direction and purpose. I pushed blindly through each day. I bought groceries, performed songs, talked on the phone. But I was in hiding. I hid from everyone, except God.

While following him became difficult as I began to fret and seemed impossible as I entered an emotional free fall, I see now that I was never lost. I guess while I was busy opening my heart to God, he made sure my ears were open too. I don't know how else to explain the presence of scripture in my prayers and in this book. Sometimes, halfway through a prayer, a verse would come to mind. Other times, my whole prayer was a response to a verse that spoke to me on a certain day. But, much more often than I realized, my own words evoked passages I wasn't even conscious of. God's voice formed the basis of almost every praise and plea. In the delight of discovery, I have exposed these hidden verses in the book's final pages. It makes me smile to know that truly, the same spirit has been leading men to pray since the time of Genesis.

We all need someone to speak for us sometimes. The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. This is especially true when we're going through pain that leaves us dumbfounded, but it's also true when we feel tired, lonely, or just uninspired. This is not a how-to-pray book, but a how-I-have-really-prayed book. While my prayers can't instruct you, but hopefully they remind you that you're not alone, forgotten, or unheard, even (especially) when you don't know what to say.

There's no right way to read this book. Read through the pages in one sitting. Set the book on your bedside table (or, if you are like me, on the pile of clothes beside your bed) and read whichever page you happen to flip to on a given night. Go straight to the third section, Falling, to get a quick shot of comfort. Use these prayers in whatever way emboldens you to wipe the dust off your own mirror and get naked before your maker. May they welcome you into a quiet place where you have the freedom be fully yourself before God.

About this edition

• Publisher: Elevate Faith
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1937498301
• ISBN 13: 9781937498306
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160