Praying: Finding Our Way Through Duty to Delight

Merit Award, World Guild Christian Living Book

Praying is an action.

Praying is an action that is of the essence of Christian existence. It involves our beliefs, emotions, values, hopes and fears, certainties and uncertainties, knowledge and ignorance.

As J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom explain, this book "is a heart-to-heart affair, in which two Christians who try to pray and wish they prayed better share thoughts about what they are doing with people whom they envisage as being like themselves. . . . Our aim is not just to clarify Christian understanding but to foster Christian living. In real praying, head, heart and hands go together." With wisdom, humility and sincerity the authors lead us through different moods of praying, including brooding, praising, asking, complaining and hanging on.

In Praying the authors offer hope for those of us who daydream when we try to listen to God and stumble when we try to speak. Yet they don't just teach us about prayer; they challenge and inspire us to do it by pointing us to a clearer realization of the reality of God and his character. Let Packer and Nystrom come alongside you to encourage and guide your active praying to our powerful God, and let him move your praying through mere duty to delight.

Carolyn Nystrom is a freelance writer based in the western Chicago suburbs. She has written more than seventy-five books and Bible study guides and served as general editor for the Christian Classics series. Together she and J. I. Packer also authored Never Beyond Hope.

J. I. Packer is Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He also serves as contributing editor to Christianity Today. He has authored numerous books including the bestselling book Knowing God.