Book Review: "Deepening Your Conversation with God"

Wanting to grow deeper in my prayer life, I've taken to reading a couple of books on the topic. Normally, when I read books on prayer, I usually don't get much out of it, and usually just end up disappointed in myself because I don't experience what the author experiences. Some of the most read authors on prayer often do very little for me. But, I was pleasantly surprised by Ben Patterson's book Deepening Your Conversation with God (ISBN: 978-0764223518).

Patterson didn't really say a whole lot I didn't already know or hadn't heard before. He even said a few things that I just flat out disagreed with. But the strength of this book was that it was practical and it made prayer not the exclusive possession of the elite super prayer warriors, but the accessible habit of average Christians. The book is geared for those in ministry, but nearly everything in it applies to all believers.

Patterson begins with the standard questions about why we should pray, but his answers are not the tired, off-the-shelf responses we typically hear. He focuses on the spiritual battle we are in, and emphasizes that prayer is the "pivotal" element for every piece of the spiritual armor in Ephesians 6. He calls prayer the "real work" that we do, especially in ministry. He addresses the "dry times" we go through when we can't seem to pray much, saying that we dry up not because we go to the well too often, but because we don't go to the well often enough. Often, prayerlessness is due to either acedia (dawdling away our time), hyperactivity (staying busy with unimportant things), or hubris (thinking we can get along fine on our own).

Patterson promotes prayerfulness by encouraging us to be hungry only for things of God (rather than filling ourselves on spiritual "junk food"), by seeking out God's company (rather than keeping Him as an abstract thought), and desiring His joy that He freely offers us (which is tightly related to thankfulness). Patterson also recommends endurance and persistence in prayer (perhaps the most encouraging treatment of the parable of the persistent widow I've read), plus a holy boldness in our prayer. Finally, he encourages us to listen while praying, and shows the great value of praying together.

There are some great thoughts of other authors that Patterson works in (but as much as I love C.S. Lewis, Patterson called upon him a bit too often). Bringing these other authors in brought a breadth to the book. Rather than a dry analysis of the topic of prayer, the author simple tells us things we pretty much already know, but need to hear in fresh ways with some frequency.

For the first time, I read on a book on prayer that didn't make me feel like a prayerless loser. I did identify a lot of shortcomings in my prayer life, but Patterson was more encouraging than anything. Clearly, prayer is vital for him, and he comes across less like a lecturer and more like an enthusiast sharing his thoughts about a holy hobby. Far from just a hobby, prayer is vital to Patterson's daily life, and reading his book encourages me to do the same.