Book Review: Prayer (Keller)

Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

Earlier this year I realised that I needed to sort out my own prayer life. I had the drive to prayer, but I had an inadequate practice of prayer, and I came to realise that I had an inadequate comprehension of what prayer really is and what to think about prayer. It's a topic treated barely in passing in most systematic theologies, and as I sought out things to read to try to address this defect in me, I realised that there are plenty of books on prayer, and most of them are not very good.

Practically, I was greatly helped by a few blogposts, and by taking up the habit of using PrayerMate, an app which ironically I helped kickstart almost a decade ago, and then never used. Yet, I needed more. I needed to think through what prayer was, and what it was meant to do, and then how to do it well. Those might seem like they have obvious answers, but the more I looked for them, the more disappointed I was.

Which is why I'm so appreciative of this book in particular. This is actually a good book on prayer.

The book falls into five sections. The first focuses on the necessity of prayer, and ultimately, "why pray?". From the beginning we are thrust into Keller's own life, and his own deep need to pray. Hearing Keller's experience echoed my own. And then Keller talks about learning to pray, and the role of the psalms. I have more to say about the psalms another time, but they really are the first place of departure, and the last place of arrival for prayer.

The second section deals with "Understanding prayer": what is prayer and how does it 'work'? Keller does some valuable work here in talking through some more general, cross-religious and typological treatments of prayer, before turning specifically to Christian prayer. While a typical sunday-school answer is "talking to God", Keller gives us the definition "a personal, communicative response to the knowledge of God". He then unpacks (a) how true knowledge of God is a necessary prerequisite and concomitant to prayer - we talk to the one we know; (b) how this is communicative and how we can think about it as conversation. This is particularly important, because there are really two schools of thought on conversing with God - how does God talk back? In one school, people should actively expect God to speak to them directly in prayer. This does not seem in line with Scriptural expectations, but it is very commonly taught. The other extreme is just "God has spoken through Scripture, his side of the conversation is done". This is one place where again Keller's treatment shines - in chapter 4 he talks through how God's speech is also God's acts, so that God is truly present in his words, and therefore prayer must, must, be grounded in and soaked in Scripture. I found this so helpful.

The third section is "Learning Prayer". This section was invaluable, as Keller takes us through three historical authors who wrote insightfully on prayer - Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Why invaluable? I think there's such a wealth of content in these authors, which Keller brings out in a way that is incredibly practical. Calvin's "rules" of prayer, Luther's modelling of freestyling prayer based on the Lord's Prayer, all three of them reflecting on how the Lord's Prayer teaches us the structure and content of prayer more generally. All this comes together to give a kind of compendium, an enchiridion, on prayer, which has informed and shaped my own renewed approach to prayer.

The fourth section is "Deepening Prayer", and it looks at prayer in terms of conversation (with the Scripture), and encounter. Here Keller does a fine job of engaging, without being dismissive, the 'experiential' and even 'mystical' tradition of prayer. He does so in a way faithful to his traditions, recognising that there are, or can be, very deep experiential moments of God's presence in prayer, and yet these emerge primarily through ongoing prayer, deeply rooted in Scripture. It's also in this section that we see Keller turn to and exposit the Psalms as both models and methods of prayer and about prayer.

The fifth section is "Doing Prayer", and I found myself a little weary of the book by this stage! Partly because I had already gleaned so much from it, partly because I wasn't sure how this fit with the earlier material structurally. In many ways though, this section is trying to move to more concrete and daily realities of "what" and "how" prayer should be. He talks about themes likes praise, thanks, repentence, forgiveness, and change, help in need, and so on, all in the framework of prayer and grace. What is really helpful here, is the way this transforms the book from "a book on prayer" to in many ways a very useful "here's Christian life mapped out over the discipline of prayer".

I am very conscious that I am not in any way an expert in prayer, I have not 'arrived', I don't have any great wisdom or learning on this topic, and having read one book (well, I read some others too), I'm not at all "well-read" on this topic now. But this book was helpful to me, both in reformatting and reshaping my own daily practices of prayer, but also in rethinking and reorienting how I think about prayer, and how I do prayer. I would commend it to you!

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Postscript: I really have learnt a lot from Keller over the years, I think he has a valuable blend of pastoral sensitivity, wisdom from long years of ministry, and insight from intellectual breadth and depth. He has a forthcoming book on forgiveness that I’m also looking forward to, and this interview about that book was well worth the listen.