Prayers of the Bible

Prayers of the Bible: 365 Devotionals to Encourage your Prayer Life by Gordon Keddie

What governs the Christian and the way he acts in the world?  For most believers, the Bible is the source and fount of all wisdom which governs the Christian life, both in practice and in salvation.  In worship, we follow the commands of the Bible in terms of elements of worship and seek to honor God through our obedience.  And yet, we often fashion our prayers to God in a most extemporaneous and free from way.  Pastor Gordon Keddie, who has helped countless numbers of believers with his EP commentaries on various books of the Bible, brings his solid wisdom to bear in a new book on prayer.  Here in this new book, entitled Prayers of the Bible, he helps the reader see the way fellow saints in the Bible prayed to the God, both in their joy and sorrow, anguish and delight, with an eye towards bringing our prayers in line with God’s Word.”

In highlighting Jesus’ practice of private prayer, Gordon brings to the foreground the truth that “Jesus intercedes for us along the way.” The beauty of Jesus’ intercession hits us square in the despairing depths of life alongside the heights of joy, he writes, “While we are sinking in the storms of life, Jesus is at God’s right hand praying for us and with us.  And so the constant discovery we make in believing prayer is that Jesus is the beginning, the middle, and the end of prayer, just as he is our salvation itself.” (479)  The relief the Christian finds is not that his prayers are always fully engaged communications with God the Father but that he is never alone in his prayers, Jesus always praying for and with us.

In the Scriptures, there are what Gordon calls “prayer protests” in which God’s people “answer back” to God by excusing themselves of their unworthy attitudes to his character, actions, claims, and promises.” (406)  Both Christians and unbelievers have these kind of anti-prayers, “Even Christians who sincerely love the Lord can feel unloved by him.  Crises in life, miseries in the world, and the like can tempt us to doubt his love.”  There is a real sense of doubt of the love of God when our circumstances cripple our abilities to see clearly.  And yet, these self-doubts projected onto the Lord are just that, projections without a firm foundation.  Gordon brings us back to God’s love, “His evidence for loving his people is his electing (Deut. 7:2-3) and preserving them (Deut. 7:4-5).” We seek to wave our fist at God and he recounts his lovingkindness to us and his preservation of us from all the sinful and wickedness we see both in our own hearts and in the wider world.

In looking at this devotional from a wider view, there are a few things that are worth mentioning about this book.  One, Gordon time and time again points his readers back to Jesus as our one and only hope, as our intercessor, Savior, example, friend, suffering servant, and redeemer.  This is to be commended because often in devotionals we want to grab a bit of wisdom for the day, often without anchoring our minds and hearts in our Savior.  Secondly, the devotional is replete with drawing out the major themes of Scripture that lead us to worship. Gordon writes concerning Psalm 5:7-8, “A serious commitment to obeying God’s Word is basic to believing prayer.  To pray without the intention of worship and serve the Lord in the practical details of daily life is not to pray at all, but to engage in premediated hypocrisy.” (181)  We pray in earnest that our prayers might be an act of worship and lead us into a life of worship for all the various times during our often frantic lives.

I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did, it was a source of great encouragement but also a challenge to learn the prayers of the Bible and the way God has worked throughout history.

Thanks to Crown and Covenant Publications for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.