Rating: 9/10
Where to Read: Kindle, Paperback
My thoughts
I had never heard of Tyler Staton before reading this book. I had heard of someone he serves alongside at their local church, Tim Mackie. Tim is the main guy at The Bible Project and someone I think a lot of and listen to often. While listening to a message of his recently, I was struck by how excited Tim had become about prayer. He admitted prayer had been something he struggled with, but was now experiencing more of God than he thought possible. In his message, he talked about Tyler helping understand the relationship between God and us during prayer.
This intrigued me enough to pick up the book. Tim is right. Tyler does a great job helping the reader see prayer as a time for communion and conversation rather than a legalistic exercise to earn God’s favor. My favorite analogy is Tyler using the the movie “The Notebook” to relate to a lifetime of prayer. In the movie, the main characters are reliving their memories through a notebook of stories. At the end of the movie, they both remember each other, hold hands, and the love of years washes over them for a few moments. Tyler says that is what prayer can be like. When we enter into God’s presence, the love of all our lives can rush in and overwhelm us.
Tyler also does a good job at the end of setting up with ideas for personal prayer rhythms. This is actually what I would consider to be my one draw backs of the book. I would have liked the author to have taken more time on this. I guess he wanted to leave a lot of room open or personal preference when it comes to this part, but I like hearing how people do things. Still, it’s a great book and I highly recommend it.
Perhaps my favorite part are the “practices” at the end of the chapters. Tyler gives us a chance to work out the things he has taught us. This was very helpful, because it’s almost like he is there as a helpful mentor guiding us through these exercises.
Quick Summary
Pray with the heart of a lover and the discipline of a monk.
Bullet Point Takeaways
- Daily prayer life is a quiet rebellion to not live according to the dictates of the world.
- Jesus had a daily prayer time. So should we.
- Pray with the heart of a lover and the discipline of a monk.
- Prayer is a love story.
- A daily prayer time is not about legalism no more than meeting with your spouse every day to share a cup of coffee and hold hands.
Who is this Book For
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has been a Christian for a little while, but never really caught on to the discipline of prayer. It will also be helpful for those who have inconsistent prayer time or see prayer as a job and not a joy.
Goodreads Bio
An invitation to an ordinary yet radical way of life, using historic Christian practices as both inspiring vision and practical instruction for how to encounter the wondrous, mysterious, living God through prayer.
Prayer is the source of Jesus's most astonishing miracles and the subject of Jesus's most audacious promises, and yet, most people--even most Bible-believing Christians--find prayer to be boring, obligatory, disappointing, confusing, or, most often, all of the above.
If you've ever felt this way, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools is your invitation to trade your conceptions and misconceptions about prayer for prayer in its purest form: a vital, sustaining, powerful connection with God that is more real and alive than you could have ever imagined. In these pages, Tyler Staton--author, pastor, and national director of the 24/7 Prayer movement--addresses common roadblocks to prayer and gives you the confidence to come to God just as you are.
Through biblical teaching, powerful storytelling, and insights on historic Christian practices, Staton helps you . . .
- Express your doubts and disappointments about prayer
- Discover and practice multiple postures of prayer, including silence, persistence, confession, and more
- Understand and embrace the wonder and mystery of prayer in everyday life
- Realize that prayer is a powerful invitation to partner with God in the redemption of a fallen world
- And, ultimately, open or reopen the line of communication with your Creator and experience afresh his divine power on earth.
Quotes
“Prayer, properly understood and practiced, is the seed from which fruitfulness grows.”
“The greatest gift of prayer is communion with God and the ability to see our world through His eyes.”
"Mother Teresa wasn’t an activist; she was a person of prayer."
"Intimacy leads to fruitfulness, not the other way around."
"Pray with the heart of a lover and the discipline of a monk. So, pray like a bunch of unruly monks."
“Jesus lived by a daily prayer rhythm in a world without iPhones or email, a world even without clocks. For Jesus and his earliest followers, communion with God marked the passage of time. Everything else happened a certain distance before or after prayer.”
