We don't question our desire to be open with our close friends about our feelings, even if those feelings are difficult to express. We recognize that being honest with our loved ones will only deepen our bonds and help us feel peace in being able to express our innermost thoughts. Why then is it so challenging for us to come as we are, however we are, when approaching God in prayer? In "Praying the Truth: Deepening Your Friendship with God through Honest Prayer," William A. Barry, SJ, helps us deepen our friendship with God by examining how to approach God, at any time and with any problem, in complete honesty. Fr. Barry reflects on how secrecy can hurt families, the Church, and ourselves and how what we are keeping secret can get in the way of our connection with God. He acknowledges that we may fear God's reaction when revealing our most intimate truths; but just like with friendships, we risk not developing our relationship with God if we are dishonest about who we are and how we feel. "Praying the Truth "helps us realize that if we do not approach God in complete honesty, we may be holding back a part of ourselves that needs to be healed. By learning how to communicate honestly with God, our friendship with God and our faith in God's promise to love us unconditionally will be strengthened.
"Thanks to Praying the Truth," I am beginning to understand that prayer is simply hanging out with God As I read this book, I felt as if the author seemed to be sitting beside me, just talking to me as I read."
-- Anonymous reader

Are you trying to do it all yourself? Muyskens reminds us that what God seeks is relationship with us, a two-way communication. What relationship with God requires is very similar to what our earthly relationships require: openness, listening, focused time. One way to practice the skills needed for this relationship is centering prayer, a simple but deeply powerful prayer practice. In beautiful and accessible language, Muyskens invites us to spend time daily focusing our hearts on God, to find the power to be still and be reoriented to "the One who is the Center of all." Exercises in prayer and scripture reading are provided for the 40 days.

'David Cole is a careful, wise and skilful writer and guide.' The Revd Canon Professor James Woodward, Principal, Sarum College, Salisbury Following the ancient rhythm of the Celtic year, these prayers, meditations and liturgies will help you focus on the natural flow of life as it changes around you. Based on the eight points of the Celtic year - the four season changes, and the four midpoints of each season - and moving from winter to spring, summer and harvest, each of the eight sections includes a liturgy for a full service, a week of daily readings, guided contemplations and a selection of prayers and blessings.

Stormie Omartian's bestselling The Power of a Praying series (more than 28 million copies sold) is rereleased with fresh new covers and new material to reach a still-growing market of readers eager to discover the power of prayer for their lives.

Stormie offers praying wives a selection of favorite prayers from her bestselling The Power of a Praying Wife. Small enough to keep in purse or pocket for quick conversations with God, lovely enough to give as a special gift to uplift and draw the hearts of friends and loved ones to the Lord in prayer, this little book will help you unlock the enormous power of prayer in your marriage.

Insightful, honest, and life-changing prayers from The Power of a Praying Wife will also encourage your heart as you pray for God's purposes and plans to come about abundantly in your husband's life.

An interactive and accessible book of 'prayer experiments' that encourages readers to try out different approaches to prayer and to record their experiences. The prayer experiments include: Praying with your whole body Colouring the Bible The Lord's Prayer Labyrinth Breathing meditation Pearls of life Examen Prayer walking The author has had several requests for a version of this book for adults.

One of the most wonderful things about walking with God is that we can have an intimate and real relationship with him. He wants us to know him so well that we are comfortable talking to him about anything and everything. Yet, there are times when we feel disconnected and insecure. We desire to grow in prayer, but we don't know where to begin, what to say, or how to listen for his voice.

In She Prays, Debbie Lindell invites you on a 31-day journey to experience a confident and conversational relationship with your heavenly Father. She shows you how to replace the pressure to perform in prayer with a faith-filled expectation--trusting that God is delighted with every conversation and every word we whisper to him. Her desire is that your soul will be transformed as your confidence in prayer grows, and that your faith will be strengthened as you see God work through your prayers in ways you never imagined possible.

If we're honest, most of us feel bored, distracted, or discouraged in prayer. We look for resources to give us the "right" words or teach us the "right" technique and are disappointed when they don't seem to help. What we fail to realize is that prayer isn't a place for us to be good or right, and it isn't a place for us to perform or prove our worth. It's a place for us to be honest, present, and known--a place for us to offer ourselves and receive God. Spiritual formation experts Kyle Strobel and John Coe want to show you what you've been missing when it comes to prayer. In this down-to-earth book, they show you how to fearlessly draw near to a holy God, pray without ceasing (and without posturing), and delight in the experience of being fully known and fully loved. Each chapter ends with prayer projects or practices to help you see a difference in your prayer life, starting now.

In Growing in Love and Wisdom, Susan Stabile draws on a unique dual perspective to explore the value of interreligious dialogue, the essential spiritual dynamics that operate across faith traditions, and the many fruitful ways Buddhist meditation practices can deepen Christian prayer. Raised as a Catholic, Stabile devoted 20 years of her life to practicing Buddhism and was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun before returning to Catholicism in 2001. She begins the book by examining the values and principles shared by the two faith traditions, focusing on the importance of prayer-particularly contemplative prayer-to both Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. Both traditions seek to effect a fundamental transformation in the lives of believers, and both stress the need for experiences that have deep emotional resonance, that go beyond the level of concepts to touch the heart. Stabile illuminates the similarities between Tibetan Buddhist meditations and Christian forms of prayer such as Ignatian Contemplation and Lectio Divina; she explores as well such guided Buddhist practices as Metta and Tonglen, which cultivate compassion and find echoes in Jesus' teachings about loving one's enemies and transcending self-cherishing. The heart of the book offers 15 Tibetan Buddhist practices adapted to a contemplative Christian perspective. Stabile provides clear instructions on how to do these meditations as well as helpful commentary on each, explaining its purpose and the relation between the original and her adaptation. Throughout, she highlights the many remarkably close parallels in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. Arguing that engagement between religions offers mutual enrichment and greater understanding of both traditions, Growing in Love and Wisdom shows how Buddhist meditation can be fruitfully joined to Christian prayer.

Jesus’ disciples heard every message, witnessed every miracle and deliverance and healing and we don’t see one recorded time where they asked Him, “Teach us to preach,” or “Teach us to heal,” or “Teach us to deliver.” After spending three and a half years with the Son of God in the flesh, they cried out to Him, “We want Your prayer life… Teach Us to Pray!” They understood that Jesus’ public life of ministry was the result of His private life of prayer with the Father.

It’s in light of this reality that we must begin to shift all of our discipleship and training of the next generation. We are living in turbulent days, therefore we must get back to the foundational realities of intimate connection with heaven. We must come out of the swirl of noise and busyness and distraction and reconnect to heaven so that we will see heaven’s invasion into the earth.

Corey Russell has given himself to 30-plus hours of prayer a week for the last 20 years, and longs to take the lessons he has learned through all the seasons of life and impart them to as many as will receive.

Discover how:

• To tune out the noise, distractions, and busyness of our culture and cultivate hours at the feet of Jesus
• To allow the Lord to remove all of the props we build our lives on and hear His voice
• To ascend to the throne of God and see His power manifested in our families, our circumstances, and our world
• To persevere in prayer when you hit walls of resistance
• To be sent with authority and power and compassion into the world around you
• To build a life of consistent prayer that hosts the anointing of prayer
• To go from being an echo of someone else’s message to becoming a voice in your generation
• To develop a deeper intimacy with the Holy Spirit+BB36

What is prayer? How does it work? And does it even help at all? Where do we start and where will it lead? These are questions that Johannes Hartl has spent his life exploring. Questions that have found their answers through encounter, experience and often through travel - a journey of discovery that has taken Hartl into the very heart of true prayer. Weaving together stories of individuals, movements and moments he has encountered across the world, Hartl invites you to join him on an incredible adventure. Exploring different approaches to prayer, such as contemplative, intercessory, creative, powerful and revelatory prayer, Hartl encourages us to rediscover the true heart of prayer - a God who hears us and wants to speak to us. For those who want to experience the power of prayer or who are struggling to pray, this book is full of thoughtful insights and wisdom, combined with reflective applications which will inspire and challenge readers to catch the fire for a life of prayer themselves.

Do you yearn for a consistent prayer life? Do you struggle with distraction when praying alone, timidity when praying with others, or knowing where to start in either setting? Bestselling writer and beloved speaker Chrystal Evans Hurst knows both the freedom and blessing of establishing and growing a lively prayer life and how difficult it can be when prayer itself feels foreign to our daily lives. This video-based Bible study, is a well-organized and welcoming guide to having meaningful conversations with God. In it, Chrystal: Teaches the basic tenets of prayer practice. Establishes a realistic and achievable pattern of prayer that will have lasting effect. Explains the four postures of prayer-supported by Scripture-that increase our communication and relationship with God. This study includes daily prayer practices, space to journal about your prayers and what you're hearing from God, as well as weekly challenges to keep you and your group active and attentive in renewed prayer. The Bible tells us that prayer is essential for an intimate and thriving relationship with God, and it's well worth the time and effort it deserves. Sessions include: Introduction: The Practice of Prayer (12:00) Offering Thanksgiving & Praise (20:00) Turning to God in Repentance (16:00) Requesting with Confidence (22:30) Yielding to God (20:00) This pack contains: The 28-Day Prayer Journey Study Guide The 28-Day Prayer Journey Video Study DVD (streaming video access included)

Towns reveals the power of prayer in this fascinating look at the Lord's Prayer. Each chapter examines a line from the prayer, revealing power points for every believer desiring a more dynamic prayer life. Towns says: "What would you say if you were ushered into the throne room of God with only one minute to request everything you needed, but didn't know how to put it into words? The Lord's Prayer includes everything you need to ask when you talk to God . . . it is a model prayer that teaches us how to pray."

A Powerful Call to Restore Your Soul Through Prayer When an excruciating bout of depression led Dr. Mark Rutland to more deeply explore prayer, he came to understand its miraculous power for soul restoration. Prayer is a declaration of our Father's compassion toward us, a confession of our own inadequacy, and a reminder that he meets our daily needs. As it turns out, these are the elements of prayer Jesus taught his disciples. Praying and meditating on the Lord's Prayer changed Dr. Rutland's life, and since then he has used it to restore others' souls as well. Filled with moving stories and powerful insights, this book will help you discover the truth about God's love and power, and this truth will bless and heal you. In the end, it's not just about saying the Lord's Prayer--it's about getting to know the Lord of the prayer.

Stormie Omartian's bestselling The Power of a Praying series (more than 28 million copies sold) is rereleased with fresh new covers and new material to reach a still-growing market of readers eager to discover the power of prayer for their lives.

As you share your deepest desires and dreams with the Lord, discover in return His power and ability to care for you. Stormie shares with you her most-loved prayers for women in this collection ideally sized to keep in purse or pocket for quick conversations with God about purpose family healing faith love

Encouraging, grounded in Scripture, and insightful, this sweet gathering of prayers from The Power of a Praying Woman will help you seek the Father and be transformed in the process. In His presence are hope and joy for your life and heart.

"The ordinary moments of life can be sacred, if we simply take a moment to notice. This collection of prayers, poems, and meditations offers a brief respite from the hectic, harried pace of our days. Open it when the spirit moves you or when the spirit feels distant--the words will be here to inspire, calm, and encourage you either way. From gifted poet and empathetic pastor Meta Herrick Carlson, Ordinary Blessings collects blessings for loving yourself, enduring hard things, authenticity, living with others, and the rhythms of each day. Pause, take a deep breath, and open these pages to find that you've been standing on holy ground all along."

Jean Pierre de Caussade, the author of the classic which came to be known as Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, was known as a good preacher. Between 1731 and 1749 he was directing a retreat house in Nancy. Notes were taken of his conferences but they were not published in book form for a wider readership until 1860, more than a hundred years later. They were eventually edited and published by Henri Ramiere who gave it its title. In his teaching de Caussade hones in upon the 'littleness' and 'ordinariness' of the daily routine in which God must be found. God is NOW and God is HERE, otherewise God is NOWHERE. If God is not found in the here and now, we will not find him in musings about the future or futile regrets over the past.

Tim and Kathy Keller's bestseller THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE looked at the human need for love and its expression in marriage. This new devotional, drawing on that book but consisting of all-new material, is a day-by-day devotional to help couples find God's wisdom as they navigate the complexities of married life. Each day includes a quotation from Scripture, a comment from the Kellers, and a prayer to help you ground your married life in God. Covering friendship and commitment, the completion of men and women in each other, and ministry and discipleship within the context of marriage, alongside many other themes, this is a profound resource to help you connect God's wisdom with your marriage.