Just Prayer

The answer to your need is locked in prayer. While prayer has not been a “hot” topic for many Christians, it is the most substantive course one could ever enroll in. I haven’t met a person who didn’t want to be better. I haven’t spoken to an individual who didn’t want to have the best job and the best spouse, attend the best school, and experience the best life. But in our attempt to have the best, we often look to people to give us what only prayer can give. We look for things that can only be received via spiritual transfer. What we really need is prayer. Pastor John Hannah shares insights on how prayer is the most under-utilized tool in the treasure chest of Christianity, and it is a MUST HAVE. Just Pray explores the call, the seat, and the warfare of prayer. When you finish this book, not only will you have practical tools to improve your prayer life, but also an encyclopedia of benefits that will help you to experience your best life now. This book will show you how to deepen and intensify your prayer life and gain wisdom on how to access heaven on Earth in powerful and yet practical ways.

Just Prayer is a four-week prayer cycle for morning and evening readings to support people who “hunger and thirst for justice.” Patterned on the ancient monastic Hours, it offers psalms, intercessions, and reflections fashioned to strengthen a personal commitment to justice. The weekly themes are: recognizing God’s command that we act justly; lamenting suffering and injustice in our world; repenting our failures and renewing our commitment to justice; and, finally, celebrating God’s promise of justice lived as a new heaven and new earth. Weekly reflections encourage personal transformation by emphasizing the connection between justice action and peaceful communities. Created with parishes, youth groups, mission trip participants, and social justice organizations in mind, Just Prayer supports hands-on service work in local communities. By repeating and building upon the prayer sequences in Just Prayer, we can conform our hearts more fully to Christ’s living message of compassion and justice for the least among us. The print edition features a soft, leather-like cover and a durable ribbon for convenient daily prayer.

Authentic prayer begins when we realize that we do not know how to pray. But what do we do after this realization? Pure Faith is a hardcover devotional written to help people deepen their interior life so that they can encounter God on a daily basis. It contains prayers for every occasion, prayers before and after Mass and Confession, prayers to various saints, and a wealth of advice on how to develop a rich prayer life.

I know you're up in heaven, God, and can hear my voice from there. I'm just a little child. Will you answer my short prayer? Bestselling author Anthony DeStefano believes that prayer is the greatest gift you can give a child. Using simple language and rhyme—written as a heartfelt prayer—this story expresses a child’s understanding of our loving, faithful God. It encourages little ones to go beyond asking God for things to trusting Him for courage when feeling afraid, joy when sad or lonely, and guidance when confused or unsure. Mark Elliott’s beautiful, photo-realistic illustrations of children in everyday situations keep young readers turning the pages to see what comes next. When the last page has been turned and the amen has been said, little ones will understand that prayer is a simple conversation with God—easy, natural, and everlasting.

An Evangelism Tool for a New Generation. Today’s seekers are far more likely to be open to prayer than a traditional gospel presentation. This beautifully designed book is unintimidating, inviting, and effective. It’s a seven-day journey through the Lord’s prayer. Each day explores a new petition in the Lord’s prayer and helps show the reader the prayer’s importance and impact. The author offers reflection questions, prayer prompts, and sample prayers to help readers begin and deepen their personal journeys in prayer. It’s a perfect resource for anyone exploring the Christian faith or young Christians learning to pray. Plus it works well one-on-one and in small groups.

"We need to encourage an understanding that inner peace comes from relying on human values like love, compassion, tolerance, and honesty, and that peace in the world relies on individuals finding inner peace." —His Holiness, the Dalai Lama These six words—please heal my fear-based thoughts—change lives. In this brief and inspiring book, based on Engle’s study of A Course in Miracles, she explains how to use the prayer and experience immediate benefits: being less irritable, more patientlaughing morefeeling like you have more time, more energyworrying lessmaking decisions more easilysaying no without guilt A typical prayer goes something like this: "Please help us find the money to pay our mortgage this month." Saying the prayer may help you feel like the burden of that month's mortgage has been lifted, but the part of you that feeds on fear will simply seek out new financial worries to keep you awake at night. Old patterns remain intact. In contrast, asking, "Please heal my fear-based thoughts about our mortgage" lifts the burden AND relieves the need to re-create that fear and hold onto it. This prayer heals your very desire for burdens, your addiction to fear-based thoughts, freeing you to live without that fear and with greater peace of mind. As a result, your financial situation is also free to improve. That's what makes it so different. One Facebook fan told Engle, "The most blessed aspect of this prayer is all the open space it creates for peace—I never knew how many fear-based thoughts were clogging up in me until this prayer."

Thomas Merton was the most popular proponent of the Christian contemplative tradition in the twentieth century. Now, for the first time, some of his most lyrical and prayerful writings have been arranged into A Book of Hours, a rich resource for daily prayer and contemplation that imitates the increasingly popular ancient monastic practice of "praying the hours." Editor Kathleen Deignan mined Merton's voluminous writings, arranging prayers for Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Dark for each of the days of the week. A Book of Hours allows for a slice of monastic contemplation in the midst of hectic modern life, with psalms, prayers, readings, and reflections.

In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause. Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral. Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear. “I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”

Could the gospel be lost in evangelical churches? In this book, J.D. Greear shows how moralism and legalism have often eclipsed the gospel, even in conservative churches. Gospel cuts through the superficiality of religion and reacquaints you with the revolutionary truth of God's gracious acceptance of us in Christ. The gospel is the power of God, and the only true source of joy, freedom, radical generosity, and audacious faith. The gospel produces in us what religion never could: a heart that desires God. The book’s core is a “gospel prayer” by which you can saturate yourself in the gospel daily. Dwelling on the gospel will release in you new depths of passion for God and take you to new heights of obedience to Him. Gospel gives you an applicable, exciting vision of how God will use you to bring His healing to the world.

Incidents and illustrations How Spurgeon fuelled his church Classic Spurgeon in a shorter format