Study Books

I started re-reading a book I had picked up a number of years ago. It is a personal study book about prayer. The title is Becoming a Woman of Prayer by Cynthia Heald. There are Scriptures to look up, questions to answer, reflections, actual written prayers and a section to journal my own prayers or thoughts. Not sure why I never finished this book but as summer is beginning, I am thinking it is a great time to finally complete this study! Especially because my small group is on hiatus during the summer months. And my husband is not the kind who likes to do "couples devotions". We do tend to pray together but not on a consistent schedule. We tend to talk about what each other is reading or praying about unless we have something specific with the children, extended family or church friends/leaders, etc. If someone emails or calls us with a prayer request, we then pray together and intercede for them. Speaking of interceding, there is a whole chapter in this book about intercession and what it means. I like this quote from the beginning of the chapter. It is by Oswald Chambers: "beware of imagining that intercession means bringing our personal sympathies into the presence of God and demanding that He does what we ask. Our approach to God is due entirely to the vicarious identification of our Lord with sin. We have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus."....Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God's interests in others for our natural sympathy with them." And of course one of my favorite verses is also at the beginning of this chapter on intercessory prayer: "Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with." James 5:16, msg.