Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals

Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do. --from the IntroductionActivists Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove show how prayer and action must go together. Their exposition of key Bible passages provides concrete examples of how a life of prayer fuels social engagement and the work of justice. Phrases like give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors take on new meaning when applied to feeding the hungry or advocating for international debt relief.If you hope to see God change society, you must be an ordinary radical who prays--and then is ready to become the answer to your own prayers.

"This latest publication from the new monasticism movement is the third book each for the two young Christian activist-authors, and it offers fresh insight on the well-worn topic of prayer. Some themes are repeated from earlier works, but the book deftly succeeds in drawing the reader out of the weeds of daily life and into a more spacious field. The text is structured around three New Testament prayers: the Lord's Prayer, Christ's intercessory prayer in Chapter 17 of the Gospel of John and Paul's prayer in the first chapter of Ephesians. From the very first pronoun of the familiar Lord's Prayer ('our'), the authors extract a compelling sermon on the power and centrality of community in Christian life and thought. The dominant theme — that prayer invites human beings into a partnership with God in answering prayer — is enlivened with earthy tales from the authors' own lives, wrenching stories of service and redemption from the people they know and lesser-known anecdotes from Christian history and sociology. Readers will never see prayer or community in quite the same way again. (Oct.) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Activists Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove show how prayer and action must go together. Their exposition of key Bible passages provides concrete examples of how a life of prayer fuels social engagement and the work of justice.