The Phenomenology of Prayer

     The Phenomenology of Prayer states that prayer is something that connects us to the divine. It’s made to inform, transform, and conform. Humans don’t know how to pray and are constantly learning, our prayers always go “beyond”, and there’s a tricky balance between praying to someone and finding the direction of prayer. The first chapter goes into how we should pray by praise, confession, intercession, and petition. I’ve heard about this method many times in my church, they teach the younger kids to pray using ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), so it was a familiar concept to me. However, the book went deeper to explain how we find praise being the hardest. I agree that it can be tricky, in my opinion, it’s hard to praise something that you can’t see. As the relationship between human and God increases and time spent in quiet time or meditation increase, it gets easier to see how God is working in one’s life and praise him for it. Phenomenology of Prayer says that “learning to pray is the task of a lifetime” (Westpal, 25); the learning never stops and the relationship can always be improved. 

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