Prayerfulness

How’s your prayer life? Do you pray as often as you’d like to? Does it feel like a chore? Most Christians long for a deep, fulfilling prayer life, but life’s busyness and distractions can make prayer an afterthought or a burden.

In Prayerfulness, experienced pastor and Bible teacher Peter Adam guides you in rediscovering the joy and power of prayer. He uses the Bible, the wisdom of Christians from the past, and down-to-earth examples to help you:

• understand the biblical foundations of prayer and see how the gospel can transform your prayer life
• overcome common obstacles to prayerfulness
• learn how to plead God’s promises, actions, character and reputation—going beyond simply asking God for things
• experience many kinds of prayer—thanks, praise, lament, confession, dedication—and the joy of bringing your requests to God.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to go deeper in prayer, Prayerfulness will help you embrace God’s gracious and transformative gift of prayer.

Introduction

1. What is prayer?

2. Our relationship with God

God’s promises, actions, character and reputation

3. An anatomy of prayerlessness

4. Enriching our prayers and using written prayers

Praying for ourselves and others

5. Letting the Bible enrich our prayers

Learning to pray the Bible

6. Praying the Lord’s Prayer

7. Jesus and the apostles on prayer

8. Repentance, confession and lament

Services of repentance, confession and lament

9. ‘Unanswered’ prayers

10. Prayer, fasting, decisions and promises

11. Prayer for deliverance and protection

12. A praying church

13. Planning to pray

Daily prayers

More Bible-enriched prayers

Appendix: More resources on prayer

Peter Adam is vicar emeritus of St Jude’s Carlton in Melbourne, Australia. He was formerly vicar of St Jude’s, then principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. He is the author of numerous books, including Speaking God’s Words, Hearing God’s Words, Written for Us, The Message of Malachi, The Majestic Son, Walking in God’s Words, and Esther. He is a regular speaker at training conferences for pastors and preachers, he mentors young ministers, and he runs ministry workshops on preaching and on praying. You can find more of his writing at peteradam.org.

There are many books about prayer, and if, like me, you’ve probably already read one or two, I hope you’ll read one more: Prayerfulness, by Peter Adam. Distilled from a lifetime of studying God’s word and walking in God’s ways, Adam gently diagnoses the causes of our prayerlessness and winsomely invites us into a more prayer-saturated life. With its bullet points, sample prayers, practical advice, and insight into our very human struggle to commune with God in a meaningful and consistent way, this book doesn’t simply tell us to pray; it opens us up and instils in us a greater desire to pray. 

—Nancy Guthrie, Author of Praying Through the Bible for Your Kids

Any book that nurtures our prayer life is to be prized. This is such a book. Peter Adam faithfully engages the Bible with pastoral deftness and theological astuteness, and makes numerous practical applications born of experience. A feast.

—Graham Cole, Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL, USA

In Prayerfulness, Peter Adam’s scholarship is made accessible and deeply practical. Adam walks us through his own prayers and prayer practices as well as showing how they are rooted in Scripture. At one point he writes, “We need deliberate, sustained coaching in prayer, as in every area of our lives”. You may not be able to have Adam as your personal prayer coach, but Prayerfulness is the next best thing: a conversation in which he encourages you to take next steps in prayer. 

—Tim Chester, Lecturer in Spiritual Formation at Crosslands Training, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and author of Enjoying Jesus

An absolute masterclass on true biblical prayer! Jesus wanted his people to learn how to pray, and Peter Adam leaves no spiritual stone unturned in carrying out our Lord’s desire. He reminds us that prayer is simply talking to God, and that God loves to talk to us about … anything! We can pray what Peter calls “big prayers”, about the world, the nations, God’s plan, and so on, and “little prayers”, about things like our failures, difficulties, trials, relationships, and joys. We are encouraged by sound theology and practical wisdom to pray in a biblical way.

Peter widens our perspective and shows us that prayer is not just asking God for our needs, though that’s important; it also includes praise, thanksgiving, trust, repentance, lament, dedication and worship. His section on prayers of lament is gold!

Christians, pastors, and churches in the West need this book, to bring us back to a true prayerfulness.

—Wally Behan, Former Rector of St John’s Latimer Square (now Latimer Church), Christchurch, New Zealand

Here is the fruit of a lifetime listening to God, responding to God, and sharing the gospel of God. The book is a treasure chest full of seasoned personal experience and pastoral wisdom, generously shared to “help people in gospel ministry to pray for themselves, to pray for their ministries, to pray with their fellow workers, to teach and train others to pray, to lead in prayer, and to promote a culture of prayerfulness in their church or ministry”.

—Johnny Juckes, Former President of Oak Hill College, London, UK

What a wonderfully helpful gift to God’s people is this new book from Peter Adam. Prayerfulness is encouraging, challenging and inspiring. It is gracious, scriptural, pastoral and practical—full of ideas to try, examples to use, dangers to avoid, wisdom to learn from, and grace to rejoice in.

In it, Peter sends us again and again to God in his word and then calls us to turn those words into prayer. Sharing his life, doctrine and even his progress, Peter calls us to a richer, deeper, broader prayer life, both individually and corporately to the glory of God.

The aim of the book is to help us pray. And that’s what it does. Praise God.

—Pete Sorrensen, Regional Team Leader at AFES Victoria, Australia

Peter Adam has blessed us with this rich banquet of a book on prayerfulness. It reflects the breadth of the biblical teaching on prayer, the depth of our dependence upon our triune God, and the height of the privilege we have in lifting our hearts to heaven in prayer. Not only does Adam allow us to eavesdrop, as it were, into his years of prayerfulness, but he supplies us with so many practical ideas and helps to enfold into our own personal prayer lives. This book is important for church leaders to read also, for with so many churches desperate to reach and revitalize Australia for Christ, how important it is that our corporate church life is increasingly dependent upon both public and private prayer to the Lord. The fervent prayers of the righteous avail much, and so I wholeheartedly commend this book. 

—Mark Earngey, Head of Church History and Lecturer in Christian Thought at Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia

When senior ministry leaders take Peter Adam’s short course in prayer and emerge saying, “This has been the best and most revolutionary thing for my prayer life”, you sit up and notice. Much of that course is in this book. But be forewarned: this is not a casual, inspirational read. It is instead the full twelve-course meal in growing yourself as a biblically formed and theologically rich pray-er. It will inspire and challenge you to further glorify, worship and appeal to God more constantly as his beloved child and faithful worker. It will help you to help others grow as faithful prayer warriors. It will minister gospel grace to your soul. I can’t think of another book I’d rather use for small group studies next! A book to spend the year with.

—Wei-Han Kuan, Executive Director of CMS Victoria, Australia

I admit I was surprised. Of course I was expecting to learn about prayer in this book, but I wasn’t ready for such rich reflection on matters of the soul and pastoral theology more generally. Drawing on Bible themes, topics like atonement and the church, and quotations from great people of prayer in history, Peter Adam gives us sage advice as well as a window into his own heart, providing written examples of praise, intercession and lament that he has found useful himself and commends to us too. Just when I thought I knew where Peter was taking us, I had to slow down and read again something that had been freshly worded or profoundly summarized. Why is common sense to help us in a close walk with the Lord so hard to find? Simple. Direct. Compassionate. Practical. 

—Rev Canon Dr Rhys Bezzant, Dean of the Anglican Institute and Principal at Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia

I am one of the legion of people who have been enormously helped by Peter Adam’s books on preaching and the ministry of the Word. Speaking God’s Words: A practical theology of preaching is widely and rightly known as a contemporary classic. Now, Dr Adam has written a unique volume on prayer that deserves returning to time and again. It is full of the fruit of Dr Adam’s sustained personal practice and reflection on that most intimate, precious, but perpetually neglected privilege of Christian discipleship: prayer to our Heavenly Father, through the Son in the power of the Spirit.

Prayerfulness: Cultivating a Bible-enriched prayer life is bursting with wise biblical insight, generous practical encouragement, and devotionally rich resources, including worked examples: ready-to-use prayers for many contexts and circumstances, and concise liturgies suitable for personal, pastoral or corporate ministry.

Best of all, Dr Adam articulates a vision for growing our own relationship with God in prayer that relies upon and responds to what God has said in his word. This is a book that lives up to its title. It’s a book to read slowly, and to re-read, so as to mine every page for the nuggets of gold immediately and directly applicable in daily routines of prayer.

Surely personal and corporate prayerlessness is one of the besetting sins of our age. Here is a bold, biblical and resolutely practical counteroffensive that is also theologically rich and pastorally sensitive. It will benefit the new believer, those long-serving in the battle, the local church and the pastor. Highly recommended. 

—Archbishop Kanishka Raffel, Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia

I’ve read many books on prayer—not because I’m good at it, but because of the exact opposite: I’ve always needed help with prayer—and I can’t think of another book that’s as strengthening, inspiring, practical and biblical as this one. Peter Adam is a sage for the church today. He is deeply honest, sharing the struggles and breakthroughs in his own prayer life (sharing many of his own written prayers, alone worth the price of the book), in a way that provides us with real help and real hope. I’m confident this will bear fruit in more prayer—and better prayer—among God’s people today.

—Sam Allberry, Associate Pastor at Immanuel Nashville, TN, USA, and author of One With My Lord