Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
By Philip Yancey, Zondervan, 2006. 352 pp.
Reviewed by Michael Glenzer
I came to Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? curious, but wary– praying has always been an aspect of my spiritual life in which I felt insecure, and so a book from a prominent Christian that tells me how to do it is obviously appealing. But it’s also a potential trap, at least for someone who’s prone to spending far too much time reading about doing something instead of simply doing it. Giving me 350 pages on how to pray– complete with a bibliography in back, no less!–might do nothing but make it so that I never have to actually pray again.
As it happened, I had nothing to worry about. I read in only fits and starts, a few pages at a time. Normally, that kind of review would not speak well for a book–the stock cliche offered as praise is that the reviewer ‘couldn’t put it down,’ and I spent almost as much time putting this book down as I did picking it up. But I’m pretty certain Yancey wouldn’t object. When I put the book down I did just what I imagine the author would like me to– I prayed.
It’s a rare book that inspires prayer, and I credit Yancey here with truly revitalizing my communication with God–more than I ever expected an author to be able to do. The book is a great example of what Yancey does best– he is wondering aloud, musing on the topic of prayer from a variety of different angles, at a pace that suits both his obvious enjoyment of words as well as his more than apparent passion for the subject matter.
Prayer is loaded with engaging anecdotes, and Yancey’s proficiency with an interview is more than apparent throughout. With characteristic transparency, Yancey discusses his own struggles with praying, expressing his doubts about both the ‘child-like’ faith that leads to frank demands of God as well the deep, meditative type of prayer whose practitioners are able to sit for hours a day with Him, freely admitting he’s predisposed to neither. He speaks compellingly about how–and why– prayer is to be gone about, and writes what I think are some of the most engaging passages in his entire body of work describing his struggle to come to terms with God not answering prayer.
The book is divided into four main parts and a conclusion. In the first, Yancey sketches out his definition of prayer as “keeping company with God,” and in the second, he directly addresses some of the mysteries surrounding prayer, starting with the broad, “why pray?” In part three, he talks about the “grammar” of prayer, or the language and structure of prayers, and in part four he attempts to resolve some of the larger dilemmas surrounding prayer, attempting to address what’s behind an unanswered prayer and disputes about prayers for physical healing.
But the structure of the book is not as linear as that outline might make it appear. If what you’re looking for is a scholarly discussion of the purposes for and arguments against prayer, he provides more than a fair share, but you’ll likely be frustrated– the book’s arguments could be made effectively with far fewer pages, most likely. The explanations offered are neither consistently well reasoned nor exhaustive. He returns to several questions periodically throughout the book, and the same themes are discussed in each section. But a philosophical argument is not really the goal of the book, and Yancey is immensely successful at what he seems to set out to do: Prayer is a somewhat lengthy transcript of Yancey wondering, pontificating on the subject, at his best– and Yancey is one very entertaining, engaging wonderer.
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