On Bended Knee

Prayer. It's something most believers want to become better at. In her new book "On Bended Knee," author Crickett Keeth takes readers a participative journey to be better pray-ers. But more than that, she encourages readers to know God more deeply and intimately through prayer and the Word.

This isn't just an easy-reading, feel-better devotional book. It's a Bible study that guides readers to dig into God's Word, meditate on it, and apply it to everyday life. Those who stick it out and complete the study will reap the reward of a deeper prayer life and a closer walk with the Lord.

While Keeth does offer some commentary of her own and includes quotes from Bible teacher and leaders, she focuses on allowing the Word of God to speak for itself. Readers will study and learn from the Lord's prayer, Pauls prayer of intercession in Ephesians 3:14-21, Job's prayer of despair, Hannah's prayer of longing, David's prayer of lament, Asa's prayer of seeking God, Jehoshaphat's prayer of dependence, Nehemiah's prayer of boldness, and other prayers in the Bible.

Each section offers opportunities to dig into the Word, meditate on it, memorize it, apply it, journal it, and pray it. Keeth's Bible study, "On Bended Knee" is highly interactive and extremely practical. Readers who invest the time and energy in the study will absolutely find themselves "On Bended Knee" with more meaningful prayer lives.

* I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. The opinions expressed are my own.

Another book on prayer? What does this book offer that other books had not? Two things. It shows us how to pray and it gives us space to pray. Many people pray the Lord's Prayer by heart. That is a good thing. Author Crickett Keeth gives us many more examples of prophets, priests, kings, and pilgrims whose prayers we could profit much from. Designed to be used for the season of Lent, each chapter can be treated as a daily workbook of prayer. Like a working devotional, readers and participants could look forward to four sections each day.

1. Looking to God's Word (meditation)
2. Looking Upward (discussion)
3. Looking Deeper (understanding)
4. Looking Reflectively (application)

Through daily devotional use and consistent application, we grow our praying muscles. The key to learning is not about technique. It is about patterning ourselves personally to people who had prayed well in the past. From Jesus, we learn the basics of the Lord's Prayer to move from ritual to relationship. We learn about worship, surrender, supplication, confession and forgiveness, etc. From Paul, we learn the spirituality of intercession. We see how he prays for others to grow spiritually. He wants the believers to grow to love God more. Many of us want to grow spiritually. Have we also prayed for others to do the same? Perhaps, this is the single biggest lesson to learn from Paul's praying stance. From Job, we learn about another dimension of prayer: In times of despair. We need lots of trust in the midst of fog. We learn to trust in times where there are lack of answers in the sea of questions. It is a time of waiting and humbling. From Hannah, we learn about prayer as longing which gives us another dimension of waiting and trusting. Does God know how we feel? What if God had missed us out? How long must we wait? From David, we learn about the psalms of lament, which reflect David's heartfelt need for comfort, for protection, for strength, for thanksgiving, praise, and complaint. From Asa, we learn the importance of starting and finishing well. From Jehoshaphat, we learn the prayer of dependence and from Nehemiah, to pray boldly when the odds are stacked against us.


There are many more Bible characters in the Bible that we can learn from. I suppose we could also learn from people like Peter, Timothy, Titus, John, Jude, and so on. Old Testament characters such as Abraham and Jacob, the prayer of Solomon, and so on could also teach us on other aspects of prayer. With the models provided in this book, readers would be able to do their own studies with characters not covered. Most importantly, if this book is able to prompt readers to pray more earnestly themselves to be on bended kness, this would pretty much pay for the price of the book.

Crickett Keeth is Women's Ministry director at First Evangelical Church in Memphis, Tennessee. She has attended classes at Dallas Theological Seminary with a focus on women's ministry. She loves writing Bible study materials for discussion groups.

Rating: 4.25 stars of 5.

conrade

This book has been provided courtesy of Moody Publishers and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

This is such a quality bible study that I would recommend to any woman looking to improve her prayer life. I was impressed with the depth of the questions as well as the wide variety of experiences it acknowledges. Any woman, regardless of her personality and strengths will be enriched through this study.