The subject of this book is deepening your relationship with God through prayer. This book is not another book on how to pray. The authors use their own experiences to illustrate the difference between saying prayers to God and pursuing an honest relationship with Him. The term "beloved dust" is the authors' separation of the Person of God from us and stresses that while He is totally other, He really loves us in Christ. The authors use the example of Jesus' prayer-life to illustrate how He shows us what it means to be "beloved dust." "Beloved" stresses God's grace (unmerited love) for us and "dust" stresses that we are creatures. Even more, our sinfulness has made us "dusty." There are no easy answers as to how to fix your issues with prayer, only clarity that the very first step in knowing God and victory in following Jesus lie in an honest relationship where we are totally ourselves before Him, holding nothing back and knowing that He totally accepts us in His Son, Jesus. This book includes notes on each chapter at the end of this book, as some material has been taken from other sources.
This book was pretty much what I expected, because of the book's title and subtitle. I was moved and impressed by how honest the authors are about their own prayer lives. In their sharing, I found it discouraging and shattering to see exactly how subtle and sinful we actually are. As they shared about how how they hid behind their devotion to God to evade the real issues of their own lives, they stressed that it is the essence of sinful human nature to use prayer and other disciplines of following Jesus, to substitute for total honesty before God and pursuing a real relationship with Him. As I read through this book, I found myself questioning my own motives for why I do everything in my Christian life, including praying for others. Am I substituting these Christian activities for naked honesty with God, who demands "truth in the inner parts"? The authors used Adam and Eve, over and over, as examples of the natural hiding from God that we all do and how we use even Christian activity to hide not only from God but from ourselves. This book is easy to read and God's amazing grace throbs on every single page. I get weary of all the Christian "how to" books that offer formulas on "how to live the victorious Christian life" and this book is refreshing. I get annoyed with authors who seem to believe that things must be done "their way" or they cannot be right. In my opinion, we do not need any more "how to" books in the genre of Christian books as that confuse rather than clarify. We need more books like this one that rely on stories to illustrate what we need to know and do.
This book is a niche book, and the Christian community is its target. I recommend this book for every Pastor and Christian leader, not for how to enhance the ministry life of their congregations, but to enhance their own fellowship with God. They, above all people, may need the message of this book. It may also alter how preaching is done in many pulpits and how the Bible and particularly, prayer, is taught in many Sunday School classes. The authors are both in Christian leadership, one as a Pastor and the other as an Associate Professor of a Seminary. But I recommend this book for every Christian who wants to deepen their walk with God. Those who want formulas will get annoyed with this book. We have no shortage of Christian books about "how to deepen your walk with God," but this one illustrates how that is possible. A youth edition of this book needs to be written as the concepts in this book may be too deep for that age group. Non-Christians who are interested in God and Christ may like this book; some may even discover that they want to know this God this book illustrates to readers.
I received this book free of charge through Booklook Bloggers in exchange for my honest review of this book. I was not required to give a positive review of this book.
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