Pour Out Your Heart ~ a book review

 

Pour Out Your Heart by Jeremy Linneman is a book on prayer.  It isn't a self-help book at all, but the author does give some ideas to enrich one's prayer life.  As the subtitle says, "Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer", Jeremy shares his own personal struggle with prayer and how God awakened him to a more intimate fellowship through prayer and time spent meditating on God's Word.

The author shares "I grew up in a wildly charismatic church in the 1980s. And I mean really charismatic - think open mic for prophecy, regular testimonies of miraculous healing, and plenty of flags and banners."  He goes on to share how it was wonderful in one sense because there was true delight in worship, "there was complete embrace of risk and faith, and there was a sense of expectation in prayer."  He also shares that the preaching of the gospel was not consistent and balanced.  The thing that he remembers the most about those years, was" the simple, self-forgetful, childlike faith."

Fast forward to his adult years, when he "came to discover and embrace Reformed theology, expository preaching, and the beauty of the liturgical and contemplative traditions. "I am deeply thankful for my current body of faith here.  But I haven't lost that early experience of happy delight in the presence and people of God." Jeremy is currently the lead pastor at Trinity Community Church in Columbia, Missouri.

This book of 205 pages is divided into 9 chapters, and then a tenth chapter titled "A Final Word".  The author shares in these chapters nine ways to pour out your heart before God, as he uses Matthew 6:9-13 as a prompt. He shares each of the following nine ways to pour out your heart before God.  Please keep in mind as you read down through this list that in the book, the author explains in detail about each of the nine ways to pour out your heart to God.  He shares personal details from his own life and how God has used these nine ways (although he admits that there are probably a lot more types of prayer than he's listed) in his own life to draw him closer to God through prayer.

1. Adoration

2. Contemplation

3. Confession

4. Intercession

5. Petition

6. Lament

7. Fasting

8. Surrender

9. Thanksgiving

There are two things that I deeply appreciated about this book and that is the author's delving into the word "adoption" and carrying it into what that means for those who are Christians.  The other thing that I deeply appreciated about the author is that he takes the emphasis away from "duty" and focus solely on "relationship"...when a person is adopted by God, it brings him into a family relationship with Him.  That resonates so much with me because in the first many years of my being a Christian the emphasis taught in the denomination we were involved in was "duty"...salvation, yes, but no expository preaching on the "relationship" or "adoption".  In fact, it wasn't until about four and a half years ago that we left that denomination and started going to a church where we do hear those things taught and preached all the time.  Both "adoption" and "relationship" have become very precious words to me.  So, to find these two things emphasized over and over again in this book did my heart and spirit good!

The author quoted a few people that I am familiar with such as J.I. Packer, John Piper, Charles Spurgeon and C.S. Lewis, but he also quoted many others that I was not familiar with.  As you might suspect, I did a bit of research on them as well. :)  

I found the book to be helpful in so many ways and the Holy Spirit definitely dealt with me on some areas of my life that I needed to address.