"Finding God in the Verbs" book review

Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a Fresh Language of Prayer by Jennie Isbell and J. Brent Bill attempts to help Christians learn how to pray by writing their own prayers. The point of the book is to try to teach you how language informs prayer and can help reignite your prayer life.

The book covers how to use verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Most importantly, the book encourages intentionality in our prayer life. I appreciate that about this book. It made me rethink how I use language in praying to God. The book provides about 35 exercises that help make the book more interactive.

The problem with the book probably lies more with me than with the book itself. I don't pray out loud often. Most of my prayers are in my head. When I do pray out loud, I have learned most of my language from reading Puritans or reading works of theology. So this book really didn't resound with me. The book doesn't provide any solid theology of prayer which I find problematic but the book isn't really seeking to provide that. The book is very specific about finding language for prayer.

Overall, the work is a good book if you are someone who writes out prayers. I think the exercises could be really beneficial for the reader. This is not a book to speed read through but to read intentionally and carefully. I hope it finds a wide readership.