In this entertaining, highly readable book, couples learn that a fabulous marriage can be the outcome of learning to pray together, causing a 20 to 30 percent increase in romance, conversation and happiness.
Best-selling author Squire Rushnell and his wife, entertainer and talk show host Louise DuArt, take readers step by step through The 40 Day Prayer Challenge™ in which couples commit to praying together five minutes a day for forty days. Backed by compelling research from Baylor University and Gallup Poll, the true-life experiences of 24 test couples, including Denzel and Pauletta Washington, Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, Donna Summer and Bruce Sudano, Scott and Tracie Hamilton, reveal that daily prayer is a "life changing experience" in which most couples report positive outcomes in less than two weeks.
Couples Who Pray includes an easy questionnaire prepared by Baylor University to help couples to chart their own progress during The 40 Day Prayer Challenge™.
My Review:
First, let me say that the title is a bit misleading. When I requested this book I had expected more of a "how to" type thing than this is. I was a lot like the police officer who asked the authors after listening to them at a conference, "...my wife and I pray. She prays separately, and I pray separately, but how do we do it together?" To be honest, I don't think that this book answers that question. Sure, I read that you can begin with just one of you praying and the other listens. We should make time to do it. We should thank God for our blessings together and confess together and other advice. It is right on. However, it still feels like and uncomfortable thought to me even after reading this. That probably isn't a reflection on the authors as much as it is on my comfort level with being that open in a public way.
This book does have a lot of examples of couples (almost all of them have been in a newspaper or magazine at one point or another. I don't recall any average everyday people mentioned) and how they feel praying together has affected their lives and marriages. The authors also include statistics about how praying together can make your marriage better. There is a lot of good advice on how to create a strong and lasting marriage in the pages of this book. Usually the advice is followed by something along the lines of how praying together helps with that.
I found the most help in Appendix 2 which includes 40 Bible passages to read together and incorporate in couple prayer time.
Thinking over this book, I think I had expectations that this book was about how to become a couple who prayers together rather than what it truly is, a book about couples who do pray together.
One thing about this book that I want to mention, this did not take me through a step by step of the 40 day prayer challenge. What it did was refer me to a website (www.coupleswhopray.com) which allowed me to sign up for the step by step prayer challenge. This was what I had been looking for in the book!
So in the end, the book is an encouragement to pray together without a lot of the how-to's included while the website is the nuts and bolts.
I received this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review, either negative or positive.
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