The Papa Prayer

In The Papa Prayer Larry Crabb talks of his own struggle with prayer and then lays out a general method of prayer that he uses the PAPA acronym for. The letters in the acronym stand for: Present yourself to God, Attend to how you’re thinking of God, Purge yourself of anything that blocks your relationship with God and Approach God as the First Thing in your life.

I’ll have to admit that I have not adopted the Papa Prayer, but it has influenced my prayer life. I have never been an elegant prayer and I’m sure no one would ever have wanted to write down a prayer of mine for any reason but I really like the conversation with God quality of prayer talked about in this book.

The early chapters in the book cast a somewhat dim light on the grocery list prayers that we so often hear and I agree to some extent, especially when the grocery list just includes our wants. On the other hand I surely don’t want to stop praying for others.

If there is anything that I didn’t like about this book is that there were times when I just wanted the author to get to the point, but it surely didn’t ruin the book and sometimes I think it may have helped me to keep reading on since I knew there was more.

I’m sure The Papa Prayer will make you re-evaluate your prayer life and give you some excellent food for thought.

The chapters include:
Your Dream of the Perfect Papa Can Come True
Introducing the Papa Prayer
Prayer Used to Be Dull, but Not Now
Get God Before Praying to Get Things from God
The Prayer of a Spoiled Child
Relational Prayer Is About God and Me
This Is No Gimmick – It’s a Way to Relate
Stay at Home with Christ
How I’m Learning to Pray
A New Paradigm for Prayer
It’s Time to Learn the Papa Prayer
Stop Trying to Be Who You Think You Should Be
Enter Your Red Dot – Don’t Just Describe It
Who Do You Think You’re Talking to?
Who Has God Shown Himself to Be?
Who Do You Turn to When You’re Scared?
Abandon Yourself to Holiness
You Will hear God’s Voice
Become Someone God Can Really Enjoy
The Papa Prayer: It’s a Way of Life