Review: Pray-ers, Book 1 "Troubles"

My most recent book to review is a Christian fiction book called The Pray-ers / Book 1 Troubles, published by CTM Publishing Atlanta and written by Mark S. Mirza.  This is a book that uses a fiction format to teach the importance of prayer. 

Published by CTM Publishing Atlanta, and written by Mark S. Mirza.  Mr. Mirza's heart is to teach people how extremely important prayer is, and to encourage people to pray more effectively.

To do so he looks into the lives of three Christians, who have learned to be effectual men of prayer.   These men span the centuries and have struggles in their lives like all believers do, the question is... will these struggles defeat them and drive them away from God, OR will these struggles deeper their faith and conversation with God.  

The whole point of The Troubles, is to help people understand the important of prayer, that many things affect our prayers and we should not be ignorant of them.  Author Mark S. Mirza has put together a fictional tale where he shows the action of Satan's minions in the lives of the saints.  What they can and CANNOT do, according to the will of the Lord God.    He does his best to not give more credit than is due to Satan's minions (demons) than he has to be not capitalizing their names.    Until you get used to the style it makes for some difficult reading, but once you are used to the names used, it just flows along.

The Christian lives followed are:

• Biblical Epaphras and his fictional nephew,
• Post-Civil War Georgia, the real itinerant preacher Alexander Rich
  
• Modern-day Georgia, Dr. Dale, a fictional descendant of Alexander Rich.
  

I have to admit, that I love fiction, I've read more than one book about the struggle between Satan and God, many of them fictionally based and they all bring one thing to bear, okay, a couple of things to bear...
1. Imagine the most self-centred person you know and multiply that by a million, add fear to that mixture and a loathing of God and you have a demon.   They gloat, they preen, and they revel in themselves.   When it comes to believers they are sneaky and backhanded, and happy to let us fool ourselves.
2. God helps his people through the power of faith in him and conversation with him.   Nothing more is needed.  Well faith in him based on the word of God.  :) 

This fictionalized account brings this all to bear for me in this book.

Mark S. Mirza frequently footnotes scripture so we can see where he gets his assertions from.  He has his own method of citing scripture, often pulling up just one section of a verse to highlight his point.   Mr. Mirza is the founder of Common Thread Ministries, which offers coaching and help to individuals and churches in prayer. He leads the men's prayer ministry at First Baptist Church in Atlanta, as well as being a speaker and teacher in the area of prayer.

For this review I received a ebook version, this came with a plain cover.

One of the first things I read was WHY Mr. Mirza wrote this book:
"First, admittedly I want you to learn prayer. I don’t just want you to learn ABOUT prayer, but I want to hear of prayer becoming who you are, how you breathe Christianity, if you will. So to reach that aim you will see much repetition by various characters in various situations, but handling the problems the same way.
Secondly, and this is important to me, I want you to enjoy yourself. "

Think about that for a moment... to learn to live life you like you breathing prayer.  That's the point of this book.   Live life as a Christian = breathing out prayer.

  Prayer is vital!   We see it in the lives of the believers throughout the book.  We have front row seats that how, without prayer we lose battles, battles that should not be lost.

My Thoughts:
I honestly have mixed feelings about this book, I really do.   I see prayer as relationship between God and his individual people (as well as with his people corporate).   I think it's really really important to for people to know what nullifies the prayers of God's people.   Praying without really believing that God will answer your prayer?  Well what's the point in asking God then?   Prayer while you are ACTIVELY living a lifestyle contrary to the word of God?   Well.. again.. you are openly defying God himself, and you expect him to answer you?   I do not see prayer as a list of "these are the rules".  And my hesitation with this book, is that some struggling believers might simply see a list of rules, a list of do's and don'ts, that they won't see the living relationship that each of these believers had with God.   The real relationship that made their prayers real and honest and answerable by God.

IF you are a weak believer and you are interested in reading this book, may I ask you to do this: Read it with a strong believer.  Read it with someone you can bounce ideas off of and talk and learn and grow.   If you are a strong believer, see that YOUR PRAYERS MATTER.  They do!   They nullify the work of the devil, they showcase the power of God and that my dear readers is what it's all about.  We serve a Lord God who has won the battle already!   Let's win the small battles by focusing on bringing God glory through our faithful prayers.

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Pricing information can be found here, you can purchase the paperback for $23.95, or the epub for $4.99.