The Prayer Saturated Family by Cheryl Sacks

With a fresh, flexible, real-world approach, bestselling author Cheryl Sacks shows how you can integrate prayer into your daily family life, including how to:

· Get everyone on board and involved

· Experience a fresh sense of God’s promise and purpose for your family

· Overcome spiritual opposition coming against your household

· Shift the spiritual atmosphere in your home to one of greater peace and joy

· Make an investment in your children’s faith that will last a lifetime

(Excerpt from back of book)

Prayer is one of those weird topics within the church. It's foundational, everyone has heard of it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of teaching on the topic in my experience and most people are afraid to ask questions. This is why I love books like this. Cheryl takes readers through different styles of prayer, ways to incorporate prayer into families at all stages of life, and easy to follow "how-to's" she has encountered over her own life  and research.

I really appreciated the care Cheryl takes to go through the highs and lows of families in each of their  glorious stages from no children to empty nesters and everywhere in between. The  31  day guide at the end of the book gives a wide variety of topics and suggestions to help families practically expand their own understanding of prayer and how to become more intentional about incorporating prayer into areas that may not be naturally apparent in our busy lives.

As I said, I love useful  how-to's  and this book provides  them :)

On the flip side, I would recommend this for people who have been in the church for  some  time  and already possess a more balanced view on the role of prayer for one main reason. Cheryl's writing, at times, slips into a very "health & wealth"/  "name it &claim it" mentality that  can be dangerous. Without acknowledging that, sometimes, even prayers for what we perceive to be good things can receive an answer of no or not yet, we run the risk of turning prayer into a one way request line for a Santa Claus God. I think she  tempered this somewhat with her incorporation of worship but for someone new to faith an explicit statement that prayers are not wishes and sometimes the answer isn't what we want would have been nice to see stately more strongly and clearly.

3.5 out of 5 stars

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc."