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Thomas Goodwin known as 'the Elder', was an English Puritan theologian and preacher, and an important leader of religious Independents. He served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and was imposed by Parliament as President of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1650. Christopher Hill places Goodwin in the ‘main stream of Puritan thought’.
Truly one of the best books I've ever read. There are not enough stars in the sky to rate this fairly. Thomas Goodwin is remarkably easy on modern ears, especially for a 17th-century Puritan, and he offers gem after gem of truth and encouragement about how and when and why to pray--and truly expect God to give you, if not the gift you requested, a hundred better mercies.
The book is potent, especially at the beginning, like single malt whiskey. I'd read 1-2 pages and put it down for a day, heart full and head spinning.
The first chapter opens with a cannon shot: God commands us to command Him in our prayers. "Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands, command Me" (Isaiah 45:11). I looked up the word command in the Hebrew and the Septuagint to make sure. Yes, it's clear: God doesn't want us to simply ask, beg, plead, argue, or persuade. He wants us to boldly and confidently command Him to do what we think He ought.
This realization revolutionized my praying. It made me feel so much more welcome in God's throne room, so much more confident in the fact that He wants to hear from me. It also made me put my hand over my mouth. What? Me, command God? I was used to begging Him for this or that, but as soon as He said, "No, command Me," I realized I had better remember that He is the God who knows everything, and I know one-one millionth of the story He is telling. So command with trembling. In Jesus' name.
Goodwin does a wonderful job in teaching us to expect answers to our prayers, to be attentively waiting to see how the Lord will answer us. This is an encouraging book to keep pressing on in our prayer life.
Goodwin explains that believers must not only pray, but be careful to observe the answer to their prayers, and he gives instructions on how to discern the answer to prayers. It's a subject I hadn't given much thought to before, and as always, Goodwin is full of remarkable insights. He is uniquely talented at mining the Scriptures for examples and illustrations, often drawing from passages of the Prophets the ordinary reader would be unlikely to recall but which shed great light on the matter.
Given its age, the language in this book is a bit dense and antiquated, but it's well worth plodding through for all the gold it contains. So many valuable perspectives and reminders on why we pray, how to pray, how to look for answered prayer, and how to understand prayer that seems to go unanswered—all of them supported with multiple examples from Scripture.
This book has drastically changed my prayer habits. Many times, prayer can seem abstract, but the practicality in the writing interwoven with biblical truth has been most helpful.