Book Review: Dynamite Prayer

Information about the book

PIcardo, Rosario and Sue Nilson Kibbey.  Dynamite Prayer: a 28 Day Experiment.  Invite Press. Plano, Texas. 2022. (Cokesbury / Amazon)

Summary

From the back cover:

Dynamite Prayer is a daily prayer guide that will show you how to begin a practice of "breakthrough prayer," a way of raying where we ask God to en new doors and reveal new possibilities, fueled by the Spirit's power.  This 28-day adventure will take you from feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and uninspired to curious and expectant as you surrender you own preferences and ideas and courageously follow the miracles God brings into your life.

Impressions

I hesitated to write a review for this book.  Earlier, I wrote a post about feeling resentment about reading this book. I know that resentment has colored by perceptions of the book itself; it seems to me that a review I write would be impacted by that feeling. And yet, it has become my practice to record thoughts about the books I read, so here we go.  But to give you another view of the book, I will tell you that it has four stars on Goodreads and a total of 13 ratings.

A few reasons why I didn't like it (beyond, but probably influenced, by my resentment):

• The author uses the word dunamis to refer to God's power. My brain stumbled over that substitution every time I read it. In my head, I had to read God's power for the words to make any sense. It disrupted the reading.
• I don't find snippets of verses to be helpful in devotional reading. I'm much more interested in reading a longer passage to know the context that a short verse. Along with that, in one instance, the authors used a particular translation (NKJV) of the Lord's prayer passage that included the phrase "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever."  This phrase was not found in the earliest versions of Matthew: I felt like this translation was used just to have the word power in the verse - when it really wasn't there.
• Each day included a Prayer-Hold phrase and a Breakthrough Prayer - these were meant to be prayed throughout the day. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but isn't something that is natural (or fruitful) for me personally.

Now some good thoughts:

• The book lends itself well to a month (or so) of readings - each day has a routine set of devotional, prayer, and scripture, and the format could be very useful for someone who will invest the time beyond reading it (which is all I did - see again, the resentment post).
• The book is well written, and I appreciate that.
• I have heard comments from others that the authors are excellent; I think that should color what you decide to read.

Give this a go if the format and purpose sounds like something that would interest you. It is well done for the kind of book it is.

Posts about book

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