Praying Always by Franz Bakker

Bakker's book, almost a booklet in its diminutive size, is an excellent help for any Christian looking to the Lord for their help. Bakker's earnestness, urgency, and heart for his readers is evident in every concise and forceful chapter.

It's broken up into a roundly apostolic twelve chapters that are all about prayer, its purpose, how to do it, and its results. While he does spend a fair amount of time defining his sections and making clear his arguments, this is not a book I would call dry or academic in the slightest. Bakker's straightforward care is that his readers would spend more time in prayer, spend more thought on their prayers, pray more boldly in terms of their approach to God as a loving Father and more boldly in terms of what we can ask of the omnipotent creator and sustainer of all things, and that the believer would seek to pray like Christ by the Spirit.

While Bakker's organization of the book doesn't seem to have been one of his major concerns, the chapters are thankfully mostly independent of each other, and one could easily benefit from reading them at random almost as much as in the order laid out. In any case, there were three blocks of content that I created in my own mind to understand his work and help summarize it.

The first block is what I would call his definitions and admonitions for worthy prayer. The seven chapters that cover these good attributes and definitions are, in an of themselves, an excellent guide to prayer, and he helpfully summarizes them on the last two pages of the book. They are:

1. Praying secretly, or as we might call it in more modern speech privately. Having a personal and private relationship with God apart from the public gathering of the saints and seeking that time with Him.
2. Praying persistently and constantly
3. Praying humbly, realizing we are owed nothing
4. Praying boldly, since we can come to God knowing our sins have been washed clean by Christ, if we are in Him
5. Praying truthfully, or worthily. This particularly has to do with praying for those things God has called us to prayer for, and not praying for things that He would not bless (i.e. I wish to be a better thief)
6. Prayerfully pleading, or praying realizing your earnest need for the person and work of Christ, your enabling by the Spirit and the calling of God
7. Fervently praying, or reverently praying

I found myself using these seven points as a way to organize my thoughts before going before the throne of grace, and it reminded me of many things that I otherwise would have forgotten. I also found it encouraging to see so much of the volume of the book on the positives rather than a series of landmines to avoid.

The second block could be called the effects of prayer. While the first section told me how to pray, the chapters that covered, for example, unfulfilled prayer were immensely helpful. Bakker, as one of the great cloud of witnesses, reminded me constantly of the effectuality of the Word of God as it goes out, and the effectiveness of prayer whether my petitions were granted, answered unexpectedly or denied.

The last block of the book I would categorize as warnings. Bakker borrows the language of scripture to remind the reader forcefully, urgently, and sincerely about the dangers of approaching God arrogantly, demanding things He has explicitly refused, or thinking you have all the time in the world to repent before you take your last breath or the trumpet sounds.

I'd wholeheartedly recommend the book, and at less than a hundred pages, it's an easy read both in its size and contents.