pray like a gourmet -- a book review

David Brazzeal's Pray Like a Gourmet:  Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul is so much like a fine meal -- full of new treats and future relishes in the Christian spiritual life of prayer. Brazzeal offers a number of "prayer recipes" from his own experiences.  He describes many simple prayer activities designed to help one break out of his or her prayer-time rut.  Throughout the process, the author encourages the reader to live with gratitude and to take note of the world in which we live.  Not since Richard Foster's Prayer (which Brazzeal often cites) have I read a better book on the various practices of Christian prayer, and Pray Like a Gourmet is filled with so much creativity that I could never do the book the justice it deserves in a review.

Brazzeal advocates a number of different ways to practice prayer and meditation such as walking through the park and taking note of the people you see, doing a "museum meditation" at the local museum of art, or a "forest walk" to nurture a sense of wonder, praise, and gratitude.  Just a quick glance at the Table of Contents reveals so much creativity to the Christian life of prayer, that there's no chance anyone who hears and lives Brazzeal's wisdom here will be bored in prayer.

That's not to say Pray Like a Gourmet is an easy book.  Because it's filled with the challenge of maintaining a relationship with God.  From praising, thanking, confessing, blessing, observing, meditating, asking, interceding -- Brazzeal has given us so much to practice in our praying.  This is a beautifully-illustrated book that will not only find its way to my bookshelf, but will be a book I return to again and again in nourishing that relationship with God.

The psalmist encourages that we "taste and see the goodness of God" (Psalm 34.8).  Pray Like a Gourmet demonstrates just how true that is.

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I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, as part of the Speakeasy book review program, in exchange for my honest review here.