Dave Earley's Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact Leaders, is an insightful guide to praying, its methods and its purpose. It is addressed to pastors, missionaries, social and political leaders, to any believer influencing the lives and opinions of others or intending to do so sometime in the future.
In it, prayer is presented as a discipline, and each of its aspects is detailed in dedicated chapters, so that, after reading the book, believers may pray with their mind, their heart and all of their being, for the things that really matter in life.
The following lines will reveal the most important ideas in the book, the strategies used by the author to convey them, and how these ideas can be applied by readers in their everyday life.
Book Summary
Chapter 1 is dedicated to the "Value of Prayer". In it, Earley argues that most church leaders and pastors do not pray as much as much as they should (2008). No matter how busy pastors are, they should always find the time to communicate with God.
Perhaps the most impressive passage of the chapter concerns praying time and refers to Martin Luther King's confession about dedicating several hours a day to prayer on a regular basis, and even more on the busiest weeks, "the first three hours of each day", to be more precise.
In order to convince his readers, the author uses the examples of Evangelist Billy Graham and Pastor David Jeremiah, fervent believers and respected ministers. According to him, only through prayer Christians can stand up to Satan and his demons and achieve spiritual warfare.
The importance of prayer is taken to a new level in Chapter 2, where the author conjures leaders to make time for it. He begins with the supreme prayer symbol, none other than Jesus Christ, and continues by recommending spiritual leaders to make prayer their main concern.
In order to find the time for prayer, people should reserve prayer time every day, by setting a duration for their prayer and choosing an adequate location. Through such recommendations, the writer actually teaches his readers to fight life's meaningless preoccupations and not let them turn into an obstacle to praying.
In Chapter 3, Earley discusses the rule according to which all leaders should pray for the communities they serve. He also emphasizes the importance of intercessory prayer. According to him, leaders are situated in the middle, between the people they serve and God. They gain power and authority by linking their heart with God, allowing it to beat in the same rhythm, sharing the same burdens. The chapter ends with recommendations on how leaders should make intercessory prayer a part of their life.
Chapter 4 focuses on why and how leaders should train others to pray for them ("Train Others to Pray for You"). Pastors and leaders need prayer as well, and they often find it difficult to ask for it, although they should not. The author gives the examples of Charles Finney and Charles Spurgeon as men who asked others and taught them how to pray for them and teaches readers how to find and train prayer partners.
The 5th chapter teaches leaders to manage their troubles and make them the focus of their prayer, by practicing spiritual stewardship. Jesus Christ is given as an example again, for His ability to release Himself from pressures and torment through prayer. The readers should lay out their problems in front of God. This way, concerns will become desires, prayers will become expectations, tribulations will become liberation, and wavering will become advances.
Fasting is covered in Chapter 6, and there are many examples of spiritual leaders who fasted and prayed constantly in the Scripture. Earley unfolds the various structures of fasting as it is presented in the Bible, and reveals 25 blessings the Scripture promises to those who do not deviate from their prayer and fasting. The other benefits of fasting, such as body and mind revival and financial savings are also presented and supported with advice on how one should fast in order to benefit the most from this period, both physically and spiritually.
Chapter 7 is dedicated to courageous faith. Readers are encouraged to be bold when claiming divine promises, while also assessing whether the promises of the Scripture match their exact situation. The author then focuses on the Scripture promises referring to prayer and provides his readers with various examples of how such promises were kept for people like Nehemiah, Gideon or John R. Rice. He advises everyone to make their prayer clear and “ask big”.
Readers are encouraged to start improving their prayer strategy from what they already know on the subject in Chapter 8. They should use multiplicity in their prayers, but still base them on specific models, like The Lord’s Prayer, and follow the A.C.T.S. (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication) pattern. The rest of the chapter analyzes each of these stages of prayer, wrapping them in historical and biblical paradigms and providing several realistic ideas on how they can be successfully implemented in every prayer.
Chapter 9 is maybe the most important part of the book, pushing readers into accepting and embracing the best prayer practices, just like their notorious predecessors did. Among these practices, the most important ones are ceaselessly praying, prayer retreat, praying and reading the Scriptures, candid awareness praying, and praying while walking.
The final chapter, “Putting It All Together”, appraises the nine disciplines covered in the preceding chapters in what Earley calls the “Life’s Prayer Catalog”. It is spread with yes-or-no questions meant to clarify the most important aspects of prayer life.
The same goal is pursued with the "Prayer Life Assessment", which allows the prayers to focus on their most urgent concerns. The section titled “Life’s Prayer Function” allows the readers to catalog their maturity processes and related strategies. Another section is dedicated to “Life’s Prayer Aim”, meant to help the readers retrieve a single sentence or concept from the book and use it to improve their prayer life.
While each of the first nine chapters is dedicated to one discipline related to praying, the final chapter reviews all of them and teaches readers how to put all the information and advice they have received together. After this final chapter, readers should be able to pray with all their heart and make their prayer heard, should have turned into the spiritual leaders everyone around them needs and expects.
Book Critique and Evaluation
Dave Earley's Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact Leaders is more than a manuscript on prayer, it is the fundament of successful praying. In it, the author presents and explains basic Christian principles with a high dose of enthusiasm.
It is impossible not to notice the expediency of the suggestions the author makes, the relevancy of the examples he gives, the accessible language he uses to portray his ideas, all working together to provide readers with a pleasurable experience. The book is based on numerous positive elements, some of which discussed below, but also includes a few controversial ideas worth looking into.
As far as the positive elements are concerned, one of them is the high number of examples and quotations spread throughout the book. By quoting famous Biblical and historical personalities, as well as rendering personal concepts in his own words, the author succeeds to make his work memorable, convincing and impressive.
One example would be the declaration at the beginning of the book that “God…can do more in a tiny fraction of a second than I can accomplish in years”. This contemplation hints at the wise teachings to follow and challenges the readers to keep reading, to find arguments that will either allow them to contradict the author or convince them to believe and start living by the author's teachings.
Another insightful quote is the one from Martin Luther King: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer”. If Martin Luther King could find the time to pray for three hours daily, anyone can and should do the same, especially since, as the writer shows a few pages later, being unsuccessful in praying means being unsuccessful altogether.
Chapter 5 is dominated by a short but comprehensive idea: “I turn my worry list into a prayer list”. This way, prayer means liberation, problem-solving, success and peace of mind. The author also teaches his readers how all these can be obtained, advising that they ask for "a few definite things with boldness than to ask for a bunch of things lackadaisically.
Of course, more such examples can be given, but the straightforwardness, the eloquence and the practicality of Dave Earley's teachings are already obvious. Reading his book, one will not only be convinced to pray more, but will also learn how to do it in order to obtain better results and, implicitly, become a better person. How could it be otherwise, when the models provided are none other than Moses, with his humble prayer life, Nehemiah, Paul or Jesus Himself.
Moving on to questionable ideas, one could be Earley’s advice for leaders to “boldly claim God’s promises”, which gets close to Charles Spurgeon’s vision that prayer is “God’s checkbook”. This type of language is used in the book of Hebrews, but there is a more viable alternative to it that goes unnoticed by the author: humbleness. One explanation for the writer's courageous attitude would be that the believers’ path to God has already been cemented by Jesus' sacrifice.
Besides easy and pleasurable to read, this book is educative, even life-changing. It makes it easy to understand many aspects of prayer and it changes your perspective on the subject. It contains principles that are not only easy to implement, but they can be implemented immediately, and without too much effort, by anyone.
Conclusion
Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-impact Leaders by Dave Early is a comprehensive guide to prayer that any spiritual leader, pastor or minister should read at least once. It helps readers understand the meaning of prayer, as well as the process of praying.
It gives readers all the motivation and tools they need in order to turn prayer into a priority of their life and, through prayer, come closer to God and the people around them. All this is achieved through a plethora of captivating quotes and examples that turn reading into a rewarding experience and underline Dave Early's talent and commitment to the chosen subject.
References
Bounds, Edward M. The Complete Works Of E.M. Bounds On Prayer (with Active Table of Contents), [Annotated]. Niche Edition: 2011.
Earley, Dave. Personal Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High Impact Leaders. Chattanooga, Tennessee: AMG Publishers: 2008.
Murray, Andrew. The Ministry Of Intercession. Eastford, Martino Fine Books: 2012.
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