Personality and prayer

Up close and personal

PERSONALITY AND PRAYER
Finding the prayer style that suits you
By Ruth Fowke
CWR. 98 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-85345-488-2

This excellent book is a goldmine of useful insights and practical help in developing our prayer life.

Ruth Fowke is a retired Christian psychiatrist who worked all her life in the NHS, but gave much of her time to the care of mission workers around the world. She is also trained in the use of the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator, and runs seminars and retreats, often using these insights into personality differences, and how they affect the way we worship, pray and behave.

She writes vividly and well, without jargon, describing the ways in which different people pray according to their preferences: e.g. those who pray more with the mind and the intellect, and those who pray more with the heart and the feelings; those who like to be ‘active’ in prayer and those who like to be quiet and contemplative.

Her main theme is that, though we have often been taught that acceptable prayer must follow a certain pattern, this may be suitable for some, but not for many others. The latter are trying to use a method which goes against their own natural style and which can be frustrating and ineffective.

She, therefore, opens up a range of new possibilities available to help us relate to God in a meaningful way, using the Bible, nature and the senses, art, imagination and discipline. At the end of each chapter are new ideas and exercises to work through.

This is a deeply spiritual book, as well as being practical and creative. I can warmly recommend it for those who want to deepen their relationship with God.

Sue Ingleby,
Personal Development Tutor at Redcliffe Mission Training College, Gloucester;
a deacon at Matson Baptist Church, Gloucester

© Evangelicals Now - August 2009
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Main Articles

• Cape's crucial congress
• The Commentary
  Making friends for the church
• Mission field on the doorstep
• Jesus in Japan
  Celebrating 150 years of Protestant missions and missionaries
• A living hope
  1 Peter 1.3-9 explained and applied
• The case for Applied Theology
• Monthly media and arts column
  The gospel according to Michael Jackson
• The Music Exchange
  Making a joyful noise
• Watching the web
  Are you all of a Twitter?
• Misidentifying the Holy Spirit
• The Third Degree
  Unquenchable flame
• What Darwin should have learned from pigeons

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• The Christ Files DVD
• The memoirs of an ordinary pastor - An extract from Don Carson's book on his father
• Fountains in the dust - Snapshots from the streets of South America
• In Jesus (CD)
• Against Physician Assisted Suicide - A palliative care perspective
• Harry Potter and the half-blood prince
• The ghosts of Eden - Shelf life: Looking at secular books
• Understanding the times
• Leading character
• Overcoming your shadow mission
• The New Creationism - Building scientific theories on a biblical foundation
• Personality and prayer
• John Nelson Darby
• The challenge of Islam - To the church and its mission
• Body, soul, and human life - The nature of humanity in the Bible
• Colossians - Confident Christianity
• Contentment - Healing the unger of our hearts
• An Anglican evangelical identity crisis - The Churchman-Anvil affair of 1981-1984
• Listen up! - Practical guide to listening to sermons
• Dysciples - Why I fall asleep when I pray, and 12 other discipleship dysfunctions
• God's pattern for the Christian life
• God's light on dark clouds
• 70 ways to beat 70
• The gods aren't angry (DVD)
• Looking for Eric