Media Reviews
This is an exciting book because it comes from a writer who has engaged deeply and skilfully with science, the Bible and human experience, and refuses to short-change any of them. The style is accessible, intelligent and humane, and the result is a book which will be profoundly helpful and encouraging to anyone trying to pray with both heart and mind. -- John Pritchard, former Bishop of Oxford
If you hope to find easy answers to questions on prayer or information on prayer techniques in this book, you will be disappointed. But easy answers often do not help in areas such as prayer in which most of us struggle, either in understanding or practising it. This is a significant book that helps readers to think more deeply about prayer and to grow in their life of prayer. Using his considerable skills and experience as an accomplished scientist, able theologian, wise pastor and honest disciple of Christ, David Wilkinson tackles the question of prayer from various angles with wit and wisdom, unmasking popular myths, bringing out tensions, and offering assurances based on Scripture. Writing poignantly from his own personal experience, David Wilkinson addresses the reality of why God answers our prayers but also why our prayers often go unanswered. He is an astute guide who leads us to explore scientific ideas such as quantum physics and chaotic systems to shed some light to our quest. At the end, he brings us to the God of the Bible who cannot be put into a pigeon hole but who loves us and relates with us in His sovereign will as His story unfolds from creation to new creation. We are challenged to respond by trusting Him and expressing that trust through deepening and authentic prayer. -- Bishop Robert Solomon, Bishop Emeritus of The Methodist Church in Singapore
In our complex and often confusing world, the tendency is to look for easy answers, avoiding the tough and perplexing questions that confront us. We simplify, formularize, regularize and codify; an exercise in reductionism which at times can be a mask for arrogance, self-deception or downright laziness. No area is this more evident than in the subject of prayer. In this highly readable and positively provocative book, When I Pray, What Does God Do?, renowned scholar, astrophysicist, theologian and pastor, Professor David Wilkinson, a man who is eminently qualified to do so, addresses this age-old and still thorny question; namely, the problem of how God responds to prayer. Professor Wilkinson tackles the subject with the rigour of a scientist, the spirit of a theologian, the heart of a shepherd and the humility of a disciple who is on a personal pilgrimage with Jesus. Blending his insights from the world of science and religion, and experience forged in the crucible of his personal walk, he highlights the dangers of following received wisdom, clinging on to discredited models, formulas, as well as false and unhelpful dichotomisations. He calls us to unlearn bad habits in prayer, and embrace fresh perspectives; with the assurance that God is still in the business of answering prayers. He reaffirms the biblical truth that God is God. He does as He chooses. He is the God of continuity as well as discontinuity. Therefore, science, which is descriptive rather than prescriptive, does not rule out miracles that God performs in response to prayer. It cannot define, restrict, prescribe or determine for God. We are invited to walk the walk of faith through the corridor of uncertainty, the pathway of vulnerability and the foggy lane of confusion, grappling with the challenges of answered prayer. The reader is called upon to constantly seek to have a bigger picture of the true and living God who is great and awesome, and ditch the personalised designer gods that we have created for ourselves. We are to think big about God, pray big, and expect big. The one who prays should not seek to box God in as to how He should answer. Because He is God it is His prerogative to respond in a multiplicity of ways to our prayers. Last but by no means least; we are challenged to get into partnership with God. He should be the primary focus of our prayer. As He draws us into closer intimacy, His overriding purpose is to change us, make us look like Jesus. Radical transformation is God's chief aim for us when we pray. His desire is to change the world around us, as well as the one who prays, recalibrating our perspective and realigning our will in line with His; leading us to echo these words, `Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is heaven'. This book has encouraged, challenged and informed my thinking and practice on various aspects of my personal prayer life. I wholeheartedly commend it to the humble seeker after truth who desires to grow in their prayer walk with God. -- Rev Emmanuel Mbakwe, National Leader, The Apostolic Church UK
In this book, David wrestles with the themes of prayer, science and the nature of God with his characteristic humility, vulnerability, wisdom, and passion to remain dissatisfied with easy answers. This is the book I wish I'd read years ago, and to which I will return time and again into the future. If you have ever struggled with whether (and why) God answers some prayers and not others, this book is for you. -- Rev'd Dr Joanne Cox-Darling, Regional coordinator, London: Discipleship and Ministries Learning Network, The Methodist Church
Deeply illuminating and highly accessible -- Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York
If you are terrified by books on prayer this isn't one of them! This combines humour, personal experience and informed intelligence. Rather than amplify human effort in praying, David walks us through all the obstacles to prayer into a new awareness of the God who responds to people trying to find him. An excellent read. -- Joel Edwards, International Director, Micah Challenge and former General Director, Evangelical Alliance UK
Imagine sitting down with a physicist and a theologian over coffee with the topic of prayer decided on in advance as the subject of the conversation. That's exactly what you get in David Wilkinson's fascinating new book on prayer, as he is both that scientist and that theologian and is having this conversation with himself and allowing us to listen in. I know of no other book on prayer even remotely like this one. It is at the same time fascinating, challenging, inspiring, humbling, humorous, profound, you can derive from it a lot of different things. Like what has been said about the Gospel of John you can plug into this conversation at whatever level that suits you. On the one hand the discussion is shallow enough for a baby to wade in. On the other hand it is deep enough for an elephant to drown! I highly recommend this book on prayer - it may change not merely your prayer life, but the whole way you look at life! -- Ben Witherington, III, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary
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