When You Pray: Trust, Surrender, and the Transformation of Your Soul

Merridith Frediani reviews Dr. Edward Sri's encouraging book on prayer, new from Ascension Press.

A few years ago, in an effort to improve my prayer life, I decided to start getting up early and spending time in prayer before I start my day. My work schedule dictates that I need to get up at 5 AM to make that happen. Most of the year it is dark at five in the morning and while I consider myself a morning person, 5:00 is a mite too early for my liking. I’m not good at fasting from food so I consider this early rising as fasting from sleep and offer it to Jesus as I drag myself out of my warm bed. And even though it’s likely the hardest thing I do every day, I look forward to that prayer time. I’m not all the way awake yet so I’m more receptive to what God wants to say than later in the day.

When I learned about Edward Sri’s new book, When You Pray: Trust, Surrender, and the Transformation of Your Soul, I knew it was for me. I accept that prayer is an evolving thing and that, for me at least, I could easily fall into a routine that loses its meaning and becomes too rote. When I discovered that not only is this a book, it's a small-group resource that includes a workbook and video series I was even more excited. I was looking for a little kick in the prayer pants and this was it. I rallied a few friends and dove in.  

Edward Sri is that rare person who is super smart but can communicate in a way the rest of us understand. He also lives what he preaches. He is a well-known Catholic speaker and has written many books that help Catholics grow deeper in their faith. This new book is no different. 

He starts off with questions all of us can relate to: 

• “When you pray do you ever feel restless or distracted?” Um, yes.
• “Do you ever feel like you don’t know what you’re doing in prayer?” Yep.
• “Do you have times when you don’t feel close to God?” For sure.
• “Do you long to be transformed?” Oh, yes! 

By starting with Jesus’ words from the Cross—I thirst—Dr. Sri takes us on a journey of appreciation of what prayer is. He reminds us that Jesus thirsts for us. Each one of us. Via reflections, a beautiful video filmed in Italy, Scripture passages, and poignant questions, we follow a path to a deeper relationship with God.  

The sessions tackle spiritual warfare in prayer, the importance of trusting God and surrendering to him, being in the world but not of the world, radiating Christ, and more. Through the readings, videos, questions, and discussion with friends, I gained greater comfort with prayer, greater consolation in prayer, and an appreciation for how deeply God desires my time in prayer.  

Prayer is like exercise. We start out full of enthusiasm and optimism, but it soon becomes work. The gains we made in the beginning become less frequent. We come up with excuses for why we can skip today. We must push through the hard times. We soon notice that we feel better when we exercise daily and that good feeling spills to the rest of our lives. The same with prayer. It does get dry. It does get hard and sometimes God feels far away but we learn in When You Pray that while God may take away the good feelings of prayer, he never takes away his grace. Our hearts are made for more than feelings, they are made for God himself. We weren’t born knowing how to talk. We had to learn. Similarly we need to learn to pray and Jesus is a good and gentle teacher. 

We also learn about the valley of humility, where we bring our whole selves to God—good and bad—and experience His mercy, grace, and love.  The workbook to accompany the videos and group meetings offers thoughtful questions for both individual contemplation and deep group conversation. At the end of the seven weeks, participants are invited to continue growing with a 30-day prayer challenge involving the book of reflections. 

My advice? Grab two or three friends and dive in. The sessions involve time outside the meetings in preparation, but it is time well spent. Dr. Sri explains the topic with heartfelt clarity and inspires us to go deeper. Doing a small group adds one more thing to our busy schedule but I promise that if you invest in your relationship with God, he will make sure all the things still get done and in the process you will reap a more meaningful and deeper prayer life. 

Copyright 2023 Merridith Frediani
Images: Canva