HOW TO USE THIS BOOK This is a book to help you pray. The elements that comprise this book are all designed to make talking to God and listening to God a stronger and more effective part of your life. Normally, we don’t ask a book for this kind of help. Rather, trouble of some sort pushes us toward prayer. Someone close to us gets sick or loses a job. Or sometimes it’s not trouble but gratitude for a particularly big blessing—a clean bill of health, a marriage, a birth. Quickly we go to our knees.