Reader Recommendation: Praying with Every Heart: Orienting Our Lives to the Wholeness of the World, by Cláudio Carvalhaes
Recommended by: Diego Salazar Galvis
Why it might be helpful: This book develops an understanding of prayer from a liberation-theological perspective. “Praying with” offers a distinctive way of praying that can help orient our prayers around the “where” we pray and “with whom” we pray as the locus of the body’s and heart’s theological praxis. The book helps create language to pray with people and in situations we are not used to praying with; it insists on praying amidst racism, poverty, violence, and suffering; it calls us to pray at night and at the end of the world when we are overcome by fear, hurt, climate disaster, or economic impoverishment. This book serves as a prayer resource for preachers prior to delivering a sermon. It has made me more aware of the importance of aligning one’s pre-sermon worship and prayer with the sermon’s message.

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Reader Recommendations are suggestions submitted by Disciples preachers and are not created or fully reviewed by the Proclamation Project.

You might also find helpful:

• The Preaching Life, by Barbara Brown Taylor — a spiritual memoir of preaching, prayer, and the pastor’s inner life
• The Sound of the Genuine — resources on the authentic spiritual grounding that makes preaching honest and alive
• Where Two or Three are Gathered — a reflection on the sacramental and prayerful dimensions of pastoral ministry