A reader’s review of “The Valley of Vision”

The Valley of Vision : A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions edited by Arthur Bennet

is a collection of Puritan prayers and meditations that demonstrate the richness of prayer during the Puritan period. It is a compilation that is well suited for personal or family devotions. The center of Puritan life was prayer and meditation and this collection displays the depth of Puritan prayer with a well assembled collection of prayers from:

Thomas Watson	Thomas Shepard	Richard Baxter
John Bunyan	William Williams	Philip Dodderidge
Isaac Watts	William Romaine	Augustus Toplady
David Brainerd	Christmas Evans	William Jay
Charles Haddon Spurgeon	Henry Law

Included authors in The Valley of Vision

What it provides

With Puritan life seeing prayer as a spiritual exercise, this devotional is not a how-to guide on prayer as Arthur Bennet says, “The book is not intended to be read as a prayer manual. The soul learns to pray by praying; for prayer is communion with a transcendent and immanent God […] The prayers should therefore be used as aspiration units, the several parts of which could become springboards for the individual’s own prayer subjects.”

Its use as a primer for prayer cannot be understated. I find it most helpful in reminding me of the breadth and depth of where my prayer life can go and how it can draw me closer to God. It is a nice lead-in to my prayer meditations that reminds me to shy away from superficial and hasty prayers but to instead consider the vastness of the Lord’s work and grace. I have used it multiple times a day to start my time alone with God.

What is in it

The Valley of Vision contains 405 pages of collected prayers that are broken into categories. While I have prayed through the book page-by-page, it has also been beneficial for the beginning of a meditation on a particular subject. The end of the book also provides a seven day morning and evening prayer.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit	Redemption and Reconciliation
Penitence and Deprecation	Needs and Devotions
Holy Aspirations	Approach to God
Gifts of Grace	Service and Ministry
Valediction	A Week’s Shared Prayers

The categories of prayers

The modern question

While Bennet made minor changes to the text to make if more appropriate for individual reading by replacing “we” with “me” or “I”, the text is substantially the same as when it was first written. This can be vexing for some who are not as comfortable with, for example, King James Version language. I grew up with the KJV and do not have any issues with it and frequently fallback to quoting from the KJV because of its long history of use by me.

I personally don’t feel that this should be a limiting factor for this wonderful work that has been reprinted 18 times; however, some may find this to be an inconvenient or even distracting barrier to their prayers. While I don’t find this to be in any way to be this, I feel that it should be shared since I have received comments concerning the language when it has been used in group worship and prayer. This has never been a negative pushback but more of an opening to answer questions that the listener had from the reading.

Worth the addition to your prayer arsenal

While the language is old, the remarkable wisdom that comes out of it makes this a worthy addition to your prayer toolkit. If it does nothing more than illuminate how the Puritan fathers thought about their spiritual meditations and the great depth they reached in understanding and contemplating the grace of God, it has accomplished a great deal!

Well worth reading.

August 15, 2022August 15, 2022

Getting Prayer Done with the Echo Prayer App

For the last couple of years the local church has been using the Echo Prayer application on mobile devices to help manage its prayer list and engage everyone in the prayer needs of the church and immediate community. It turned out to be a useful prayer tool as they navigated congregational life through the pandemic and continues to be the go to tool for prayer.

The Good

Echo is a minimalist user interface that focuses primarily on creating, tracking, and listing prayers for those engaged in prayer. It doesn’t try to do to much which is a critique that can be made of some prayer applications. It sticks to the basics.

Echo Prayer App. Image from Echo Prayer App site: https://new.echoprayer.com/ — Echo Prayer App

Much of what Echo offers is free:

One can create your own prayers,
track your prayer streak by days and weeks for those who are driven by such things,
see your answered prayers,
participate in prayer groups,
participate in prayer feeds, and
set reminders for your prayers

These are simple things, but the ability to use an intuitive and simple interface to interact with your prayer list cannot be understated. The usability of the app is simple on iOS and Android making it one of those apps where it can be said the application is not getting in the way of your prayers. Having to work the user interface in order to pray with an application is a major issue for such an important time of spiritual reflection. Any application that gets out of your way and just helps is a win, and this is were Echo’s simplicity takes the lead.

The Other Stuff

The other stuff is called just that because there really isn’t a bad here. There is a paid version which is to be expected in order to sustain and improve the application over time. So, no bad…just the other stuff that you get with a paid subscription.

Here is some of what is available in the paid version:

Share your prayer requests with others,
create prayer groups including small groups, family or friends,
create prayer feeds that anyone can subscribe to and join in prayer with you,
create prayer goals with stats, and
add pictures to your prayers.

Sharing prayers with others is the real bang for your buck in the paid version. A prayer feed is how our church reaches out to the community of prayer warriors. There is a definite appeal to this capability and seeing the comments of the prayer team as they respond in the app to the needs.

Need

There is only one thing that I think is a true need for Echo. It would be helpful if it added the date of a new prayer as a timestamp when entering it. It doesn’t need to be an elaborate date picker, but a simple timestamp that reminds me when the request was entered. While praying through a personal prayer list, a prayer group, and a prayer feed, it is easy to forget when a prayer was first lifted. This would be a nice memory aid enhancement.

Conclusion

Echo Prayer is an app worth consideration. Since it is available as a free download with a wealth of benefit included in the free version, there is no hesitation in recommending it to someone looking for a prayer list aid who is even beginner-level friendly with Apple or Android mobile devices. Were it not available for free, it would still garner a recommend look for those seeking a prayer tool for their daily life…

Well done Echo!

Echo Prayer app, available in the App Store and the Google Play Store.

March 19, 2022April 5, 2022

Welcome to Pray It Online!

Pray It Online is all about prayer. We are dedicated to sharing the wonders of prayer with all who would hear about the wonderful things that prayer has brought into our lives as well as the means we use, investigate, or try out to experience a growing and increasing prayer life.

All are invited and welcome to join us on this journey whether you are someone who has calluses on your knees or are curious about what a prayer life is and what it really means to be a praying person. There are no requirements for you to join us and only a kind and open heart is asked of you as your ticket to join us on our journey.

We hope you will come in and experience all that a prayerful life has to offer!