Part One — Enlistment
Chapter 1 — The Legacy of Prayer
It shouldn’t surprise us that the greatest men and women in the Bible were always people of prayer. Abraham walked by faith, but he was guided by prayer. Moses spoke with God “as a man speaks to his friend,” and the world still has the Ten Commandments as fruit of those talks. And before Jesus chose His disciples, He spent the whole night in prayer. As they followed Him, they found out His private habit was to get up and pray before the sun rose. Even as crowds pressed in, He would “often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”
That’s the legacy we’re invited into. The Kendricks lay out the path the way an army trains a new recruit. First you enlist and learn why prayer matters. Then come basic training, conditioning for the heart, and finally the strategies you’ll use to pray for real people in real battles.
Chapter 2 — The Power of Prayer
Prayer connects us to the God who made everything, and that line never drops. We can reach Him at any hour, from anywhere, about anything. Prayer gives us an unlimited spiritual data plan, so we never need to worry that we’ve drifted out of range of the signal tower. With everything prayer can be for us, why would anyone choose not to pray?
Chapter 3 — The Priority of Prayer
Prayer isn’t only a private habit. It belongs at the center of the church. When Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple, He said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. But you have made it a robbers’ den.” With that one bold act, He boiled God’s house down to a single priority: His people coming together to pray. He didn’t call it a house of sermons, or singing, or fellowship. He called it a house of prayer.
God never meant for us to live the Christian life in our own wisdom or strength. His plan has always been for us to lean on the Holy Spirit and live a life of obedience in prayer. When a church truly gives itself to prayer, Scripture says to expect the lost to be reached, wise decisions, needs met, true worship, and revival.
Part Two — Basic Training
Chapter 4 — The Ultimate Purpose of Prayer
Basic training starts with the why. Ultimately, all prayer is for the glory of God. So the best answer He can give to any prayer is whatever answer brings Him the most glory. That isn’t cold. When God shows His glory, He’s unwrapping a little more of who He is: His holiness, His power, His lovingkindness. A prayer shaped by that purpose sounds like this: “Your ways are higher than my ways. Work in my heart and in each of my situations, Lord, so that You are most glorified.”
Chapter 5 — What Is and Isn’t Prayer
Before we talk about how to pray, it helps to remember who we’re talking to. We’re bowing before the same One John saw in Revelation, whose eyes were “like a flame of fire” and whose face “was like the sun shining in its strength.” Prayer isn’t a casual chat, and it isn’t a wish list.
So what is it? Prayer is communion with God in order to do three things: to know, love, and worship Him; to understand His will and shape our lives to fit it; and to access and advance His kingdom, power, and glory. But the order matters. Prayer isn’t really about prayer. It’s about a Person, God Himself. When prayer becomes only about getting His provision or protection instead of knowing and pleasing Him, we’re getting off track.
Chapter 6 — What: Types of Prayer
Scripture shows several kinds of prayer, and praise comes first. When people praise God in the Bible, they remind themselves who He is, recount what He’s done, recognize His holiness, rejoice in His name, and give up control: “All that I am and have is Yours.”
Then come confession and thanksgiving. Our hearts are more ready to pray in faith once we’ve worshiped God, confessed our sins, and thanked Him. Confession can be as short as, “Search me and cleanse me of anything that displeases You.” Intercession means praying for someone else, the way Queen Esther prayed for her people and then stepped in before the king to save them. And petition is simply asking for what we need.
We don’t have to use every type every time. Sometimes we just need to get to the point, like Peter sinking in the waves and crying out, “Lord, save me!”
Chapter 7 — What Are God’s Answers to Prayer?
Once we start asking, we need to know how God answers. It might surprise you how many of His answers are some kind of yes. In general, they fall into five types.
The first is yes, right away. When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, the servant prayed that the right young woman would offer to water his camels. “Before he had finished speaking,” Rebekah walked up and did exactly that. God isn’t bound by time. He’s likely preparing things right now for prayers you’ll pray someday.
The second is yes, in due time. A delay isn’t a denial. If a nine-year-old girl asks her mom for a wedding dress, the answer might sound like no. But it’s really, “Yes, honey. Just not now. You’re not ready for it yet.”
The third is yes, so you’ll learn from it. Sometimes God gives us what we ask for, knowing we don’t understand what we’re asking, because the lesson will do us good.
The fourth is no, because your heart’s not right. James wrote, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives.” If greed or pride sits at the heart of a request, God may say no to protect us.
The fifth is no, I’ve got a better plan. Sometimes we ask too small. We pray for a handful when God wants to give us a houseful. So it’s good to pray, “Lord, would You do more than I can ask or imagine in this situation?”
Chapter 8 — When: Scheduled Prayer
So when should we pray? Start with a set time. What if the richest man in your city said he’d give you $10,000 in cash every morning if you rang his doorbell at six in the morning? Would you be there? Absolutely. When we value something enough, we make it happen.
Jesus offers us eternal treasure and time with His Father every day. And yet we still come up with excuses. A planned daily time is how we stop letting prayer get squeezed out.
Chapter 9 — When: Spontaneous Prayer
A set time is the anchor, but prayer isn’t meant to stay there. It should become a natural part of how we think, not just in our quiet moments but in our chaos too. If we said teenagers “text their friends constantly,” we wouldn’t mean they never do anything else. We’d mean they work it into their whole day. God wants prayer to be like that: quietly praising Him, thanking Him, and leaning on Him in any moment, wherever we are.
Chapter 10 — How: The Posture of Prayer
How we pray matters too, right down to how we hold our bodies. Many prayers in Scripture were prayed with lifted hands. Folding our hands is meaningful, but it’s actually a more recent habit. And while closing our eyes helps us focus, people in the Bible often lifted their eyes toward heaven, the way Jesus did before He prayed at the tomb of Lazarus.
We can all tell the difference between the prayers we mumble flat on our backs, fighting sleep, and the ones we pray on purpose: kneeling, raising our hands, or speaking out loud. Our posture can wake up our hearts.
Chapter 11 — How: The Locks of Prayer
Some things lock up our prayers. One is how a man treats his wife. Peter told husbands to live with their wives “in an understanding way” and show them honor, “so that your prayers will not be hindered.” Another is how we treat people in need: “He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered.”
A third lock is unforgiveness. Jesus said, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone.” Bitterness is a toxin. It poisons us spiritually, mentally, and even physically, and it poisons our prayers too.
Chapter 12 — How: The Keys of Prayer
Just as some things lock our prayers, others unlock them. The first key is persistence: “Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” The second is praying in Jesus’ name. That means praying the way He would. We don’t come to God based on what we’ve done, but on what Christ has done.
A third key, often overlooked, is fasting: going without food for a while to focus fully on the Lord. Jesus, Esther, and Nehemiah all fasted and prayed. Fasting puts seeking God above every appetite. The last keys are obedience and delight. John wrote that we receive what we ask “because we keep His commandments.” And the psalm says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The Hebrew word for “desires” there is the word for petitions.
Part Three — Conditioning
Chapter 13 — Vertical: The Cross of Christ
Before a soldier goes to battle, he has to get in shape. In prayer, that conditioning happens in the heart. The Kendricks look at it in three directions: vertical, which is our relationship with God; horizontal, which is our relationships with others; and inward, the condition of our own hearts. The vertical starts at the cross.
Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” One day many will say they did great things in His name, and He’ll answer, “I never knew you.” Jesus isn’t trying to haunt us with those words. He’s trying to help us. So before anything else, make sure you’ve actually begun a real relationship with God. Eternity is too long to be wrong about your ultimate destiny.
Good works can’t save anyone. But real salvation bears fruit, and 1 John gives seven signs: a life of obeying God, confessing Jesus as God’s Son, turning away from sin, real love for other believers, God’s discipline as your Father, the Holy Spirit living in you, and trusting Jesus alone to save you. If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would the evidence of your life clearly show that you know Christ?
Chapter 14 — Vertical: Repentance Versus Pride
Once we belong to God, the biggest thing that can come between us is pride. It leads to almost every other sin. And the things we chase, like money, success, and applause, can all feed it once we get them. The answer is repentance, coming back to God humble and honest. It might sound like this: “Lord, where I’ve worked so hard to build myself up, I see now I’ve been tearing away at what my relationship with You can be. Purge me of pride. You first. You always.”
Chapter 15 — Horizontal: Unity Versus Division
Our relationships with each other affect our prayers too. When God’s people come together in unity, we gain momentum and take ground for the kingdom. That’s why the enemy does everything possible to keep God’s people divided. The night before He died, Jesus prayed that His followers “may all be one.” And He promised that where two or three gather in His name, He’s there with them. So part of getting ready to pray is making peace with the people around us.
Chapter 16 — Your Heart: Faith Versus Doubt
Now the conditioning turns inward, and the first question is whether we believe. James wrote that the one who doubts “is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind.” If you don’t feel like praying much anymore, the problem probably comes down to one of four wrong beliefs about God.
The first is “God doesn’t know my needs.” He does. So why pray at all? Because prayer is about knowing Him, and that takes interaction. God could do things without us. But He’s too good and kind to kick us to the curb.
The second is “God isn’t able to help.” But Paul said He’s “able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think.”
The third is “God doesn’t care.” Jesus told two stories about people who didn’t care, to show us God isn’t like them. In one, a man knocks on his neighbor’s door at midnight to borrow bread, and the neighbor only gets out of bed to make him go away. In the other, a widow keeps pleading with a heartless judge until she wears him down. If a sleepy neighbor and an uncaring judge will give in to persistence, how much more quickly will a loving Father answer? He cares for you more than anyone else in your life.
The fourth is “God isn’t likely to do anything anyway.” That’s not what Jesus said: “All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.” Of course, God isn’t a genie, and we should be glad. He may choose not to act, but we can trust that His reasons fit His wisdom.
Chapter 17 — Your Heart: Secret Versus Show
The next question is who we’re really praying to: God, or the people watching. Jesus said to go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. That’s what He did. But His routine was to get up early to be alone, or slip off to a quiet place in the afternoon, or stay up late and pray after everyone else had gone to sleep. Secret prayer was His habit, and it should be ours.
Chapter 18 — Your Heart: Obedience Versus Rebellion
A lot of people hide behind prayer. God keeps telling them to do something hard, and they keep “praying about it” without ever taking a step. But prayer was never meant to replace obedience. Pray and obey. Obey and pray. Put those two together and you’ve got a powerful combination.
Chapter 19 — Your Heart: Persistence Versus Impatience
The last test of the heart is patience. God may use delays to show us how much we really trust Him. Look at Elijah. On Mount Carmel, he prayed once, and fire fell from heaven. For a widow’s son who had died, he prayed three times before the boy came back to life. And when he asked God for rain, he prayed seven times. We don’t know if God’s answer will come right away or after years. So we keep praying.
Part Four — Strategies
Chapter 20 — The Word of God
With the heart in shape, it’s time for strategy, and the best place to start is the Bible. It’s your companion in your prayer closet and a gold mine of promises you can trust. When you don’t know what to say, let the Bible lead your praying for you. Read a promise, then thank God for it and ask Him to keep it. Read a command, then ask for strength to obey it. When we pray His words back to Him, we don’t have to guess what He wants.
Chapter 21 — The Will of God
Praying God’s Word leads right into praying God’s will. And much of His will is already known. He wants to be glorified. He wants His kingdom to grow, which is why Jesus told us to “seek first the kingdom of God.” He wants to be Lord over every part of your life. And He wants you pure, grateful, and growing.
What about the specific decisions? Whether to buy this house or that one, or take a new job or stay put. Those questions aren’t separate from the rest of God’s will. The answer will become clear in His timing as you keep praying and surrendering to all of it. The heart that’s surrendered to His will won’t miss what He wants in the end. And if you take a wrong turn, He’ll bail you out.
Chapter 22 — The “Whatever” from God
Some people say God only lets us ask for what we need, never for what we want. It sounds humble, but it isn’t biblical. A “whatever” offer runs all through the New Testament. “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it.”
God isn’t Santa Claus, and He won’t answer requests born in sin. But if you’re walking with Him, if He’s your first love, and if your heart’s desire is to please Him, then He delights in granting your heart’s desires. Your good ones.
Think about it like a parent. If our kids asked for something good they didn’t need, something that would bring them joy, and we knew they were trying hard to honor us, we’d go out of our way to give it to them. And yet we think God wouldn’t? We are not kinder than He is.
So don’t throw out the good desires in your heart for fear of asking too much. Turn them into petitions. Just ask wisely. What we want today, we might not want tomorrow. Most of the junk at garage sales is stuff somebody once wanted really badly.
Chapter 23 — The Wonder of God’s Names
In the Bible, God’s names aren’t just labels. Each one shows something true about who He is. He’s Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who provides. He’s Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord who heals. He’s El Shaddai, God Almighty. So when you need provision, call on the Lord who provides. As you pray, call out to God by His names as you learn them. He loves to hear His children recognize Him for all He does.
Chapter 24 — The Wisdom of God
“Wisdom is supreme, so get wisdom. And whatever else you get, get understanding.” Not many things in life come with that kind of endorsement. And prayer is one of the keys that unlocks it. Prayer brings wisdom, and then wisdom brings better prayer.
Wisdom is the ability to take what you know and make it work in real life: in your relationships, your money, your marriage, and your parenting. And God promises to give it generously to anyone who asks.
Solomon is the classic example. When he took his father David’s throne, he had almost no experience leading. So he prayed for “an obedient heart” to judge God’s people and to tell good from evil. God was pleased with that request. He made Solomon so wise that he wrote 3,000 proverbs, and that wisdom brought him riches and honor too.
Chapter 25 — The Ways of God’s Spirit
Prayer is an admission that we aren’t in control, and that we’re safely under God’s control. He knows we often forget to pray, and we don’t always know what to pray. Yet He urges us to keep praying anyway, because He’s put His Spirit in our hearts to lead us.
The Holy Spirit is the engine of the Christian life. Every believer has Him. But we have to keep being filled with Him. When Paul says to “be filled with the Spirit,” the Greek means to keep on being filled, moment by moment. So every morning, ask God to fill you with His Spirit as you give Him your day. And any time you sin or get bitter, quickly repent and give Him the lead again.
The Spirit does so much in prayer. He brings God’s Word to life. He shows us what we need to know, when we need to know it. And He prays for us, “with groanings too deep for words.” What we can’t pray, He can. So we are never without hope or help.
When people say the Spirit “speaks” to them, it’s usually not a voice out loud. It’s more of an inner knowing: a timely thought, with a holy burden to do something specific for God’s glory. It’s Him saying, “This is the way, walk in it.”
So now we have God’s Word, His will, His promises, His names, His wisdom, and His Spirit. Together they sharpen our praying to a razor’s edge. Now it’s time to use them.
Chapter 26 — Praying Offensively
A lot of our praying is defense: protect us, heal us, help us get through this. Sometimes that’s what we need. But we also need a game plan for offense. That means asking God to open doors for the gospel, send workers into the harvest, pour out His Spirit in revival, and raise up a generation that honors His name. Spiritual warfare is about standing our ground against the enemy and taking new ground for the kingdom.
To start, think about your marriage, your family, or your city, and ask a few questions. What’s the most loving thing I can ask for right now? What would be overwhelmingly good? What would bring God the most glory?
Chapter 27 — Praying Preemptively
Jesus told His disciples, “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation.” If you led a country and learned an army was about to invade, you’d get ready fast. That’s what we do in prayer. We fight our battles on our knees first, before they break out in real life.
It helps to know the enemy’s signature schemes. The first is distraction. He’ll pull you off track, even with good things that aren’t God’s best. The second is deception. He’ll lie to you about God’s goodness, about the Bible, and about who you really are. The third is derision. He’ll run you down, bring up your past, and make you assume the worst about others. And the fourth is division, because “if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”
The question isn’t whether he’s coming to fight you. He is. The question is whether you’ll prepare in prayer first, or wait until the devil has you in a headlock before you call on the One who’s already defeated him. If we prepare ahead of time, we’ll do a lot more winning than losing.
Chapter 28 — Praying Defensively
Even with good preparation, attacks will come. Every time the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus raised His shield of faith and cut Satan down by quoting Scripture. God has given us a full supply of ammunition in His Word. We just need to learn the verses that speak to our struggles.
When an attack comes, the Kendricks give a simple plan that spells the word RESPOND. Resist Satan in Jesus’ name. Escape with Scripture. Search for unconfessed sin. Plead the blood of Jesus. Overtake any ground you’ve given to Satan. Name someone to pray for right then. And Delight in the Lord. If you learn this and do it, the devil will tempt you less and less, once he sees that his attacks only remind you to call on Jesus, quote Scripture, repent, pray, and praise.
Chapter 29 — Praying Extraordinarily
Some moments call for more. Prayer goes to the next level when things get desperate, like when a mother is rushed to the hospital with a premature delivery, or when the foreclosure notice is on its way.
Esther faced a moment like that. Her people were about to be destroyed, and going to the king uninvited could cost her life. So she told the Jews to fast for her for three days, and she and her maidens fasted too. “And thus I will go in to the king,” she said, “and if I perish, I perish.” When we set aside our appetites to focus fully on God, like Esther did, and like Jesus did for forty days, we can go deeper in prayer in times of crisis.
Nehemiah shows what that sounds like. When he heard that Jerusalem’s walls were broken down, he “wept and mourned” and kept “fasting and praying.” He praised the “great and awesome” God, confessed, “I and my father’s house have sinned,” reminded God of His own promises, and then asked for exactly what he needed. Humble, persistent, honest, full of Scripture, and specific. That’s extraordinary prayer.
Chapter 30 — Praying for the Lost
The rest of the battle plan is about praying for specific people, starting with those who don’t know Christ yet. Jesus said He came to seek and save the lost. As His body on earth today, we share that priority.
So how do we pray for them? We ask God to start preparing their hearts for the truth. We pray against the enemy blinding their eyes. We pray for chances and boldness to share the gospel with them. And we pray that conviction of sin would lead them to real repentance.
Praying for them also means getting ourselves ready. We can’t let embarrassment or fear of rejection keep us quiet. Putting our insecurities above someone’s need to hear the truth is like saying, “My comfort level is more important to me than your salvation.”
Chapter 31 — Praying for Believers
We also need to pray for each other: thanking God for other believers, bringing their needs to Him, and asking them to do the same for us. One simple strategy is to pray the Lord’s Prayer over a fellow believer instead of yourself.
Think about what we miss when we don’t. Economists once looked back at the arcade game Pac-Man. A quarter dropped into the machine in 1980 bought a few minutes of fun. But put into one of the stronger stocks in the S&P 500, that quarter would be worth more than $1,800 today.
Now think about how much of our time goes to our own gripes and problems, when it could have been invested in praying for others. “Pray for one another.” It pays high, eternal dividends.
Chapter 32 — Praying for Family
Some of the most important people we’ll ever pray for live under our own roof. And we’ll see God’s hand more clearly when we pray specifically for them.
For your spouse, pray first that they would be devoted to Christ and surrendered to His Word. Pray that their relationships would be marked by love, especially the ones that are most strained right now. Pray for peace and healing wherever something is broken.
For your children, your role as a mom or dad is to stand in the gap. Know the true condition of their hearts. Pray with them, with your arm around them, and pray for them when they’re away. Ask God to protect them and to shape their character, their friendships, and their ability to stand up to temptation.
Chapter 33 — Praying for Authorities
The Bible tells us to pray “for kings and all who are in authority.” Authority centers on four main areas: family, church, government, and work. So we pray all the way around, up and down the chain of command.
God still uses imperfect leaders to carry out His perfect purposes. He can turn a ruler’s heart, and our prayers are part of how He does it. Pray for your boss, too. Like all leaders, they’re charged to give direction, protect with boundaries, praise those who do right, and correct those who do wrong. Let those four guide how you pray. You might even add a fifth: that they’d point others to Christ.
Chapter 34 — Praying for Laborers in the Harvest
Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” So He told us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers. Those workers start with the pastor you already have. If you want a better pastor, start praying boldly and faithfully for the one you have. Pray that God would protect his heart, his marriage, and his home, and that he’d fear God more than people.
Then look beyond your own church. By most counts, the world has 11,500 people groups. About 6,800 of them are less than 2 percent Christian. And roughly 3,200 have no Christians at all and no one reaching them. No Bible. No churches. No missionaries. The workers they need are sent through prayer.
Chapter 35 — Praying for Churches and Revival
The Kendricks end with a cry from the heart. They’re tired of churches that make little mark on their own neighborhoods. And they’re tired of believers who settle for lifeless religion while millions are dying without Jesus.
There’s no reason we can’t see God’s Spirit poured out again, reviving families, restoring broken lives, and drawing people to Christ every day. The secret is united, repentant, humble prayer. Persistent prayer. Fervent prayer. Prayer that believes what God wants is always better than what we want.
The Welsh Revival of the early 1900s shows what that looks like. Its best-known leader, Evan Roberts, boiled his message down to four points. Confess all known sin. Remove anything from your life you’re unsure about. Be ready to obey the Holy Spirit right away. And confess Jesus publicly. In other words, pray and obey. “Bend me” was the prayer people prayed again and again in those days, and God’s power came down and set thousands on fire with love for Him.
That prayer is a good place to end, and a good place to start. “Bend me.” Help me want Your will first, follow Your Word without question, and put myself last. Help me finally die to the vanity of me.