Unbinding Your Soul

I've recently finished reading and leading Unbinding the Gospel (the red book) by Martha Grace Reese. About 28 people participated in three different classes. To just say "I loved it!" would inadequately express the deep joy I had in prayer and the closeness that developed between participants.

But, reading the book over 8 weeks was a little bit like my daughter, Anna Sophia, learning to drive on a stick shift. Not only did she have to learn the fundamentals of driving and traffic, she had to do it while shifting gears. It was too much.

One group of participants felt that way, too. We read the chapters about faith sharing...interesting. And we learned to pray better...awesome. But learning to pray so we could better faith share was, well, a bit much. We are not, however, discouraged. Quite to the contrary.

We're going through the whole book and the prayer exercises again. I think mostly we just want to hang on to this precious place of encouragement, sharing and spiritual growth.

Which brings me to an important discovery: there is a fourth book in the series called Unbinding Your Soul.

GREAT CONCEPT. The subtitle is "Your Experiment in Prayer and Community." It is a book that encourages a group of people (church people and NOT church people) to get together for three weeks of prayer and faith sharing together. It invites us to "talk about religion." To talk humbly and kindly about the deepest things of our spirit. Even if we don't understand everything (anything?) the same way.

This book will only work for people who are open to practicing prayer. And it uses the Scripture of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and the Greek Scriptures (New Testament). So, for the avid atheist, this may not be a good fit. But for those of a Christian tendency, but maybe not happy with church or looking for something more "real," this might be a wonderful way to experience the very best that church has to offer: real relationships that help us love God more deeply and opens our eyes to the people beyond our own wingspan.

Prayer can be better, deeper and more meaningful. I haven't ever said this before: I really love to pray.

Really pray. Really love. Really love to pray.

Blessings, Julia

PS: By the way, for pastors within the Illinois Great Rivers Conference: our very own Mike Crawford is mentioned and Roger Ross was given three pages of his own to write on in Unbinding your Soul.