I have always loved reading books, and especially anything Christian fiction. I was really excited to find out that I would be reviewing The Pray-ers / Book One Troubles, written by Mark S. Mirza, and published by CTM Publishing Atlanta.
About the author:
Mr. Mirza led a men's prayer ministry at First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He ended up forming Common Thread Ministries to help people and churches with prayer.
About the book:
The Pray-ers / Book One Troubles is a fictional book. It's a little over 350 pages, but some of that is references and explanations about the book. This book was like no other book that I've read before. It covers 3 different time periods, which are First Century, 19th Century, and Current Day. We follow 3 different people throughout the book and take a look into the problems they are facing and learn how prayer can change the situation they are in.
What did I think?
Well, I started out reading this book with my kids ages 14 and 11. About 50 pages in, I could tell they were completely lost. They unfortunately weren't enjoying it, and they also didn't understand it. My 14 year old daughter really didn't like me reading it out loud because it made her feel almost a little guilty about giving demons any credit at all, even if it was talking about how awful they are in a book. With that being said, Mr. Mirza does take the time in the beginning of the book to explain why he gives the demons names and a visual of them, but that he wants us to not focus on the demons and remember that we are victorious with Christ. He even goes on to explain why he doesn't capitalize their names. His intentions with this are good, but I just don't think that it would be a good read for kids unless they are quite a bit older.
The second issue I had with the book and reading it aloud was that it really needed an editor. All of the mistakes made it very hard to follow, at least for me. Also, the way the book jumped around was quite challenging. It would flip between the conversations of the angels and demons, and also the eras so it was just a bit confusing at times.
Throughout the book you can see the issues the characters face and how the demons react versus how the angels react. While Mr. Mirza gives us a clear image of the demons and how vile they are, he also gives a clear picture of just how mighty the angels are. Hael, a guardian angel, was my favorite character. He was funny at times, but also so strong and faithful. We can imagine a very tall and mighty angel sitting next to us and fighting for us. He wanted to intervene in the life of the man he was guarding, but couldn't because he knew God wanted the man to learn something.
The demons would also intervene with the humans, and just like I have always imagined, they would whisper doubts in their ears so that they would question themselves.
Like I said, it is a fiction book, but the purpose of the book is to teach about prayer. This was done by the characters praying for the situations that they were in, and by praying scripture. One thing that I really appreciated was at the bottom of the page, the scriptures being used in the story were listed so that you could go and read the actual scripture.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction. Although, this book wasn't really my favorite style, and could really benefit from an editor, I think that it does have a lot to offer in the teaching of prayer.
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