A Review of Yonggi Cho and Wayde Goodall’s “Prayer”
A Lot of Blah Blah Blah
Here we go again with another book on prayer — a subject near and dear to me, because I sometimes wonder if I’m doing enough praying. Reading a book on prayer could kind of be construed as an act of prayer, and this book by Yonggi Cho — a South Korean Pentecostal minister who reportedly leads the world’s largest Christian congregation of more than 800,000 people (his megachurch might be a mega-mega-megachurch) — and Wayde Goodall fits the bill. The last 10 percent of this book on my Kindle is nothing but a series of prayers, and I did hear the Holy Spirit speaking to me as I read this section, even if I didn’t read it out loud as instructed. So there is some good with this book. Too bad that it’s tempered with a lot of bad.
For one thing, I’m not sure if it really required two people to write this book since most of it is told from Cho’s point of view. And, boy, does Cho ramble. The first 30 percent of this volume, I must confess, I just didn’t understand. It wasn’t that my mind was wandering, but the segment is confusing as an introductory passage to a book on prayer. Cho and Goodall talk about doing violence to the body, but not crushing it. No, the body simply needs to be broken to be a vessel for prayer, but not altogether pulverized. (Say what?) Now, I wasn’t expecting a book on prayer to advocate self-harm, even on a limited basis, but there it is. And that’s a problem.
The other problem I had with this book is that Cho (and Goodall) go off on tangents about how the world isn’t Christian enough. There’s a lot of talk about satan (which Cho and company do not capitalize) and the second coming of Christ. There’s more Revelation in this book than you can shake a stick at. The problem is, Cho and Goodall have issues with gay marriage and a host of other “sins,” which is kind of rich coming from Christians. If you don’t support your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, how much of a Christian can you be? After all, Jesus hung out with rebels and prostitutes. I think the book would have worked a lot better if it stuck to the subject at hand, rather than go off on endless tirades about how Unchristian the world is — which will be struck down by Jesus’ so-called return to Earth, according to the authors.
Anyhow, the book wasn’t as bad as another book on prayer I recently reviewed, How to Pray. By being better than that book, it is because Prayer is only marginally less offensive. Like the author of How to Pray, Ronnie Floyd, Cho and his cohort talk about fasting as a form of prayer — which I feel isn’t quite so healthy for an individual to do for a prolonged period of time, as advocated by both books. There’s also talk of being prayer warriors in these books, but Cho and Goodall go one step further and talks about “prayer cells” without explaining very much what those things are. I can assume it’s when more than two people meet up to pray, but then that doesn’t explain why there’s a chapter tucked towards the back of the book about praying in groups. Anyhow, the concept of “prayer cells” evokes images of terrorism for me. Maybe they should have called these things by another name?
Before you go away thinking this is a one-star review of a Christian book, be aware that there is the odd nugget of advice that Cho and friend gives that is actually helpful. Feeling tired by God not answering your prayers? Maybe you might need to be more specific. You know, rather than ask for a bicycle, ask for a bicycle made in America! (To quote from a passage of this book.) And, oh yes, that reminds me that Cho has the unfortunate tendency to end his sentences in exclamation marks! Which is a technique that is rendered ineffective by its overuse! I mean, if you’re always exclaiming about things, it has the impact of having the opposite effect and not being very exclamatory at all!
Overall, Prayer is a book that you can probably skip, unless you believe that God can understand you while you speak in tongues. (One of the things this book advises you to do.) There’s a lot of stuff in here that is just over the top, and that’s when Cho and Goodall are staying on point and not branching off into tangential remarks about something or other. I just felt that the authors like the sound of their authorial voices, and just found themselves going off into whatever territory they felt like for no real reason at all. In all, you could probably take away 60 percent of this book, and still have the nuts and bolts of the essence of what they wanted to talk about. I honestly felt that this book would have worked better as a series of chapbooks — that way, you’d be boiling down what they had to say to a short, punchy tome and at least the chapbook, even if it went down some weird rabbit holes, would be compact enough to not leave your head spinning in one sitting. Indeed, I found reading this book to be a let down: I had to put it down from time to time because there just wasn’t any soothing Christian magic happening in its pages. It basically gave me one big headache. So Prayer is a book with a lot of blah blah blah and nonsense. Which is a shame, really. There’s the occasional glimmer of a decent thought from time to time. I just wish the authors had spend more time developing such things.
Yonggi Cho and Wayde Goodall’s Prayer: Key to Revival was published by Broadstreet Publishing Group on July 4, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
