Upside-Down Prayers for Parents - A Review

Upside-Down Prayers for Parents by Lisa Bergren is a wonderful parent's devotional. Inside its covers are 31 devotionals. Each devotional starts with something you should pray for your child. These are not your run of the mill prayers for happiness, safety, and wonderful spouses. These are prayers that will result in great spiritual growth, for example:

I pray you will...

• suffer loss so you can see how God can use all things for good
• face hardships so you can see how the Lord provides
• get so weary that you will give up and learn that through submission to God comes great strength

After this short prayer suggestion is a short bible verse. Then it gets to the meat. Lisa spends roughly 2-3 pages discussing the reasons behind the prayer. She writes in a way that is completely relatable and I saw myself in nearly every page of this book. Next is a prayer to pray. I noticed right off that these prayers are just as much for the parents as for the children, if not more.

God put this book in my hands today. It could only have been His timing as it has been sitting on my dresser for about a week.. It was a rough weekend and Monday. God used this book to speak to me today. That's right, today I went through the entire book. Nearly all of the devotions and prayers related to the specific difficulties that I have been struggling with over the past 3 days. I needed this book today and am grateful to have had the chance to read it. It may have made its way onto my exclusive list of books to bring on our mission trip.

That is not were the devotion ends though. There is a small area to record your thoughts on the questions about the theme of the day's devotion. Also, there are questions to ask younger kids or older kids to help them understand the topics and help apply them to their lives. This is a book I plan on returning to time and again. I highly recommend it!

I would like to thank Water Brook Multnomah for providing me with a free copy of this book to review as a part of the Blogging for Books program.