The Prayers You Were Never Taught

The Prayer You Were Never Taught

What if surrender never required you to bury your desire?

Many believers have been taught that mature prayer means learning to want less. Ask God for what you want. But if the answer does not come, eventually you are supposed to stop asking, accept the outcome, let go, and surrender.

The Prayer You Were Never Taught challenges that teaching.

Walking through Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, Marty Gool shows that asking and surrender were never enemies. Jesus asked for the cup to pass while knowing what stood before Him. He named His sorrow. He spoke His desire. He returned to the same prayer again. And when He surrendered the outcome to the Father, His surrender did not erase what He wanted.

The want remained.

The hands opened.

That is the prayer many believers were never taught.

This book is for anyone who has ever wondered whether asking again means they lack faith, whether telling God exactly what hurts is unbelief, whether accepting reality means abandoning hope, or whether surrender means learning not to care about the outcome.

It is for the person who has prayed into silence.

It is for the person who has reduced a desperate prayer into safer words.

It is for the person who has asked for strength when what they really wanted was healing.

It is for the person who has asked for peace when what they really wanted was for someone they loved not to die.

It is for the person who has made the prayer smaller before bringing it to God.

Through the garden of Gethsemane, this book offers another way.

You can tell the truth.

You can name the cup.

You can ask for it to pass.

You can acknowledge the facts without pretending they do not hurt.

You can repeat the prayer when the desire remains.

And you can place the ending in God’s hands without surrendering the desire that made you pray in the first place.

As the book teaches, surrender is not the death of the want. It is the will laid down while the want still stands.

The Prayer You Were Never Taught is not a formula for getting God to give you what you want. It is an invitation to bring God the whole prayer. The unedited prayer. The trembling prayer. The prayer beneath the respectable prayer.

You do not have to clean up your desire before you bring it to God.

You do not have to pretend the cup is easy.

You do not have to call disappointment peace.

You do not have to stop wanting in order to surrender.

You can ask honestly.

You can surrender courageously.

You can keep the want alive while placing the ending in God’s hands.

Bring the whole prayer.

Not the cleaned prayer.

Not the mature-sounding prayer.

Bring the one that still trembles with want.

The want belongs to you.

The ending belongs to God.