Review: The Barber Who Wanted to Pray by R. C. Sproul
Hey y’all! Welcome to our latest book review! We are big readers in our home and thought this may be a good way to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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(((If you would like to see/listen to a review of this book, check out our video review here)))
This wonderful little book is a treasure! We can’t recommend it enough. Why? Because it teaches kids (and maybe adults) how to pray biblically using historical church writings from Martin Luther. You may or may not know this about us, but we love history! So when we saw that this children’s book by R.C. Sproul was based on the book Martin Luther wrote for his barber about how to pray, we knew this was one we had get!
We grew up, as many in America have, with a very poor view of prayer. Few people we know have actually been taught how to pray in a biblical manner. Many are not taught about prayer at all or are taught that prayer is simply for you to declare to God what you want Him to do and keep doing that until God follows your command. This of course is unbiblical. But having grown up with little teaching about how to pray, it has been something we have struggled to learn how to do. We also have had to unlearn a lot of unbiblical prayer practices along the way.
So this simple children’s book made my heart so happy when reading it to our daughter because it teaches a biblical model for prayer. It is based on the book A Simple Way to Pray by Martin Luther. In this short story, as in all of Sproul’s children’s books, it begins with a child asking a question. In this one, a little girl asks her dad to teach her how to pray. He then tells the story of the barber who struggled with praying and asked Martin Luther for help. And of course, Luther went straight home and wrote the little book to help his barber and anyone else who may need help with their prayer life.
He based the model from prayer on 3 things: the Lord’s prayer, the 10 commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed. We don’t want to give the entire book away, but we found the model to be biblical, simple enough for little ones, and profound enough to be used for adults. Needless to say we are looking forward to picking up A Simple Way to Pray and reading it in it’s entirety for ourselves.
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray is a fantastic resource for any parent wanting to teach their child from an early age how to pray in a biblical manner. We highly recommend this book as well as R.C Sproul’s other children’s books that we have reviewed on our site. You can check out those reviews at the links below.
MORE COMING SOON
If you’re looking for other great kid resources, check out our kids/homeschool resources page for more reviews and recommendations.
We hope this review has been helpful to you. If you’re looking for other great kid resources, check out our kids/homeschool resources page for more reviews and recommendations.
Soli Deo Gloria