I was very excited when I saw the book Praying for Your Future Husband on the list of book choices for the blogger program at Multnomah. As a mom of two growing daughters, the topic is an important one. I appreciate the authors’ desire to encourage young singles to be intentional in praying for whoever God has for them as a life mate. It’s an important subject.
Things I liked about the book:
1. The chapters. I liked how the authors got specific in what and how to pray for a future mate, not just generalities. There are chapters to encourage you to pray specifically for your future husband’s patience, understanding, trust, faithfulness, protection, contentment and more.
2. The outline. Each chapter starts with a short personal story from each of the two authors, followed by a list of ideas on how to specifically pray for the character quality focused on in the chapter. Next are some testimonies from other christian woman. Then each chapter has a short prayer to read for both the husband and the reader herself. There’s a small spot for jotting notes about the chapter and then discussion questions.
3. The back of the book has an appendix of sorts listing scriptures to pray for your future husband. I like that very much!
Things that gave me pause:
1. While I appreciated the authors’ personal stories, I don’t know that they always were pertinent to the topic at hand. I did enjoy reading them and learned from them, I’m just not certain they were needed to round out the book.
2. I fear this book could cause younger singles to “dream” more than pray. Although I’ve never read other books by either author, I’m guessing their novels are along the “christian romance” line which would explain the overall romance-y tone of the book.
3. This is NOT a book I would give to my teenager and have her just read on her own. The chapter on intimacy, in particular, caused me to shudder a bit as I considered a 12, 13 or even 16 year old reading it without mom close by. Again, I think it could/would cause less mature readers to forget the entire topic of the book and think about ... well, other things that unmarried girls should not be thinking about.
So overall, I give the book 3 stars. I think it could be a great book for a mom to read and bring to her daughters in sections or as a help to her as she guides her young charges through praying for a future mate.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.