Living Close To God When You’re Not Good At It by Gene Edwards has a title that many of us can identify with if we’re honest with ourselves.  The emphasis of this book is how to have a spiritual life that goes deeper than your daily devotions.  I appreciate Edwards’ emphasis on having a genuine relationship with God based on an inward desire to be with God rather than out of an obligation.  This book is a good apologetic against the formality of legalism which can stifle one’s relationship with God.  His personal experiences throughout the book were engaging and gave credibility to the application.

Edwards emphasizes the importance of fellowship at the expense of prayer.  He writes on page 56, “Keep in mind that your time with the Lord in the morning is not request time – this is fellowship time.  This is time with your Lord, not prayer time.”  Prayer is time with the Lord!  Edwards is creating a straw man by limiting prayer to requests and not including fellowship as part of prayer.  A careful study of the Bible indicates that prayer is more than simply asking but it is a time of communion with God. 

As we look at the example of Jesus we see that a primary aspect of His life was prayer.  Mark 1:35 states, “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.”  Luke writes, ”But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:16).  If we believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of God’s word why did the author use prayer rather than fellowship?  The point is one can have a vibrant relationship with God through prayer from the heart.  Perhaps Edwards is arguing against those who emphasize prayer is something you must do to have a relationship with God and I would agree with him that prayer from the heart is a “want to” and not a “have to”.

Edwards presents some helpful suggestions for deepening one’s relationship with God and I have enjoyed some of his other books but this was not one of his better works.  (I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review).