Seeking God's Face: Praying with the Bible through the Year

by Eugene H. Peterson (Foreword), Baker Publishing Group (Compiler), Philip Reinders (Editor)

From the very beginning of the church, Christians have found it helpful to pause for prayer during various times of the day. Whether for morning or evening devotions or other fixed-time prayers, such spiritual respites were deemed essential to worshiping God. Over the years, Christians developed a structure for such moments of worship, keyed to the time of day and season of the year. Part of its genius was the seamless integration of Scripture and prayer. This ancient practice, called the "Daily Office," has experienced a resurgence of use in our time.

Seeking God's Face is a user-friendly approach to this form of prayer and devotion. Each office includes a psalm of praise, a passage of Scripture, and a brief set of prayers. An introduction to prayer-book use from Eugene Peterson is included to acclimate readers to this form.

Genres: Nonfiction, Christianity, Faith, Prayer, Christian

832 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Eugene H. Peterson was a pastor, scholar, author, and poet. For many years he was James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He also served as founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. He had written over thirty books, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language a contemporary translation of the Bible. After retiring from full-time teaching, Eugene and his wife Jan lived in the Big Sky Country of rural Montana. He died in October 2018.

Reviews

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

2024: In spite of the book's defects, we enjoy having a way to read the Scriptures that follows the church calendar.

2023: We love having the Bible readings that go along with the church calendar. Wish there was something like this that was more traditional (without prayer requests focusing in the envirnoment and without the questionable translation of the newest NIV).

2022: My husband and I have enjoyed reading this together each morning, but our pleasure in it is sometimes lessened by its modern tone and emphases.

Pros: Daily immersion in Scripture. We love reading from the Psalms every day and especially enjoy the verses used in the invitation and in the blessing that are repeated each day for a week, helping you to absorb their ideas. We bought this book so that we could follow the Church calendar and that is what keeps us reading even though we don't like every aspect of the daily readings.

Cons: Many of the written prayers seem more concerned with sounding self-important than with humble entreaty. For example on Epiphany Day 59 we read, "Lord of all, it feels strange to pray it, but thank you for taxes." And on the first day of Lent we read, "[Sin] is a family curse that I've inherited, like a genetic deficiency that plagues my life and infects my living." Clever wording, for sure, but not really a prayer. Environmental issues are often part of the prayer requests. Sadly, because of this, we skip the prayer section altogether, The use of the gender-neutral NIV is occasionally disconcerting when it slaughters biblical poetry and grammar. (Psalm 8:4 reads, "What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?")

[Sadie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent devotional book for individuals and families. Each day is saturated with scripture readings from psalms and new or old testament, along with prayer prompts. We used this during our family worship times after dinner and our children loved taking turns reading portions of scripture and enjoyed the rhythm and discussions it led to each evening. We especially loved how the themes of the readings followed the church calendar.

[Tanya Marlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was looking for something for a daily ‘quiet time’ that would be very gentle, and this is perfect. It is a little like doing a ‘daily office’, with set readings and prayers, following the church year (e.g. at the moment we’re in Epiphany), and it’s just done really well. There’s a great introduction suggesting ways of doing ‘lectio divina’, letting the word sit in your spirit, and every day there is a reminder to stay quiet and prompts for reflection. So many evangelical commentaries are a little ‘noisy’ and busy, and I love how this slows me down. There is also only scripture (already printed out on the page so you don’t have to look it up separately in your Bible) and his prayers (traditional prayers from creeds or catechisms which he has modernised to read more fluently). This book is totally saving me at the moment – thank you, Mr Reinders. Love it.

[CCCfaithathome]

Seeking God's Face uses the practice of Lectio Divina to guide you in daily prayer and reflection with Scripture. It starts with Advent, the beginning of the Christian calendar, and includes Scripture readings and suggestions for prayer topics. Seeking God's Face is a resource you can continue to use year after year because each reading has a date for its use through the year 2026.

If you would like more meditation, contemplation, and guided conversation with God, then this is a resource worth checking out.

[Barb Terpstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will set this aside for another day. There was much about it I liked, but I seem to get more depth from my devotional stand by "31 Days of Praise" by Ruth Meyer.

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good lectionary, prayer book, and devotional guide, and Seeking God's Face provides all of that. Coming to this book after a year of through-the-Bible reading, I most appreciated how it encouraged me to slow down and practice lectio divina with just a couple of small selections of Scripture (a Psalm and another brief passage) each day, through the church calendar. That slowing-down and focusing was just what I was looking for. After each day's Scripture portions, the book asks you to look at them again and see if anything specific stands out. That's an excellent habit for me to cultivate.

Each day also includes a few points for prayer, and an original prayer by the book's author, Philip F. Reinders. This part was less helpful for me. I like thoughtful written prayers, but these often seemed a little too personal to Reinders, not "scalable" to what I was thinking about that day. That's totally subjective. But because of that, I don't expect to use this book again. There are a good number of other prayer books that I do like, and I'll definitely find something to look at in the next church year.

[Carol Hallenbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my pastors recommended this great devotional book that I found to be easy to stay committed to. Each entry is dated with the day in the Christian calendar in which to read. Each 2-page day includes an invitation verse, a Bible song from Psalms, a relevant paragraph from the Bible, a reminder to focus and read again, topics for free prayer, a brief printed prayer, and a blessing.

There is something powerful about knowing that Christians all over the world are reading and praying the same thoughts on the same day.

I enjoyed the practice of devotions with this book last year so much that I'm reading through the book again this year, knowing the words I read will likely hold different messages for me with each new day.

[Annie Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book benefitted me greatly over the past year.

Even though I often disliked the prayers themselves, the call to quiet, the juxtaposition of Psalms and other Bible passages, and the free prayer suggestions were invaluable.

The book itself is small enough to read while lying down and contains all the Bible readings so it was very convenient to use.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely book of scripture and prayer that have been a breath of fresh air to my quiet time when I felt like I wanted to do things a little differently. I love the introductions to the sections, and the reasoning and purpose behind putting these readings together. A fresh, personal way to utilize a liturgical style of prayer and worship.

[Mom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I give this 10 stars? Outstanding in every way. A great way to walk through the year, reading and praying. I have read it all year long - it actually starts with Advent - so expect it to be a year long process. I just recently added it to my list because it is, after all, a book!!!

[Jennifer]

Excited to use this book for devotional time. Set up in a really neat way that I think I'll like!

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great way to incorporate the Psalms into your prayer and devotional life. While it can be a bit confusing at first, the way that the scheduled readings are oriented is toward the Church calendar and week, not a regular calendar. It's a small detail, but it's a nice way to begin rethinking time in terms of church cycles and celebrations- yet another way to reorient your life toward something outside of the fever of life and a busy world existing apart from God.

I also really like the schedule of prayer topics for each day, which are arranged by the weekly cycle of the church (with Friday and Sunday being particularly reflective days). I also appreciate the prayers at the end of each reading that are based on historic confessions of the Christian church (from various traditions but mainly Reformed).

I don't like that given a 2 page limitation for each day, that the Psalms are cut short or edited to make them fit within the allotted day. Also, the bible passage reading included for each day is short (which is good and bad), and oriented toward a lectio divina type reading- which is a slower, reflective, and repetitive style. I have mixed results with this.

This book was a good aid for me when I started- to more consistently read the Psalms. I have since moved on to the Book of Common prayer's daily office reading (for Morning and Evening Prayer). It has most of the strengths of this book: providing a framework to facilitate a reflective and prayerful spirit (including readings from the Old and New Testament and Psalms). It also provides more direction for prayer for my wondering mind than simply a suggestion of topics to pray for (as valuable as that is).