Six Secrets to a Powerful Quiet Time

Martin (Revive My Heart!), founder of Quiet Time Ministries, passes her own industrious ""quiet time"" practices on to readers in this book, broken up into 30 daily readings. Martin's ""P.R.A.Y.E.R."" method includes the following steps: prepare your heart, read and study God's word, adore God in prayer, yield to God, enjoy his presence and rest in his love. However, Martin builds the daily discipline into an enormous task which may prevent some readers from delving in. Her own one- to two-hour daily sessions (including prayer, journaling, reading and analyzing scripture, listening to music and reading devotional books) are daunting, though Martin does advocate that readers use only those parts of the process that work best for them. There is little fresh content here; the book recites timeworn Christian concepts, and its chapters include endless alliterated lists that seem to have been taken from Martin's other teachings. Martin also fails to bond with readers by sharing her own struggles. In the end, the book advocates a great amount of work in order to achieve ""radical intimacy"" with God, and will appeal only to the most disciplined evangelical Christians or to followers of Martin's ministry.