Praying should be the main focus and fuel of every soul that looks after redemption. Great book and highly recommend!

This book is very practical and it helps you go deeper into different themes of prayer. This book helped me get over my begging prayers and it made me focus on different aspects I need to pray on.

CALLED to Pray by Marsha DuCille is a Christian book sharing 52 devotionals that hopes to improve the reader's prayer life. This book is directed specifically to women and includes many devotionals specific to the problems women may face.

Each devotional is organized into several sections with some commentary, a line from the bible, an affirmation, a quick prayer, and ends with a summary sentence. This is a great structure as it makes using a devotional so easy and does not require lots of time. Each devotional includes an illustration at the beginning as well. At times it is hard to read the last sentence of the devotional due to the font however. It is easy to reference a devotional that may be related to your struggles and I found the prayers to be the best part of the devotional. Overall this is a sweet devotional for those looking for a nice entry.

Many thanks to Tyndale House Publishers and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This book was one I blew through, rather than take the 52 days/weeks it could have taken. If read daily, the short reads were a good size, but if weekly, they would need more meat to them.

As is usually the case, sometimes the prayers and examples hit where they needed to, but most of the time they were a miss. Not a bad book, it just depends on what your needs are at the time and if God chooses to speak to you through this book through the particular prayer you are reading at the time.

Also per usual, devotionals to me, unless incredibly bad, need to be read more than once to be fully appreciated, so while my initial rating is 3 solid stars, that isn't necessarily the final verdict, just the initial one.

Recommended if you are looking for a short devotional on prayer.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tyndale House Publishers for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Marsha DuCille provides beautiful devotions that allow the reader to pray deeply. Oftentimes, I pray during the day but do not focus on specific things. My attentions seems to drift however, these devotions have allowed me to gain strength through prayer. I am more comfortable with my praying and am looking forward to purchasing this devotional to use throughout the year.

I'd been looking for a devotional that centers on enhancing my prayer life, so when I came across Called to Pray, I was excited to get started on a 52-day prayer journey; however, I was surprised at how different it was from the description. Created to provide women with a year's worth of prayer topics, Called to Pray was short and to the point, rarely going deep into the "week's" subject. With a small intro, followed by scripture reference, the prayers were often less than a paragraph long, making me question how someone could spend a year reading such a book.

Though Called to Pray was spot-on in speaking into my life on a few occasions, the devotion fell flat, oftentimes requiring me to stray off the path to search the topic in other places. Unless you are mature in your faith, some of the "doctrine" used could also be dangerous to younger believers. For instance, the author spoke about running away from a bear (which you should never do) in comparison to leaving a church, and, on another day, the author spoke about staying in relationships with toxic people because it's not about your "feelings." With a goal to build one's prayer life, I found Called to Pray very basic and not as inspiring as I'd hoped. Nevertheless, there were some helpful quotes and days when I was thankful for the author's direction. Was it enough to sway me to recommend this devotion? Probably not. After 52 days, I concluded that Called to Pray is not a devotion that will strengthen your prayer life; however, it will certainly give you a foundation to expand your time with the Lord.

My hope in this review is not to discourage, though my points are quite critical, but urge the author to expand on each topic and truly get into what it means to go into your prayer closet and seek the Father. This devotion had a lot of potential, but its shallow approach was not enough to help me connect with the Lord on a deeper level.

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a pre-release copy of this book. My thoughts and opinions are entirely my own!*

So encouraging and practical. Needed a encouragement to know that prayer works and actually DOES stuff! It's so easy to feel helpless in many situations, but this book encouraged me to press on, despite not seeing instant results!

This is an absolutely beautfil book of prayers that address many situations in life, from anxieties to lost family members to grief. Each entry is beautifully laid out and I love that the prayer is laid out for you so that you can take it further if you like. The affirmations are short and sweet so that you can carry them with you throughout the day. I highly recommend this book if you are looking to give prayer as a gift or if you want a large variety in perspectives - things you may not typically pray about. It will really open up your prayer life if yours feels stagnant.

I am grateful to have received an advance reader copy from the Tyndale Publishing and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.