Prayer of Agur by Jay Payleitner

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I read a book. I realize I have shocked you all. This particular book landed in my lap at an opportune time and seemed to fall right in line with every other book God has been using to talk me through grief lately. It fell right in line with the last 5 books I have read over the past month. This is not a shout out type of book review. This is how I saw the Lord speaking to me through another man's words during a time of pain.

 I do not want to sound like a broken record, but I have lost 18 people in my family is the last 17 years. My remaining brother passed away recently just weeks after my husband's brother passed away suddenly. Grief from all of the compound loss made me feel like I had been run over by a truck. Compound that with all of the things that have gone viral in our nation of late and I was needy to hear from God. The first three lines of Proverbs 30 made me need to catch my breath.

 I am weary, God,

 I kept repeating it in my head before I moved on to the next portion. We moved into the only prayer in the book of Proverbs. That astounded me. Proverbs 30 is  also the only mention of God having a Son in the book. I sat there and thanked God (and Jay) in my head for showing me Christ in this book. When You are shown Christ anywhere, it can help you see him everywhere. I wanted to see him everywhere desperately. Even though I have written out the book of Proverbs, I have been truly beginning to see the beauty of the book after. The true Wise Man of Proverbs is a healer when we look to him. I am thankful to see him illuminated so clearly here. I see you, Jesus. You're beautiful.

 We follow the rest of the Proverb seeing God's attributes on display. There is something centering about meditating on God. We will never wrap our minds around him, but what a joy it is to try.

 I appreciated Agur's prayer to balance on God's provision and seek no extreme in poverty or riches. It's something we could desperately use in our current cultural climate.

 Agur's prayer for neither riches not poverty is still resonating in my head each day. He asked for only what he needed each day. He didn't want too much so that he thought he had no need of God or too little that he might steal and dishonor God's name. I wondered if I could truly do the same.

 Thank you for writing this book, Jay. It has spoken deeply to and challenged me.

 My dear friend Robert has Jay on his podcast today. You can find that here: https://bit.ly/PrayerofAgur




This is book 665 in my journey to read 700 books by the end of the year (in a total of 12 years). https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/70094937-steph-cherry

 Thanks for following along with our mission to the homeless and the restoration of our mission mansion at The Boho Table.

 This book was generously provided by Jay Payleitner and Multnomah for review.

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