An Interview with Rick Hamlin

[MUSIC PLAYING] It Gives me great pleasure today to be here with my good friend and colleague, Rick Hamlin. Rick has written a book, “10 Prayers that You Can’t Live Without– How to Pray to God about Anything.” And so today I want to talk to Rick about his book. Rick, which you be able to tell us what motivated you to write this book?

This is a chance to share my prayer story to help people in their prayer life because sometimes people feel insecure in their prayer life. How do I do it? When do I do it? It’s so hard. I’m not sure I’m doing it right.

The big message is you are doing it right. You can’t fail at it. To try to pray is to pray. You just can’t do it wrong.

How do you handle unanswered prayers?

Unanswered prayers are hard to figure out sometimes, aren’t they? Waiting is really important. I can think of a prayer that I knew was going to be answered. I knew that a book I wrote many years ago was going to sell 100,000 copies. It hasn’t. But I’m thinking, you know, if I just wait a little while that prayer will be answered. So waiting is part of our prayer life, just waiting and then asking the question again and again.

Well, how do you use the Bible in your prayer life?

The principal way I use the Bible my prayer life is the psalms. I’ve got this little Bible I take with me on the subway and I usually read a psalm every morning. But here’s another exhibit. I Xerox verses of the psalm and when I’m running when I’m jogging in the morning, I take this little piece of paper with me and I read a verse or two and pray as I’m running. And of course, the Lord’s Prayer– you can’t, you know– you can’t pray without always referring to the Lord’s Prayer.

How his prayer changed your life?

Prayer has changed my life– probably the biggest way is, I think, I’m a person that could go sort of scatterbrained. I can end up going in too many directions at once. I can also get weighed down with a lot of worries. I think, you know, first thing in the morning I’m worried about so many things– work, my kids, money, the mortgage. So a prayer life brings me back to what’s important. It’s that constant reminder so I worry less, thank God. I trust more. And I always need it to get back to what’s important in life.

So we want to really thank Rick for the opportunity to talk with him today about his book, “10 Prayers You Can’t Live Without.” Rick and I work very closely together at our prayer and we get the opportunity to spend a lot of time, you know, seeing what people are praying about, seeing what people are concerned about. And Rick gets the opportunity to interview people for the “Guideposts” magazine and so he has a heart for prayer. And so we want to invite you to get your copy of this book, “10 Prayers You Can’t Live Without– How to Pray to God about Anything,” and I mean anything.

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