Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

The 7 Great Prayers: For a Lifetime of Hope and Blessings

by Paul McManus and Tracey McManus

published April 14, 2009 (hardcover) by Vanguard Press

The 7 Great Prayers is calling to me from the top of a stack of new books. It is Easter Sunday and it is Passover. It makes sense to read the book, and I find myself rising up as I read.

The prayers are simple. The book is simple. Paul and Tracey McManus created the seven great prayers when they lost their home during the dot com bust earlier this decade. And, now their book pubs at the perfect time — when millions are jobless and homeless. Learn more from Paul and Tracey at www.the7greatprayers.com.

As I read, there is an essence of The Secret, but it is more than that. And more simple. I remember how Conversations With God author Neale Donald Walsch told me how The Secret was terribly flawed because it leaves out God. This book is all about God.

I do a little dance around God. Growing up, I had a hard time with the God-the-Father concept, because my real father was suddenly gone and never came back (he tried, but my stepfather beat him up in front of me, and forbid him to return) and my stepfather raped me beginning at age four and a half. But I could see angels! So my psychological little dance is talking to the angels. My most pure messages make it through. And I thank God for that. There are dozens of miracles every week. I thank God for them. And, I thank God for something quite magical that happened a few years ago that proved to me He is there. It was revealed in a dance-related atmosphere, and I’ll share that story in a moment.

First, one comment from the McManus wakes me up immediately – they say don’t say please. That’s because please connotes the possibility that God might not come through – and He always does.

I’ll tell you the prayers, but take care to take time with each – 21 Days, they recommend.

I love you God

Thank you God

God, you are within me

God, bless me

God, I see you everywhere

God bless and I love…

God, help me help you

Have a goal, the couple says, and pray not for money but for an abundant supply. Pray for balance in your life. Pray to be happy, healthy, in love, enjoy work and life, to be wealthy in the broadest sense. Tap into your God-given gifts. Live in a state of gratitude, they say, and live in the now. Know that God will answer your prayers – in His own time. Bless others. Be aware. We are hardwired to get clues from God – you say you get a strange vibration or you get goose bumps.

Now for my story: About nine years ago, I was in a dance group with a woman who led the group with frequent references to God and to the Bible. I was still in my frightened stage, but I knew I needed to break through my early religious blocks, so I danced with this trainer. One day, the group was in a photo shoot, and we were in various states of costume and dress, sitting and waiting our turn. The trainer noticed I was getting anxious just waiting, so she tossed me a magazine from the shelf beneath the mirror. It was a dance magazine. As it sailed through the air, it opened, quite magically, to a story on the whirling dervishes, whom I’d loved to emulate when I was a kid. As I caught the magazine, the first words I noticed on the page leaped out at me, and gave me goosebumps. It was a prayer from the Kuran, printed just beneath the headline.

The prayer said “Wherever you turn, there is the face of God.”

Which of these 7 Great Prayers comes easiest to you, or hardest?

What prayers would you add to this list?