In the book "Are My Prayers Falling on Deaf Ears?", many of the common questions about prayer are answered from a scriptural perspective. Dr. Steinmann shows how the Bible teaches that prayer begins with "God's promise of mercy toward us," and that it is not "a way to manipulate God into answering our questions or solving our problems in the way we want them solved"(p. 12).The structure of this book is to present a situation about prayer (i.e. God doesn't seem to be listening), and then examine several scriptural examples that correlate with this situation. Many of the prayers are taken from the book of Psalms, but other significant prayers are also covered, especially the Lord's Prayer. Steinmann provides an interesting discussion of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer and compares the Matthew and Luke versions. Another nice feature is that each chapter has highlighted points that are explained as you read.
This book would make an excellent basis for a topical Bible study on prayer, and could be divided up by chapter or even smaller sections. While the book provides explanations of dozens of Biblical prayers, it also offers many more examples (categorized within the chapters) that would be good for more in depth study and comparison. All in all I found "Are My Prayers Falling on Deaf Ears?" to be a sound treatment of prayer that offers Biblical hints on how to shape our own prayers.
