Make Your Voice Heard in Heaven

In a time when more and more people are calling on those in power to listen and act, US Senate chaplain Barry Black challenges us—individually and collectively—to call on the one who has the ultimate power, the ruler of all creation.

In Make Your Voice Heard in Heaven, Chaplain Black shows—through Scripture, personal stories, and practical insights—how your prayers can

• Unleash God’s power
• Increase your partnership with God’s will
• Deepen your intimacy with God
• Strengthen your desire to live a God-pleasing life
• Help you avoid missing God’s blessings…and more

Review

Any book written by a chaplain to the Senate of the United States deserves attention: more so
following his invocation for distressed legislators on 6 January 2021.
 
Chaplain Black is a well-known and outstanding preacher among Seventh-day Adventists, and always
captures our imagination as an ambassador for our faith in the public space. In the Senate he is
better known for the meaningfulness of his prayers.
 
I can’t say that I am impressed with the title, which I suspect is more about getting the book read in
Waterstones: nevertheless, the content is substantial and necessary.
 
Prayer Ministries has followed various fashions, variously encouraging spontaneity, contemplation,
one-phrase group prayers, and intervention through the power of numbers, among others. There
was a time when I was critical of the formalism in The Common Book of Prayer, but of late I have
come to appreciate the value of well-thought-out and structured prayers.
 
Barry turns prayer into an art form with structured poetic expression. As a professional, these
prayers take hours in composition, and include a dozen or more principles, values and attitudes
upon which prayer may be structured. As ever, Chaplain Black outlines the biblical basis for values
that take supplication beyond a casual conversation with the Almighty. 
 
All prayers are heard in heaven, but the listening Jesus will, no doubt, listen out for those crafted
with purpose and reverence by reflective supplicants.
 
(Chapters include: Pray with assistance, Pray the model prayer, Pray with purity, Pray fearlessly, Pray
with effectiveness, Pray to escape the squeeze of temptation, Pray when God is silent, Pray when
you don’t feel like being good, Pray with celebration, intimacy, fervency, perseverance and
submission, and finally Pray with a partner.)