The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian | Book Review

(The cover of my copy is "hardcover" but sort of squishy.  Does that make sense?  I don't care for those covers... they remind me of board books for toddlers.  But my copy was a gift, so no choice.)

The Power of a Praying Wife walks the reader through 30 areas in which one could/should pray for their husband.  Each chapter is laid out identically: an introduction to the topic, about 2-3 pages in length, and usually containing an anecdote or two from Stormie's life; a prayer; and 3-5 Bible verses (Stormie calls them "Power Tools") relating to the topic.

I read the entire book through, cover to cover, in May.  I'm now on my second trip through, so that says something about the book's use and effectiveness!  On the first read-through, I read (and chuckled a little at) the topic introductions; on this second read-through, I'm just praying.  I really do think that the topics suggested for prayer are sound, and I appreciate that Stormie wrote guideline prayers for them.  I often go off the prescribed prayer to add a little more, specific to whatever the hubby and I are facing that week.  

As I mentioned above... the little bit of chuckling.  I think maybe Stormie needs to be taken with a little grain of salt sometimes.  There's a chapter where she says that no matter how tired we ladies are, no matter what our day has been like, we should doll ourselves up and make ourselves *ahem* available to our hubbies... Yeah.... so that's something that this slightly more modern gal doesn't necessarily agree with 100%.  But that little bit of advice is found within the chapter that ends with a prayer for our hubbies to not fall under any temptation from any other lady than his wife.  That's a good prayer!  To sum up: take the anecdotes with a grain of salt; take the prayers for serious.

To wrap up, I think this book is pretty ok!  The introduction explains this better than I can, but setting aside time each day to specifically pray for a certain area of the hubby's life is not only for his benefit.  This has also made me more aware of ways in which I can support him day to day, through prayer and through communication and action.  In our house, the hubby has the companion book The Power of a Praying Husband, but I'm not exactly qualified to review that one, am I?  Overall, I give The Power of a Praying Wife three of five stars... the prayers, the basic principle are sound but the advice... eh, not so much.