Talking With God

Talking With God by Robert Millet
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Confession: I do not finish nine out of ten books that are written on the topic of religion and spirituality. It's not that the topics don't appeal to me, but that the books are dry or unengaging. More often than not, this type of book is too lengthy, and I am left musing not on the things of God, but rather on who the writer's editor is.

Amazingly enough, I completed Millet's "Talking With God" and I completed it in a timely manner (those two things are often mutually exclusive). Millet's premise is very simple - he believes that these divine conversations we are privileged to have can transform our daily lives. He does not preach or talk down to his reader, but instead talks as he would to a friend or neighbor about his personal insights and experiences. Though Millet is an LDS author, the book is not written exclusively for members of the Church. He cites theologians from many Christian denominations and references multiple translations of the Bible, which only strengthens the points that he makes throughout his writing.

I cannot say that I loved "Talking With God" because the style of religious texts, as previously mentioned, does not usually appeal to me (unless written by Jeffrey R. Holland). However, there is something to be said for the fact that I finished this book and that I have a dozen post-its sticking out of it for ideas and concepts I want to revisit in future personal study.

The one post-it that I keep going back to has to do with our preparation for prayer - so often, we rattle off our daily prayers or our meal prayers just because we're supposed to. We say the same rote phrases that our parents taught us to say without thinking twice about the meaning behind them. Millet asks what type of preparation we would put into meeting someone important - the President of the United States, the Prophet, or anyone else that you have dreamed of meeting. He asserts that we would never rush into a meeting like that. We would stop and think ahead of time about things to discuss, key questions that we want answered, etc. I was taken aback by this concept because immediately when Millet had posed the idea of meeting someone so important, my mind went a million different directions. Who would I want to meet? What would I want to talk to them about? I think I imagined half a dozen people (oddly enough, alive and dead) before I realized my eyes were still moving over words I wasn't taking in. I realized in reading that section and in thinking back over it that I do not prepare adequately for my conversations with The Important Person. I can do better. For that insight alone, this book was worth my time reading it.

So read it or not, the choice is yours. Either way, I hope you're enjoying what it is in currently on your nightstand. And if there is nothing there right now, we need to talk. You know my number....