This volume brings together Bunyan's writing on prayer, chiefly his treatise on praying with the Spirit and with understanding and his exposition of coming boldly to the throne of grace. Bunyan defines prayer as the sincere pouring out of the heart to God through Christ, argues that the Spirit's help is indispensable rather than optional, and deals plainly with formality, with set forms imposed on the conscience, and with the discouragements that keep believers from praying.

Part of Banner of Truth's Puritan Paperbacks, a series that puts the shorter works of the Puritans into print at a price that makes them worth giving away. Bunyan wrote much of this from Bedford gaol, imprisoned partly over the question of free prayer, which gives the treatise a particular edge. It suits believers whose prayers have become mechanical, and it works well read a few pages at a time before prayer itself.