Jim McManus, author of Our Spiritual Lifeline, believes that the best way to encourage people to joyfully live their Christian lives in the world today is to help them develop their own personal prayer life. In this book, by highlighting how prayer was a lifeline for Jesus, he seeks to assure readers that no matter what their situation in life may be, they too have a gift of prayer. This is expressed not only in formal prayers, but also in the prayer of their hearts that inner personal dialogue with God that they often quite unexpectedly find themselves engaging in during the day. Therefore, as well as examining familiar formal prayers such as the Lord s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the prayers of the Mass, he also suggests solutions to the problems we all face when we are trying the organise our life of prayer, such as finding the right time and coping with boredom and distractions.