Richard J. Foster On Prayer (Part 3 of 3)

Excerpts from:

Prayer: The Heart's True Home

All creation seems in harmony with you, the Master Conductor. All, that is, except me. Why? Why do I alone want to sing my own melody? I certainly am a stubborn creature. Forgive me. I do desire to come into harmony with you more fully and more often. I do desire a fellowship that is consistent and sustaining. Please nurture this desire of mine, which seems so small and tentative right now…. For Jesus sake. – Amen. [Pg. 129, Chapter: Unceasing Prayer]

We live in a wordy world with our sophisticated high-tech telecommunication systems. We now have the dubious distinction of being able to communicate more and say less than any civilization in history. [Pg. 155, Chapter:  Contemplative Prayer]

The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find him at all. Ours is to be a symphonic piety in which all the activities of work and play and family and worship and sex and sleep are the holy habits of the eternal. [Pg. 171, Chapter: Praying the Ordinary]

This wrestling is a hard image for us to accept. We much prefer the image of restful harmony. Our difficulty is due, in part, to our cultures inability to reconcile struggle with love. We assume a loving relationship by its very nature must be peaceful and harmonious, and yet even on a human level those things we care about the most deeply we argue for the most passionately. Struggle is consistent with love, for it is an expression of our caring. [Pg. 225, Chapter: The Prayer of Suffering]

In the strong name of Christ I stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. I resist every force that would seek to distract me from my center in God. I reject the distorted concepts and ideas that make sin plausible and desirable. I oppose every attempt to keep me from knowing full fellowship with God…. Find your satisfaction in the infinite love of God’s love rather than the bland diet of sin. I call upon the good, the true, and the beautiful to rise up within me and the evil to subside…. By the authority of almighty God I tear down Satan’s strongholds in my life, in the lives of those I love, and in the society in which I live. [Pg. 242, Chapter: Authoritative Prayer]

~ Daniel Brockhan