I used to be a woman of prayer. Journals upon journals I store in my closet document the years of interceding for promises and years of waging spiritual warfare. Cries of the heart and dreams written in various Notes on my iPhone. Prayer walks around college campuses and fasts. Symbolic Jericho walks and, like Paul urges Timothy, using the words spoken over me as a battle cry against the enemy.
I don’t know the exact time or day that I stopped praying in this way. My prayers became more desperate pleas and angry rants to a God I knew heard me, but I had believed stopped caring. One day I’m sure I’ll dive deeper into the past two years of my life and all that the Lord was doing, but now I’ll just leave it at this: I was filled with hopelessness. Unmet expectations and seemingly unfulfilled promises left me in the state of not caring about prayer anymore because I had decided that the Lord had stopped answering them.
I knew my perspective wasn’t right - I knew He was there, I knew He wanted me to talk to Him, and I know prayer is an invitation to deeper intimacy with Him.
But here I was, my own “dark night of the soul” as St. John of the Cross, and so many after him, put it.
Slowly, but surely, the Lord has begun to chip away at the walls I have put up to Him and to prayer.
Encounters at my church’s prayer nights.
The hunger and passion of friends that stirred my heart towards prayer.
The Lord, awakening my heart to its first love again and seeking intimacy with Him.
Enter Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard J. Foster. A book that has sat on my shelves for longer than I care to admit (is it really a book buying problem when you promise to one day read it?).
This isn’t a how-to book or a book of his own personal prayers. In fact, I love the humility of Foster throughout his writings - he doesn’t claim to know everything there is to know about prayer, and he testifies that there are certain prayers he has only witnessed.
“For a long time I have wanted to write on the subject of prayer. To do so, however, would have been to commit the sin of presumption. I was not ready. I had more - much more - to learn, to experience. With many subjects it is perfectly acceptable to share one’s wonderings and wanderings, but this is not true with prayer. Prayer ushers us into the Holy of Holies, where we bow before the deepest mysteries of the faith, and one fears to touch the Ark. The years have come and gone, and while I am still a novice in the ways of prayer (who can ever master something in which the main object is to be mastered?), I somehow sense the divine nod of approval. Now is the time. And so I am writing, and in my writing I am speaking for all the prayerless persons I have been and all the prayerful persons I hope to become.”
Foster, in inviting us to prayer, invites us to come home to the Lord. He invites us to come back to what matters most - intimacy with the Father.
I loved this one, in a way that it came to me at the perfect time and with my heart in the perfect condition - primed to hear this message and eager to come home to God.
Foster takes us through three “sections” of prayers - inward, upward, and outward. Each chapter functions as a description of a different type of prayer related to one of the overarching sections.
Prayer inward moves us toward the transformation that we need. They include the Davidic psalm where he says that the Lord has searched Him and knows Him. As well as prayers of surrender.
Prayer upward moves us deeper into intimacy with the Lord. Where we sit before him in adoration, we learn what Brother Lawrence called practicing the Lord’s Presence and we learn what it means to meditatively pray as we read the Word.
Prayer outward moves us deeper into the ministry we are called to. Where we pray for the needs of others as if they’re our own, we learn to pray for healing over those suffering and we learn to pray authoritatively.
Overall, this is a great read and one I would definitely recommend to anyone. The language he uses is easy to understand and his writing is relatable. I spent a lot of time highlighting and tabbing pages to come back to!
Read if:
You’ve felt like your prayer life has been a little stagnant lately and are wondering where to go.
You are new to praying and don’t know where to start.
You want to learn more about different types of prayer and want to learn from those prayer warriors who have gone before us.
Purchase Prayer by Richard Foster here.
