Chapter 1: Simple Prayer (part 3)

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Dom Chapman

Counsel Along the Way

Foster gives us readers five wise counsels for our prayer journey:

¬     Remember that prayer is “nothing more than an ongoing and growing love relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.”

And this love relationship is open to all, on equal footing (based on the Redemption), as Madame Guyon has said, ‘This way of prayer, this simple relationship to your Lord, is so suited for everyone; it is just as suited to the dull and ignorant as it is for the well-educated. This prayer, this experience which begins so simply, has as its end a totally abandoned love to the Lord.’

¬     Do not become discouraged by your lack of prayer—“even in our prayerlessness we can hunger for God. If so, the hunger itself is prayer…We give even our lack of prayer to God.”  (Recall Mark 9:24; Philippians 2:13)

¬     Let go of “trying too hard to pray…[don’t try to digest too much of God’s presence and the spiritual discipline of prayer all at once if it overwhelms]…If prayer is not a fixed habit with you…single out a few moments and put all your energy into them.”  We recalled the time when Jesus told His disciples that He had sooo much more to tell them, but they “could not bear it” and so they would have to wait, and take it in slowly under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage (John 16:12-13)…

¬     Learn to pray “even while dwelling on evil. Perhaps we are waging an interior battle over anger, or lust, or pride, or greed, or ambition. We need not isolate that from prayer…We lift even our disobedience into the arms of the Father…Sin, to be sure, separates us from God, but trying to hide our sin separates us all the more.”  Again, we mentioned the promise in Phil. 2:13, that God will work in us even the desire to do God’s will, as well as the ability to follow through! And of course, I John 1:9 reminds us that when we come to God with our inner gunk, He will forgive and cleanse us!

¬     In the beginning, strive for “uneventful prayer experiences. Divine revelations and ecstasies can overwhelm us and distract us from the real work of prayer…[Besides] just slipping quietly into the presence of God can be so exotic and fresh that it delights us enormously.” We do not want to be like the “adulterous generation” that Jesus chided, who were just seeking after spiritual thrills and “signs” (Matt.12:39,16:4) Linking it again to the “love relationship” theme, the core of a lifelong love partnership does not hang on the ephemeral romantic frills and thrills, but on the steady, abiding communion and commitment. : )

Finally, Foster encourages us that as we begin an earnest prayer journey, we will experience a “shift in our center of gravity. We pass from thinking of God as part of our life to the realization that we are part of His life.”  May it be~

“Dear Jesus, how desperately I need to learn to pray. And yet when I am honest, I know that I often do not even want to pray.

I am distracted!

I am stubborn!

I am self-centered!

In your mercy, Jesus, bring my ‘want-er’ more in line with my ‘need-er’ so that I can come to want what I need.

In your name and for your sake, I pray. –Amen”