He Likes to be Asked.

God, Prayer 0

Do you know why the mighty God of the universe chooses to answer prayer?  It is because his children ask.  God delights in our asking.  He is pleased at our asking.  His heart is warmed by our asking….

We like our children to ask us for things that we already know they need because the very asking enhances and deepens the relationship….

Be encouraged that God desires authentic dialogue, and that as we speak what is on our hearts, we are sharing real information that God is deeply interested in….

Here we must see the Abba heart of God.  In one important sense nothing is more important to him that the anxiety we feel over the surgery we must face tomorrow and the exasperation we feel today over our child’s irresponsibility and the desperation we feel over the plight of our aging parents.  These are matters of great magnitude to him because they are matters of great magnitude to us.  It is a false humility to stand back and not share our deepest needs.  His heart is wounded by our reticence.  Just as we long for our own children to share with us the petty details of their day at school, so God longs to hear from us the smallest matters of our lives.  It delights him when we share.

–Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 179-181

Waiting as Prayer

Life, Prayer 0

Waiting is part of ordinary time.  We discover God in our waiting:  waiting in checkout lines, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for graduation, waiting for a promotion, waiting to retire, waiting to die.  The waiting itself becomes prayer as we give our waiting to God.  In waiting we begin to get in touch with the rhythms of life — stillness and action, listening and decision.  They are the rhythms of God.  It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 174

Our Vocation as Prayer

Life, Prayer 0

Our vocation is an asset to prayer because our work becomes prayer.  It is prayer in action.  The artist, the novelist, the surgeon, the plumber, the secretary, the lawyer, the homemaker, the farmer, the teacher — all are praying by offering their work up to God….

We do not need to have good feelings or a warm glow in order to do work for the glory of God.  All good work is pleasing to the Father.  Even the jobs that seem meaningless and mindless to us are highly valued in the order of the kingdom of God.  God values the ordinary.  If, for the glory of God, you are putting an endless supply of nuts on an endless line of bolts, your work is rising up as a sweet-smelling offering to the throne of God.  He is pleased with your labor.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 171-173

The Secular and the Sacred

Life, Prayer 0

In the creation and the incarnation the great God of the universe intertwined the spiritual and the material, wedded the sacred and the secular, sanctified the common and the ordinary.  How astonishing!  How wonderful!

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 habitats of the eternal.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 171

A Word from God

Guidance, Inspiration, Prayer 0

“When reading the Bible, people commonly experience a special ‘word in the Word,’ in which a particular passage seems to apply to an individual situation in a new way….  This ‘quickening of the Word’ encourages us that God is near and deeply interested in the particular circumstances of our lives.”

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 137

God’s Steadfast Love

God, Inspiration, Prayer, Trust 0

“Regardless of whether we feel strong or weak, we remember that our assurance is not based upon our ability to conjure up some special feeling.  Rather, it is built upon a confident assurance in the faithfulness of God.  We focus on his trustworthiness and especially on his steadfast love.”

–Richard J. Foster, Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 212

Prayer of Healing

God, Inspiration, Prayer, Trust 0

“Second, we ask.  This is the step of faith.  As we come to clearness about what is needed, we invite God’s healing to come.  We speak a definite, straightforward declaration of what is to be.  We do not weaken our request with ifs, ands, or buts.”

–Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 211