End of the Book

As I finish Foster's book, I am resolved not to finish the practice of creative prayer, prayer that stretches me, unfamiliar or even uncomfortable prayer, because I am a branch ever seeking a deeper abiding in the vine.  A dynamic relationship comes from dynamic interaction.

I have been writing down the phrases that most struck me in this reading, and in this final entry on the subject, I wanted to share them with cyberspace:

• To be effective prayers, we need to be effective lovers. (3)
• We will discover that, by praying, we learn to pray. (13) 
• What we learned to do in the light of God's presence, we also do in the dark of God's absence [the dark night of the soul]. (24)
• Who we are - not who we want to be - is the only offer we have to give. (31)
• The less we are mesmerized by human voices, the more we are able to hear the Divine Voice. The less we are manipulated by the expectations of others, the more we are open to the expectations of God. (63)
• It is an occupational hazard of devout people to confuse their work with God's work. How easy it is to replace "this work is really significant" with "I am really significant." (73)
• Thoughts continue to jostle in your head like mosquitoes. To stop this jostling you must bind the mind with one thought, or the thought of one only. - Theophane the Recluse (124)
• That is my task: to hold my will to the current of power and let you sweep through endlessly. - Frank Laubach (126)
• Virtue is discovered not so much in the attaining as in the trying, the struggling, the running of the race. (150)
• Know that it is by silence that the saints grew, that it was because of silence that the power of God dwelt in them, because of silence that the mysteries of God were made known to them. - Ammonas (155)
• He is closer to my true self than I am myself. He loves me better than I love myself. He is Abba Father to me. I am because HE IS." - James Borst (163)
• The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and heroic. ... Ours is to be a symphonic piety in which all of the activities of work and play and family and worship and sex and sleep are the holy habits of the eternal. (171)
• Petitions that are less than pure can only be purified by petition. (180)
• Love loves to be told what it knows already. ... It wants to be asked for what it longs to give. (181)
• Struggle is consistent with love, for it is an expression of our caring. (225)
• The righteous man strives in prayer with God and conquers in that God conquers. - Soren Kierkegaard (226)

Moving on, I am not completely sure what this blog will become. I am thinking it may be a prayer journal, and I like that idea better than abandoning the whole project. This is a question I will bring to God in conversational prayer!

Contemplative Prayer

The Concept

“For God alone my soul waits in silence.” (Ps. 52:1)  

 

Contemplative Prayer is silence before God, a respite from our addiction to words. Foster comments that our modern society is one that has more active communication but says less than any other society in history. With Contemplative Prayer, our own voice recedes, and we can enter an experience of the heart not the head, a focused and devoted attentiveness to being with God.

The experience and revelation of the Father gained through this prayer is far beyond the scope of human words. Thomas Merton describes, “God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons.”

Comfortable silence with God, as in any relationship, grows intimacy. Without words to cloak the interaction, the experience is pure and unadorned.

Yet Foster cautions that this is an “advanced” prayer, one that shouldn't be undertaken before maturity in prayer life is reached. He says it should only be exercised by those with “flexed spiritual muscles” who “know something about the spiritual landscape” because not all spiritual guidance is divine guidance. Though I appreciate the advice to pray for protection, to pray for divine guidance, before entering an attitude of contemplation, I don't think there is any need for “advanced” prayer techniques here. I think it calls for a pure heart, a heart solely seeking God, no matter the size of the spiritual muscles. Sometimes big muscles accompany big egos, and ego is the most dangerous thing on the spiritual landscape.

The steps given for this kind of prayer are :

1. recollection: releasing (not suppressing) all competing distractions until you are truly present where you are. This is difficult, but take encouragement: “If at first we achieve no more than the understanding of how much we lack in inner unity, something will have been gained, for in some way we will have made contact with that center which knows no distraction.” (Romano Guardini)
2. inner attentiveness: an expectant silence, utterly responsive to the Lord. The long-term goal is to bring this posture of listening naturally into the course of everyday experience.
3. spiritual ecstasy: this is the devastatingly beautiful revelation of God that transforms our hearts. It's nothing we can do, but a work God does upon us. Juliana of Norwich writes, “The whole reason why we pray is to be united into the vision and contemplation of him to whom we pray.” Madame Guyon explains, “This cannot be brought about merely by your own experience. Meditation will not bring divine union; neither will love, nor worship, nor your devotion, nor your sacrifice. … Eventually it will take an act of God to make union a reality.”

The Experience
This is not a prayer that you step into and master immediately. I quickly discovered in myself the pitfalls of pride and selfish aspiration, (“How cool it will be for my blog if I have a major contemplative success!”)

I also became aware of the weakness of the flesh, so bored by the absence of thought and language that it tends to put itself into sleep mode. I found it helpful to abandon the eastern meditation techniques of “emptying the mind” and focus instead upon release: acknowledge the thought then turn it loose because it's value is nothing compared with the desire to experience the Father. After several assessments of value like this, no thought stands for long. Still, it will take many attempts to silence this inner voice constantly playing to my mind's desire for entertainment.

I know from my meager attempts, that the key to this is “more of you and less of me.” In the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). I can think of nothing greater than scraping away all my outer layers – my words, my thoughts, my aspirations – and finding at the center only Christ. I know he is there now, but it may take stilling those outer layers to fully experience the truth of it in this lifetime.

As a huge fan of Martin Buber, this exercise made me want to re-read I and Thou because I think the genuine experience of the Thou is ultimately what Contemplative Prayer is about.

Covenant Prayer

The Concept

A covenant is a two-way commitment. Christ made a covenant with you through his blood shed on the cross, and Covenant Prayer is your responding commitment to him. Jesus says in John: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” Our response to his love is obedience.

This is not a legalistic, robot-soldier obedience. It is a duty in the sense of De Caussede who said “duty is the sacrament of the present moment.” This is obedience without reservation. Selfless, joyful obedience. An expression of love. A desire to please the God who has lavished the riches of his grace upon us.

Commitment is scary; most of us naturally veer away from it. We see it as confining, a sacrifice of freedom. (Yet freedom actually results from restraint. Only through discipline and commitment do we gain mastery of a skill or a relationship to the point that we can operate freely within it.) We see commitment as compulsory, a sacrifice of spontaneity. (But just because something is required does not mean it must lack joy or generosity.) We may fear commitment because we fear failure and the resulting self-condemnation. (But God knows the intention of your heart, and he will provide the desire and strength to take us to the heights as well as the grace and humility to catch our falls. A.W. Tozer writes, "We pursue God because and only because He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to that pursuit.' And here is the beautiful thing: finding God only deepens and heightens the pursuit.")

This Covenant is not a boring promise to obey but a redirection of the heart and mind to seek God at the center of you and at the center of everything, an expectant and relentless pursuit of God. When you seek him, spend time with him, when you know him, then you begin to know his will.

Prayer is a prerequisite of obedience. So Covenant Prayer is meant to be a quantifiable promise of a fixed habit of prayer, not merely an open-ended sentiment. It likely will involve a commitment of time (length and frequency) and of place (a location to anchor your focus). We must be careful of impossible burdens, but we must also be careful of complacency and stagnation.

This may all sound confining and uninspired, but John Dalrymple reminds us: “The truth is that we only learn to pray all the time everywhere after we have resolutely set about praying some of the time somewhere.” As soon as you set up a rule for yourself, you will be distracted. But you have a choice “you alone will decide whether you will hold steady in the inner sanctuary of the heart or rush out of the holy place, tyrannized by the urgent.”

Let this prayer and its commitment be a language of love, not a language of obligation.

The Experience

In praying about what kind of commitment I was going to make for at least this week, I turned open to Isaiah 2, and all over the page is the exaltation of the Lord alone. I was reminded not to give him just what is easiest, but to give him what is my best. I was reminded not to do this for this blog, for myself, for any personal agenda, but for him alone.

I committed to a quiet time with the Lord first thing, every morning, no excuses. Later that afternoon, a friend told me about the devotional website Pray As You Go. As soon as I checked it out, I knew that this would be a part of my Covenant Prayer.

As it turned out, this week was wonderful. The messages and quiet meditations from Pray As You Go were a respite for me, a renewal rather than a striving. It was something I looked forward to upon waking up, and I know this was a gift from God. A reward for my desire for commitment, a burden made light. A means to draw easily and comfortably closer to my Lord.

Authoritative Prayer

The Concept

Authoritative Prayer is not a personal prayer or a devotional prayer; it is neither petition or worship. It is a proclamation. Authoritative prayer is not asking God for something, but speaking his will into enemy territory. William Law says it is “not for getting man's will done in heaven,” but “for getting God's will done on earth.” It is kingdom advancement on a spiritual plane.

This type of prayer, directed at powers and principalities - not to God but from God - is biblical. God told Moses to stop praying and start exercising the authority he had given him (Ex. 14:15-16); Mark 11:23 instructs us to tell the mountain to move, not to pray that it will move. Throughout the gospel, Jesus prays/commands authoritatively. He directly addresses waves, demons, deaf ears, etc. and then gives that same authority to his disciples (Luke 9:1-2). In a personal story, Foster tells about a time that, after asking God repeatedly to remove his son's pain, he spoke directly to that pain and it was soothed.

Of course, this type of prayer can be dangerous. It is important to remember not wander away from God's sovereign, not to let pride and presumption pervert this God-given responsibility. We use his strength and his power, never our own. But there is also error in not exercising this authority at all, in making light of God's power and restraining it to a superficial, domesticated level. We are given the armor of God to fight spiritual battles (Eph. 6:12)!

We should actively seek and pray for discernment as a “guardrail” for Authoritative Prayer. “Discernment is the divine ability to see what is actually going on and to know what needs to be done in any given situation.” It is both wise and sensitive, seeking first and then obeying the will of God.

When we speak with authority from a transformed heart, there are beautiful results. Excesses in this type of prayer come from embracing the power of this prayer without embracing the compassion of it. In Jesus, we see power and compassion perfectly united, and in imitating him, we are in error when our power and compassion are out of balance - to either side.

The Experience

Authoritative Prayer is new territory for me. I have previously been suspicious when people pray directly to spirits. But I have also understood that prayer without activity is not God's will (Matt. 14:15-16). Surely we have been called to act - humbly, and through his power - in both the physical and the spiritual realms.... Remember, we are already seated with Christ in heavenly places! (Eph. 2:6)

Still, getting up one day and praying to "principalities" seemed beyond me. But I find Foster's chapter-closing prayer illuminating. We are not necessarily addressing demons or angels (though that is a real possibility), but we are free to directly address God's creation in his name. Foster prays:

In the strong name of Jesus Christ I stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil.... I oppose every attempt to keep me from knowing full fellowship with God. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I speak directly to the thoughts, emotions, and desires of my heart and command you to find your satisfaction in the infinite variety 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.....

There is power in our words. God desires us to step into the powerful gift he has given us, that we may be co-laborers with him, his ambassadors in this world. I am not standing comfortably in this authority today, but I do want to understand it better and to obey the Lord as he calls me further into the work of his kingdom.

Meditative Prayer

The Concept

In addressing Meditative Prayer, Foster focuses primarily on meditation of the scriptures. The aim is that “the Bible ceases to be a quotation dictionary and becomes instead wonderful words of life that lead us to the Word of Life.” It is a way of reading that differs from study/exegesis (which also has its place) by focusing on personal and internal application. 

This classic practice has been known by the church for centuries as Lectio Divina or “divine reading.” Lectio Divina is slowly reading a passage of scripture over and over again while imagining it, tasting it, applying it, and praying it until it becomes internalized.

Imagination is welcome, even invited, to this practice which engages both mind and heart. Inject your senses into the biblical narratives; when you see the setting in your mind's eye, when you imagine the tastes and sounds, then you will find yourself participating in the action rather than merely observing it. You will find that what was written in the past doesn't merely parallel the present, but can intersect it. (Another happy benefit of using the imagination is that it focuses the mind and prevents it from wandering.)

We are not using imagination to unlock historical facts. Your imagination, of course, may not match the actual circumstance or even the intent of the text, but it opens up a gate to your heart where God will show you what he would have you see just this day, just for you.

While Foster recommends practicing Meditative Prayer with the scriptures, he also suggests trying it with other Christian writings, remembering the words of Thomas à Kempis: “Search for truth in holy writings, not eloquence. All holy writing should be read in the same spirit with which it was written.... Do not let the writer's authority or learning influence you, be it little or great, but let the love of pure truth attract you to read.”

The Experience

Each day this week I [almost randomly] chose passages from the prophets, from the psalms, from the gospels, from the epistles, and applied this imaginative approach. I focused on passages only one or two verses long. This is different for me, as I usually read a chapter or more each day, but I found that what I read this week stuck better throughout the day, and I also found that I was connecting the truths I was being shown from day to day.

It took discipline for me, as I am in a pattern of reading to study rather than reading to meditate. Often, I had to refuse impulses to look up the original Hebrew or Greek word, to read too much ahead or behind, to scour the concordance, etc. There is a time for these things, but not in this exercise. Whenever I would get caught up with a curiosity that would only lead me on a chain-reference scavenger hunt, I would acknowledge the curiosity for what it was: a distraction. I might make a quick note to check it out later, but then I would return to seeing the text as “life not lines” and ask God to show me what he wanted to tell my heart directly that day, hoping for a new revelation about his very nature so I can know him more.

For me, the difficulty was treating this like prayer and not a mere exercise. But the reward is so rich, that I hope to incorporate this type of reading – even if only for a few minutes – into every devotional reading/prayer of the scriptures.

As an example of the fullness of this kind of prayer-reading, on Day One, I selected a newly favorite passage of mine:

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,  

Though the olive crop fails  

and the fields produce no food,

Though there are no sheep in the pen
   and no cattle in the stalls,  

Yet I will rejoice in the LORD.
   I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
   He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
   He enables me to tread on the heights. 

-Hab. 3:17-19

Before, I had read this and appreciated the sentiment of rejoicing even in times of trouble. I had enjoyed the poetic language and even applied it in prayer. But after this day, it really became alive for me.

As I really took stock in what it would mean for the fig tree not to bud, and the cattle stalls to stand empty, I realized how heart-breakingly frustrating, soul-crushing, even scary, it would be to have put so much work into a job and have it yield nothing, to the point that you might not know where your next bite to eat would come from. Planting fields, building pens: these jobs required my efforts, but their yield depends solely on the blessings of God. Progressing through the short text, I then allowed myself to really think what it is to be joyful in God, to rejoice in the Lord. I felt myself lifted up from the disappointment of fruitless work and concentrated on the eternal truths of a mighty God who loves us and has saved us from darkness. He makes my feet like a deer so I may go to the heights and be with him – this is the work he has done for me, and again I can rejoice because his work will not be fruitless. Amen!

Formation Prayer

The Concept

I will let Foster define this prayer: “The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son. This process of transformation is the sole focus of Formation Prayer.”

Unless we are changed by a life of prayer, we will not maintain a life of prayer. God is a gracious father, and he teaches us to press in deeper and deeper into our relationship by pulling back in seasons to wean us of our selfishness and complacency. Each step towards him is not a step on a path that stops at perfection, but a step that leads us endlessly deeper and deeper into infinite revelation.

The realm of prayer is both where we pursue God and where we are pursued by God. There are seasons for striving and initiating and seasons for yielding and receiving, but always we must be malleable like clay in the hands of the potter. We do not change ourselves, his power alone “can melt this heart of stone.” Evelyn Underhill calls us to be “completely abandoned in the hands of God.” Foster asked us to imagine it as an adult guiding the hand of a child to draw on a paper. Humility is required if we are to be truly transformed.

I don't know any better way to summarize the intent of this prayer than by this passage from Richard Foster's book:

As winter approaches each year, I like to watch our large maple in the backyard begin to lose its covering of summer green and take on a funeral brown. As the leaves drop, one by one all the irregularities and defects of the tree are exposed. The imperfections are always there, of course, but they have been hidden from my view by an emerald blanket. Now, however, it is denuded and desolate, and I can see its real condition.

Winter preserves and strengthens a tree. Rather than expending its strength on the exterior surface, its sap is forced deeper and deeper into its interior depth. In winter a tougher, more resilient life is firmly established. Winter is necessary for the tree to survive and flourish.

Instantly you see the application. So often we hide our true condition with the surface virtues of pious activity, but, once the leaves of our frantic pace drop away, the power of a wintry spirituality can have effect.

To the outward eye everything looks barren and unsightly. Our many defects, flaws, weaknesses, and imperfections stand out in bold relief. But only the outward virtues have collapsed; the principle of virtue is actually being strengthened. The soul is venturing forth into the interior. Real, solid, enduring virtues begin to develop deep within. Pure love is being birthed.

The Experience

I didn't want to blog this week, because I wanted to hold out until I could pinpoint “my transformation” and proudly present it to cyberspace. But instead, there was no momentous occasion that I could look at and say “See! That's where I was changed!” But out of respect to transparency and humility, I will instead post about what I was shown about how to change.

As I was praying this week, the words of Ephesians kept coming to mind, and I realized that no amount of striving for a change of heart can work. But striving to know God more, to understand and truly befriend Jesus Christ, this is the path that leads to heart transformation. Paul prayed:

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”(Eph. 17-21)

I was practically born into the faith. And though I spent some years flagrantly sinning, I never intentionally hurt anyone other than myself. When I came back to Christ and the church, it felt like returning home, and I never had a huge salvation moment as an adult. Of course, I know Jesus died for me and that I am a sinner and the wages of my sin is death, but I've never been moved by this knowledge: I've never cried for this grace, and I've never considered this exchange impossible. In my pride, I've never doubted my worthiness to receive this cosmic gift. It's not out of stubbornness or some ridiculous self-deification, but it does shed a light on what parts of my heart are in desperate need of transformation!

But knowing Jesus more will release the proper responses to his infinite goodness and grace. Knowing him more intimately will cause my knees to buckle before his majesty. The more I know of love, the more I can share it. The more I know his character, the more I will tend towards conforming to it. The more I know his holiness, the more I will recognize my wretchedness. The more I intimate his Truth, the more my life will be clothed in humility. Today, I pray that I can join in the prayer of Job (42:5&6):

My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.

The Prayer of Suffering

The Concept

There will be suffering! So naturally there is a Prayer of Suffering. The victory of the cross is not that we will avoid suffering but that we will pass through it and find triumph on the other side. As George MacDonald said, “The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” For Christ himself was“a man of sorrows acquainted with grief” “who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross.”

Take comfort that your suffering is not for nothing. God uses everything for something beautiful and good, according to his eternal purpose (Eph. 1:11 and Rom. 8:28). As we mature spiritually, we gracefully find that joy and suffering are not opposed but are complementary. Our hearts are enlarged and sensitized by suffering; our trust in God grows; our perseverance is strengthened; our trials becomes a our ministry to others (Rom. 5:3-4). Sorrow is full of purpose and meaning: it unleashes compassion and healing in the world.

As we persevere in our own sufferings, we are also called to share in the suffering of others, to stand with them in their sorrow and in their sin … not at arm's length but in the middle of their mess. As we allow ourselves to be carried beyond pat answers and beyond pity into the true sharing of emotions, our prayers become “we” rather than “he, she, they.” Of course, once we have taken up a burden, we must also release it into the arms of the Father and enter his rest, because we are not required to be heavy laden. “Hold the agony of others just long enough for them to let go of it for themselves. Then together we can give all things over to God.”

Fasting is a physical sign of the seriousness and intensity of the Prayer of Suffering. We relinquish a physical necessity to show our need for even greater nourishment. Fasting is a sign that nothing will stop us in our struggle on behalf of the broken and oppressed. Mysteriously (and not magically!), fasting has weight with God and an affect upon others. It is not to be self-torture but a sign of submission and dependency upon the hand of God.

When God's glory is revealed, we will see what a privilege suffering has been: our own suffering in this world, suffering for the sake of Christ, and the sharing in the sufferings of his body. “But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1Pet. 4:13, also Rom. 8:18).

The Experience

I think the Prayer of Suffering is a two-parter. It's prayer during your own suffering, relinquishing your hold on your broken heart to the Lord to accept his healing and his use of your experience. It's also prayer during someone else's suffering, either with them or for them, that goes beyond intercession because you truly enter into their suffering and take on their pain as your own and present it to the Lord.

I am not a tearful person, so when I cry, I know something powerful is happening within me. On a few occasions, while praying, the Holy Spirit has moved me to weeping as my heart opens to the cause of another person. This has even happened for total strangers. Though I don't particularly know the words I prayed in those situations, the memory of the prayer experience is strong.

In another very timely “coincidence,” this topic of prayer came up the very week that several of my close friends had organized a fast and prayer session for me! I was truly and deeply comforted by the willingness of others to deprive themselves of food, time, and their own agendas to help me shoulder my burden and carry it to the cross. I was amazed at the differing perspectives each individual brought to the table, illuminating and clarifying the situation in unexpected ways. I am convinced the Lord builds us up and teaches us and unites us through the shared suffering of the body.

The key to really allowing yourself to be moved by another's situation is to really understand their situation. I don't mean pry into all the details, but I do mean step into their shoes. This week I was praying for an acquaintance whose story and personality I don't know much about, yet I found that the more I prayed not for things but about things (the more I told her story to God almost conversationally), the more I found myself understanding her heart and the truths at work below the obvious crisis. Only then did I know what I should be praying for! This prayer is love. You will be surprised at the healing that takes place in your own heart as your lift someone else up for healing in this way.