Prayer - 10th Anniversary Edition: Finding the Heart's True Home - Softcover

Foster, Richard J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006053379X ISBN 13: 9780060533793

Publisher: Sanfran, 2003

Synopsis

Best-selling author Richard J. Foster offers a warm, compelling, and sensitive primer on prayer, helping us to understand, experience, and practice it in its many forms-from the simple prayer of beginning again to unceasing prayer. He clarifies the prayer process, answers common misconceptions, and shows the way into prayers of contemplation, healing, blessing, forgiveness, and rest.

Coming to prayer is like coming home, Foster says. "Nothing feels more right, more like what we are created to be and to do. Yet at the same time we are confronted with great mysteries. Who hasn't struggled with the puzzle of unanswered prayer? Who hasn't wondered how a finite person can commune with the infinite Creator of the universe? Who hasn't questioned whether prayer isn't merely psychological manipulation after all? We do our best, of course, to answer these knotty questions but when all is said and done, there is a sense in which these mysteries remain unanswered and unanswerable . . . At such times we must learn to become comfortable with the mystery."

Foster shows how prayer can move us inward into personal transformation, upward toward intimacy with God, and outward to minister to others. He leads us beyond questions to a deeper understanding and practice of prayer, bringing us closer to God, to ourselves, and to our community.

About this title

Review:

Of course there are hundreds of books on prayer and much of the advice in them is likely to be the same. So what is it that distinguishes the best of these many books? Call it a kind of wisdom, a sense that here's someone who knows something of God's heart. A good example can be found in this fine book by the Quaker writer and teacher Richard Foster. The author of the bestselling Celebration of Discipline explores various aspects of prayer, which he defines in one place as "the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul". Beginning with the simplest forms of prayer--what he calls "ordinary people bringing ordinary concerns to a loving and compassionate Father"--he then explores the deeper places where prayer becomes not simply petition but a way of life. He writes of prayer, adoration and rest, sacramental prayer, meditation, and contemplation and, in the final section of the book, moves outward into ministry where prayer meets the needs of the world. In each chapter Foster defines, describes, and gives helpful examples. Above all, he writes with grace--a word I use here in both artistic and spiritual senses. --Doug Thorpe

Review:

"Magnificent! ... carried us into communion with Christians of every century and denomination."--Rev. John Loren Sandford and Rev. Paula A. Sandford, Co-Founders of Elijah House, Inc.

"You will not find a better guide. This is a landmark book."--Dallas Willard, author of The Divine Conspiracy

"This book has helped me immensely in my struggles for spiritual vitality and depth."--Tony Campolo, Professor of Sociology, Eastern University

"This book is a rare gift... both a guide to prayer and an answer to one."--John Ortberg, author of "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat"

"As one fairly fluent with words, I am hard-pressed to express the impact of this timeless classic on my life. Richard Foster's book is invaluable now, but not quite as invaluable as it will be a hundred years from now."--Brennan Manning, author of The Wisdom of Tenderness

"A master teaching on the Master Subject."--Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Canada, and author of Answering God

"...takes the mystery out of prayer and returns it to the ordinary rhythms of life"--Robert Webber, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary

About this edition

• Publisher: Sanfran
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 006053379X
• ISBN 13: 9780060533793
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544