Richard Foster: Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Book Review day has come round again!  Today we look at Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster, a Quaker theologian and author of the book Celebration of Discipline.  

A friend introduced me to Foster’s book on prayer when I was in my mid-fifties. He knew I was interested in prayer, so he suggested I try each of the 21 types of prayer the book describes.

I ordered the cheapest copy of the book I could find and when it arrived, my teenage son and daughter saw I had received the large print edition. Oops! I assured them it was a mistake, that I really wasn’t that old, and that I really did not need the large print. However, they made so many jokes about my eyesight and age that  I considered throwing the book at them, or throwing it away.

Instead, I read it and liked it. Following my friend’s suggestion, I spent 21 weeks praying by the book, using a different type of prayer each week. That was a good experience. It broadened my thinking about what prayer is and what it can be, and it gave me new tools for praying about myself and others. 

So what are the 21 kinds of prayer? Here are some chapter titles: Simple Prayer, Prayer of the Forsaken, The Prayer of Rest, Praying the Ordinary, Radical Prayer. At the end of each chapter, the author provides a sample prayer in that genre. 

For example, the chapter on Healing Prayer has wonderful examples of people who were healed by prayer and medicine, or by prayer alone. Foster’s end-of-chapter prayer says: “My Lord and my God, I have a thousand arguments against Healing Prayer. You are the one argument for it . . . . You win. Help me to be a conduit through which your healing love can flow to others.  For Jesus’ sake.” 

Foster talks about spiritual warfare in the  chapter Authoritative Prayer and presents a helpful concluding prayer. “In the strong name of Jesus Christ I stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. I resist every force that would seek to distract me from my center in God. I reject the distorted concepts and ideas that make sin plausible and desirable. I oppose every attempt to keep me from knowing full fellowship with God.”

I like that phrase, “I reject the distorted ideas that make sin plausible and desirable.” That’s what I’ve been trying to pray, but I haven’t had the words for it. 

That’s today’s book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster. It’s worth owning, but only if you use it. And if your eyes are a bit weak, I might even trade my large-print edition for a copy in regular size print. 

Let’s pray, using the benediction which concludes Foster’s book.
May you now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, receive the spirit of prayer. May it become, in the name of Jesus Christ, the most precious occupation of your life. And may the God of all peace strengthen you, bless you, and give you joy.  

Amen. 

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

When Daniel, who is famous for his episode with the lions, read the prophecies of Jeremiah, he learned that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. Now that those years were almost over, Daniel prayed that the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple would occur on schedule, saying: “I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and . . . sackcloth and ashes.” His prayer included confession and request: “Our sins and the sins of our ancestors have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn. . .  . Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay” (Dan. 9:16, 19).

While Daniel was praying, the angel Gabriel came to him and said, “As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.” Gabriel’s word was an explanation of the future. Yes, God would honor Jeremiah’s prophecy and Daniel’s prayer. Jerusalem would be rebuilt and a new anointed king would come. But an evil ruler would also come, and he would kill the anointed one and destroy the restored Jerusalem and the rebuilt temple (Dan. 9:25-27).

Thanks, Gabriel, for this helpful and encouraging answer to Daniel’s prayer. Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the anointed king will come. But then history will repeat itself with the murder of the king and the destruction of the city.

Daniel wasn’t exactly happy with this answer, so two years later, he fasted and prayed again. He says, “At that time I . . . mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no . . . wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all. . . .”  At the end of three weeks, an angel appeared to Daniel and said, “Since the first day you . . . [started praying] . . . your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, . . .  [but] soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come” (Daniel 10:12-14). This seems to describe angelic warfare where Michael, the protector of Israel (Dan. 12:1) is fighting against demonic princes of the Persian and Greek empires.

Daniel’s experience of prayer raises questions about the relationship of human prayer to what happens among angels and demons in the heavenly realm. I offer three observations.

1.    First, our western secular worldview that earth is earth and heaven is heaven, and rarely the twain shall meet is clearly wrong. Daniel met and interacted with warrior angels who were protecting Israel (Daniel 12:1), fighting against the demonic princes of Persia and Greece (Daniel 10:20), and carrying messages between heaven and earth.

2.    Second, in Ephesians 6:12-13, Paul describes a similar state of affairs when he says, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God. . . .” In my early twenties, I struggled with depression and guilt and isolation and fear, but I refused to see my difficulties as spiritual warfare. I assumed that my biggest problem was me, not the rulers and authorities and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. But still, I regularly followed Paul’s advice, praying to put on the armour of God. My mind rejected Paul’s view of spiritual warfare at the same time my prayer life implemented it.

3.    Third, Daniel’s prayer was heard immediately but it took Gabriel three weeks to get through with an answer. Sometimes I pray for simple stuff, like more self-control in my eating — less chocolate, less snacking, more vegetables, etc. Years ago, after someone pointed out Daniel’s experience to me, I noticed it often took about three weeks for me to begin receiving an answer that enabled my self-control. One of my difficulties in prayer is keeping a request in focus for three whole weeks! That’s a long time in the earthly realm I live in.

Let’s pray.

Our father, help us not to concern ourselves with “things too wonderful for us” (Psalm 131:1), or to entangle ourselves in battles better left to angels and demons. But we believe that our prayers influence a heavenly realm we only perceive dimly. And we believe the heavenly realm influences our lives. Guide us in this spiritual battle, Lord, make us good Christian soldiers.

Amen.  

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Footnote: For a helpful discussion of spiritual warfare, see: Gerald Ediger in the journal Direction: A Mennonite Brethren Forum, Fall 2000 · Vol. 29 No. 2 · pp. 125–141 Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare in Historical Retrospect. Online at as of June 15, 2019 at https://directionjournal.org/29/2/strategic-level-spiritual-warfare-in.html.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”, is a favorite psalm. A friend recently asked why I thought Psalm 23 is often used at funerals. I replied, “Because it’s comforting to think of Jesus leading someone through the valley of the shadow of death and giving them rest in quiet pastures beside still waters and inviting them to dwell in his house forever.”  I said, “The funeral would feel very different if the text was Psalm 22, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

At first glance, the psalms seem to be placed in a random order, but I think there is wisdom in placing Psalm 23 after Psalm 22. After meditating last week on, “Why have you forsaken me, God?”, we are ready this week for the comforts of the Shepherd Psalm. Part of the genius of the psalms is to open our lives to a wider experience of God. If last week was filled with abandonment and despair, perhaps this week God will be present to us as a shepherd. If last week God was a sheepdog nipping at our heels, herding us into the corral of righteousness, perhaps this week he will lead us gently into green pastures, to a table overflowing with food and wine.

Let’s pray.

Jesus, we walk in a dry desert world. We drink our fill of news and Facebook and movies and meetings and shopping and work and play. But still we are thirsty.
    Lead us, good shepherd, beside quiet waters. In silence may we drink from your river.

We walk in a barren world. Our road is littered with plastic and pop cans and broken glass, we walk on asphalt and cement through in a haze of pollution and smoke.
    Lead us, good shepherd, to green pastures.

We walk in a noisy world. We hear the sound and fury of sports and advertisements and celebrity gossip and politics and wars. But our souls are empty and wasted.
    Restore our souls, good shepherd. Breath into us the breath of life.

We walk in a wasteland of evil. The world, the flesh, and the devil are ever near. “We see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds we hear” (John Bode, hymn O Jesus, I Have Promised).
    Lead us, good shepherd, in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.

We walk in a world of sickness and death, in a valley strewn with the wreckage of accidents, natural disasters, cancer, moral failure, and mortality.
    Walk with us, good shepherd, in this dark valley. May your rod and your staff comfort us and deliver us from anxiety and fear.

We walk through a land filled with enemies. The world invites us to escape into pleasures of mind and body, to choose philosophies of existentialism and despair, to numb our pain with drugs and music.
Prepare for us a table, good shepherd, in the presence of our enemies. Feed us true food, serve us true wine. Anoint our heads with oil, fill our cups to overflowing.

We walk in a world filled with violence and abuse .
Follow us, good shepherd, with goodness and mercy all the days of our lives, until we dwell in your house forever.

Amen

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.