Prayer Richard Foster.
Pg 7
It is the notion –almost universal among us modern high achievers –that we have to have everything ‘just right’ in order to pray. That is, before we can really pray, our lives need some fine tuning, or we need to know more about how to pray, or we need to study the philosophical questions surrounding prayer, or we need to have a better grasp of the great traditions of prayer. And on it goes.
That puts us in the ‘on top’ position, where we are competent and in control. But when praying we come ‘underneath’, where we calmly and deliberately deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.
‘To pray,’ writes Emilie Griffin, ‘means to be willing to be naïve.’ The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives –altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it.
The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives –altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it.