Prayer: A Conversation

This week’s devotion is written by Richard Foster, the founder of Ren­o­varé, and is entitled, “Understanding Prayer”. We hope this devotion encourages your faith.

Prayer is the heart’s true home. But, you see, we have been in a far coun­try. It’s been a coun­try of climb and push and shove. It’s been a coun­try of noise and hur­ry and crowds.

The heart of God is an open wound of love because of this dis­tance and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of ours. God mourns that we do not draw near to him. God weeps over our obses­sion with ​“much­ness” and ​“many­ness.”

And God is seek­ing after us. God seeks us like the father rush­ing out to embrace the prodi­gal. God seeks us like the woman who will leave no stone unturned in her deter­mi­na­tion to find a lost coin. God seeks us like the shep­herd search­ing, search­ing, search­ing for one lost sheep. God is seek­ing us. 

God invites us to come home: home to where we belong; home to seren­i­ty and peace and joy; home to inti­ma­cy and accep­tance and affirmation. 

God wel­comes us into the liv­ing room of his heart where we can put on old slip­pers and share freely. God wel­comes us into the bed­room of his rest where we can be naked and vul­ner­a­ble and free. It is also the place of deep­est inti­ma­cy where we can know and be known to the fullest. 

And it doesn’t mat­ter if we have lit­tle faith, or none. It doesn’t mat­ter if we have been bruised and bro­ken by the pres­sures of life. It doesn’t mat­ter if our prayers have grown cold and brit­tle. It doesn’t mat­ter if God seems remote and inaccessible. 

Just like a lit­tle child can nev­er draw a bad pic­ture, so a child of God can nev­er utter a bad prayer. God, you see, accepts us just the way we are, and he accepts our prayers just the way they are. 

But here is the beau­ty of this inter­ac­tive life of prayer: God does not leave us the way we are. God’s inten­tion is to trans­form our inward char­ac­ter into the like­ness of Christ. C. S. Lewis writes that God’s intent for you and me is to form us into ​“a daz­zling, radi­ant, immor­tal crea­ture, pul­sat­ing all through with such ener­gy and joy and wis­dom and love as we can­not now imag­ine, a bright stain­less mir­ror which reflects back to God per­fect­ly (though, of course, on a small­er scale) His own bound­less pow­er and delight and good­ness.” The inter­ac­tive life of prayer is a cen­tral means God uses for bring­ing this trans­for­ma­tive real­i­ty into the deep habit struc­tures of our lives. 

Now, we must not think of prayer as a flat, dull, one-dimen­sion­al expe­ri­ence. Far from it! Prayer is a dance, a love feast, a wrestling match, a high, hilar­i­ous par­ty… I could con­tin­ue adding metaphors for some time. Prayer is so rich and var­ied and indi­vid­u­al­ized a reality. 

The syn­tax of prayer is love. ​“True, whole prayer is noth­ing but love,” writes Augus­tine of Hip­po. ​“The Trin­i­ty is our ever­last­ing lover,” declares Julian of Nor­wich. ​“Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly,” cries out Charles Wes­ley. The heart of God is open wide to receive us; we are wel­come to come home.