Celebration of Discipline: Prayer

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which is an email I send to the par­tic­i­pants). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online if you’d like to read along.

This week’s spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline is prayer. I found this chap­ter a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing because I’ve read Fos­ter’s book Prayer, and it’s the best book on prayer I’ve ever read. Most books on prayer make me feel guilty for not pray­ing enough, but his book encour­aged me so much that I kept putting it down to pray right away. This chap­ter was good, but it’s only the embry­on­ic form of Fos­ter’s best writ­ing on this sub­ject. If you like what he says here, order Prayer right now.

A few thoughts in response to this week’s read­ing:

1. First, you should also read this one-page C.S. Lewis essay “If God Is Sov­er­eign, Why Should We Pray?” It will answer ques­tions that I am con­fi­dent some of you have. You can also find this essay as chap­ter 11 of his book God In The Dock — the ver­sion I linked to is slight­ly abridged, so if you own God in the Dock I sug­gest you read it there.
2. Sec­ond, there are so many tid­bits of advice scat­tered through­out this chap­ter that I urge you to just focus on one at a time. Just as a sci­en­tist learns best when they adjust one vari­able at a time, we will gain the most if we incor­po­rate insights slow­ly.
3. Third, I think the sin­gle most impor­tant sen­tence in this chap­ter might be, “I deter­mined to learn to pray so that my expe­ri­ence con­formed to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words con­form to my impov­er­ished expe­ri­ence” (page 37). If that is your men­tal­i­ty you will expe­ri­ence tremen­dous growth and see great things.
4. Fourth, some­thing he does­n’t empha­size as much as I would like is that a huge part of prayer is call­ing upon God’s nature (i.e, call­ing on the name of the Lord) and call­ing upon His promis­es. Our faith is root­ed in His faith­ful­ness, both His faith­ful­ness to His char­ac­ter and His faith­ful­ness to His com­mit­ments. A great way to do this is by pray­ing Scrip­ture. Andy Nasel­li has a sol­id arti­cle about this: 12 Rea­sons You Should Pray Scrip­ture.
5. Fifth and final­ly, I very much appre­ci­ate how he empha­sized pray­ing for your pas­tor (page 43). I tell you frankly and with­out shame that I cov­et your prayers. As Paul said in 1 Thess 5:25, “pray for us.” Don’t know how to pray for a pas­tor? Paul basi­cal­ly asked the church to pay for his pro­tec­tion and effec­tive­ness. Specif­i­cal­ly, he asked peo­ple to pray for open doors for his min­istry (Col 4:3), the abil­i­ty to preach clear­ly (Col 4:4), fear­less­ness in min­istry (Eph 6:19), Spir­it-led words as he preached (Eph 6:19), that the gospel would spread through his min­istry (2 Thess 3:1), for deliv­er­ance from those who wished him harm (2 Thess 3:2, Romans 15:31), favor for his min­istry (Romans 15:31), for deliv­er­ance from despair and chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances (2 Cor 1:9–11, Philip­pi­ans 1:19), for safe and suc­cess­ful min­istry trips (Romans 15:32), and for him to return safe­ly to a friend (Phile­mon 1:22). Pray just a few of those things for me and I’ll be grate­ful!

Next week’s chap­ter is on fast­ing and it’s super-prac­ti­cal. If I recall cor­rect­ly, it was the chap­ter on fast­ing that made the most sig­nif­i­cant impres­sion upon me when I first read this book back in col­lege. I hope it helps you as much as it did me!