Luke 11:1-4 Celebration Of Discipline: Prayer page 1
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Luke 11:1-4 Celebration Of Discipline: Prayer page 1 |
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Introduction So - hands up anyone who's satisfied with their prayer life? [Hopefully no-one will.] There is something wrong with us if we are satisfied with our prayer life. If we do think there is no room for improvement, then we are saying there is uninhibited, perfect communication between ourselves and God. There is always something new to learn. To sit on our laurels in any area of our Christian experience is dangerous, and to do so with prayer is particularly risky. My parents once put on a display about a course in Christian basics at an event. One Christian they knew came up to them and pooh-poohed the course they were promoting. "We don't need anything like that here, we're all experienced Christians," said their critic. You won't be surprised to know that the man in question was a negative influence in his own congregation. We all need to learn more about prayer, because none of us can be self-satisfied. At the same time, they way we may enter more deeply into prayer is not always by finding ever more obscure and mysterious teaching, but by going back to the basics. That is what happens here, and much of what Richard Foster teaches in chapter three of 'Celebration Of Discipline' is also a case of going back to basics in order to go deeper. Perhaps you have had a bad experience of prayer: you felt let down, something you badly wanted was not granted. Foster has a helpful analogy: if your television goes wrong, you don't stop believing in the existence of television. Instead, you consult the manual, and if necessary call an engineer. So it is with prayer, and this is a further reason for going back to basics.
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |