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The Practice of Prayer
from the Introduction to Kenneth Boa's HANDBOOK FOR PRAYER: PRAYING SCRIPTURE BACK TO GOD (Trinity House Publishers, 1993). THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER Spiritual growth is impossible apart from the practice of prayer. Just as the key to enhanced relationships with other people is time spent in communication, so the key to a growing relationship with the personal God of heaven and earth is time invested in speaking to Him in prayer and listening to His voice in Scripture. As central as these twin disciplines of prayer and Scripture are to our spiritual life, most believers in Christ are frustrated by hit-or-miss approaches to both. As a result, their time in prayer and the word can become unsatisfying, routine, and even boring. It is no surprise, then, that most people spend a minimal amount of time in either of these disciplines and fail to develop intimacy with the One for whom they were created. The problem with prayer is heightened by the fact that people often succumb either to the extreme of all form and no freedom, or the opposite extreme of all freedom and no form. The first extreme leads to a rote or impersonal approach to prayer, while the second produces an unbalanced and undisciplined prayer life that can degenerate into a litany of one 'gimme' after another. [My wife gave me this book for Christmas. It has been a wonderful help to me in my prayer life. For information call 1-800-DRAW NEA(R), (372-9632)]. Have a great week, Chip |