In 1995, someone found Richard Foster's book Prayer
on a desk at the high school where I was a regular substitute teacher. I was also a pastor in town at the time, so the office assumed it was mine—it wasn’t—and insisted I take it since no one else claimed it. Like many of the books I have acquired over the years, it ended up on a bookshelf in my basement, unread.
Over ten years later, I finally decided to start reading Foster’s book at a time when I needed to completely rebuild my spiritual life. When I got the book, the world was very different than it is now. I had never been on the Internet and had no idea what technological innovations were about to be let loose on the world. I grew up under the Cold War threat of nuclear bombs; fortunately, that threat never materialized. But I never suspected how we would soon be bombarded with something seemingly so innocuous and yet potentially so dangerous—information.
All of that information is taking its toll as more and more people are showing signs of information and communication overload. The Sunday New York Times contains more information than a person who lived in the 15th century was exposed to during his or her entire life (page 4, Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding The New Currency Of Business
). The weapons of mass communication are ubiquitous—the Internet, cell phones, emails, PDAs (personal digital assistants), instant messaging, and even beepers and faxes are still around. In this model, people are always within reach of communication—even if they are halfway around the world—a characteristic formerly reserved for God but more and more becoming the domain of mere mortals. In the midst of all these assaults on our minds, many of us are having a difficult time identifying that "still small voice" of God. We are connected to everyone, but finding it harder to stay connected to the Holy One. How does one hear His voice in the midst of this chaos called the modern world? This is where Richard Foster helped me with his Prayer book.
After the New World Order of information overload arrived, I started having a lot of trouble praying. My prayer style required elaborate start-up routines. I thought short prayers were for the weak, the unspiritual. But my prayer life had nearly grounded to a halt, a mere pittance of prayer reflecting an overall spiritual decline. I had learned to pray in a divided, walled off world where we thought communism was the primary threat. I lost my prayer life in a connected world ruled by cyberspace and technology. It just seemed there was too much stuff coming at me all of the time in this new world to get started praying again.
In Prayer, Foster taught me the valuable, ancient practice of "breath prayers," which are prayers that last only a single breath. These little prayers seemed almost foolish to me as I started, mere baby steps for a grown man, but who was I to judge? I needed to learn how to pray all over again. So I started with baby steps as I began the long road back toward living the Apostle Paul's admonition to "Pray without ceasing."
As I got started, I did notice there were what seemed to be breath prayers in the Bible:
"Now strengthen my hands" (Nehemiah 6:10).
"God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13).
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
So I decided to try it. In response to an email request for my church’s prayer chain, I prayed:"Lord, heal the clot on Lee's brain."
That was it. No warm up or gyrations needed. Just straight to the prayer. No movement from the outer court to the inner court. No lengthy prerequisites that I had to do, such as acknowledging God’s name as holy followed by praise, adoration, petition, and closing with thanksgiving for what God would now do in response to my faith. No prayer acronyms to try to remember. Just a mere breath prayer. A single, prayer-filled breath.
It felt strange, informal. Before breath prayers, I would have told myself I would pray about the email request during my regular prayer time, and then my regular prayer time would have never come, squeezed out by something far less noble.
I discovered that breath prayers are the kind of prayers that I can weave into the daily hustle and bustle of life as a corporate employee commuting nearly an hour each way to work. Instead of having to get a dial up connection to God each time I want to pray, I can stay connected all of the time—like a DSL or cable connection—interspersing breath prayers into my commute, on the job, a lunchtime walk, whenever. Breath prayers are agile, allowing one to pray on-demand in a variety of situations. Instead of trying to get God's attention through my eloquence in prayer, breath prayers signify a return to simplicity, something I desperately needed.
"Lord, thank you for this cup of coffee."
"God, please restore the Johnson's marriage."
"Guide my children at school today."
"Help my pastor hear Your voice."
I had unwittingly thought that God's answers to my prayers were somehow tied to the quality and wording of my prayers. I had somehow believed that the more biblical phrases I incorporated into a prayer, the better the chance I had at getting the answer I was looking for. I am now learning to trust that God will do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine. I think this means that His ability to answer my prayers far exceeds my ability to pray them in some profound way that moves Him to act.
Although breath prayers tend to be short, simple sentences, akin to praying bullet points, I still pray in paragraphs sometimes—maybe even an essay now and then— mostly during my weekly prayer walk in the woods at a local nature center. So I stay connected to God during the week through breath prayers, and use the weekends for extended prayer times. These two practices have helped me revitalize a prayer life that had gone null and void.
How are you coping with the information age? Are you burdened by your “connectedness” to the world while your connection to God has been at worst dropped, or is at best an occasional dial-up connection? Breath prayers may be the first tentative step back toward a healthy prayer life.
Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). Sounds a lot like an endorsement of breath prayers to me.
on a desk at the high school where I was a regular substitute teacher. I was also a pastor in town at the time, so the office assumed it was mine—it wasn’t—and insisted I take it since no one else claimed it. Like many of the books I have acquired over the years, it ended up on a bookshelf in my basement, unread. Over ten years later, I finally decided to start reading Foster’s book at a time when I needed to completely rebuild my spiritual life. When I got the book, the world was very different than it is now. I had never been on the Internet and had no idea what technological innovations were about to be let loose on the world. I grew up under the Cold War threat of nuclear bombs; fortunately, that threat never materialized. But I never suspected how we would soon be bombarded with something seemingly so innocuous and yet potentially so dangerous—information.
All of that information is taking its toll as more and more people are showing signs of information and communication overload. The Sunday New York Times contains more information than a person who lived in the 15th century was exposed to during his or her entire life (page 4, Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding The New Currency Of Business
). The weapons of mass communication are ubiquitous—the Internet, cell phones, emails, PDAs (personal digital assistants), instant messaging, and even beepers and faxes are still around. In this model, people are always within reach of communication—even if they are halfway around the world—a characteristic formerly reserved for God but more and more becoming the domain of mere mortals. In the midst of all these assaults on our minds, many of us are having a difficult time identifying that "still small voice" of God. We are connected to everyone, but finding it harder to stay connected to the Holy One. How does one hear His voice in the midst of this chaos called the modern world? This is where Richard Foster helped me with his Prayer book.After the New World Order of information overload arrived, I started having a lot of trouble praying. My prayer style required elaborate start-up routines. I thought short prayers were for the weak, the unspiritual. But my prayer life had nearly grounded to a halt, a mere pittance of prayer reflecting an overall spiritual decline. I had learned to pray in a divided, walled off world where we thought communism was the primary threat. I lost my prayer life in a connected world ruled by cyberspace and technology. It just seemed there was too much stuff coming at me all of the time in this new world to get started praying again.
In Prayer, Foster taught me the valuable, ancient practice of "breath prayers," which are prayers that last only a single breath. These little prayers seemed almost foolish to me as I started, mere baby steps for a grown man, but who was I to judge? I needed to learn how to pray all over again. So I started with baby steps as I began the long road back toward living the Apostle Paul's admonition to "Pray without ceasing."
As I got started, I did notice there were what seemed to be breath prayers in the Bible:
"Now strengthen my hands" (Nehemiah 6:10).
"God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13).
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
So I decided to try it. In response to an email request for my church’s prayer chain, I prayed:"Lord, heal the clot on Lee's brain."
That was it. No warm up or gyrations needed. Just straight to the prayer. No movement from the outer court to the inner court. No lengthy prerequisites that I had to do, such as acknowledging God’s name as holy followed by praise, adoration, petition, and closing with thanksgiving for what God would now do in response to my faith. No prayer acronyms to try to remember. Just a mere breath prayer. A single, prayer-filled breath.
It felt strange, informal. Before breath prayers, I would have told myself I would pray about the email request during my regular prayer time, and then my regular prayer time would have never come, squeezed out by something far less noble.
I discovered that breath prayers are the kind of prayers that I can weave into the daily hustle and bustle of life as a corporate employee commuting nearly an hour each way to work. Instead of having to get a dial up connection to God each time I want to pray, I can stay connected all of the time—like a DSL or cable connection—interspersing breath prayers into my commute, on the job, a lunchtime walk, whenever. Breath prayers are agile, allowing one to pray on-demand in a variety of situations. Instead of trying to get God's attention through my eloquence in prayer, breath prayers signify a return to simplicity, something I desperately needed.
"Lord, thank you for this cup of coffee."
"God, please restore the Johnson's marriage."
"Guide my children at school today."
"Help my pastor hear Your voice."
I had unwittingly thought that God's answers to my prayers were somehow tied to the quality and wording of my prayers. I had somehow believed that the more biblical phrases I incorporated into a prayer, the better the chance I had at getting the answer I was looking for. I am now learning to trust that God will do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine. I think this means that His ability to answer my prayers far exceeds my ability to pray them in some profound way that moves Him to act.
Although breath prayers tend to be short, simple sentences, akin to praying bullet points, I still pray in paragraphs sometimes—maybe even an essay now and then— mostly during my weekly prayer walk in the woods at a local nature center. So I stay connected to God during the week through breath prayers, and use the weekends for extended prayer times. These two practices have helped me revitalize a prayer life that had gone null and void.
How are you coping with the information age? Are you burdened by your “connectedness” to the world while your connection to God has been at worst dropped, or is at best an occasional dial-up connection? Breath prayers may be the first tentative step back toward a healthy prayer life.
Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). Sounds a lot like an endorsement of breath prayers to me.
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