2 – Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

“Prayer – Interactive conversation with God about what we and God are thinking and doing together.”

 “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sights too deep for words.” Romans 8.26″

from A Year with God:  Living out the Spiritual Disciplines edited by  Richard J. Foster and Julia L. Roller, introduction to days 26 – 45.

“I am, O God, a jumbled mass of motives.
One moment I am adoring you, and the next I am shaking my fist at you.
I vacillate between mounting hope, and deepening desire.
I am full of faith, and full of doubt.  I want the best for others, and am jealous when they get it.
Even so, God, I will not run from your presence.
Nor will I pretend to be what I am not.
Thank you for accepting me with all my contradictions.
Amen.”

from A Year with God:  Living out the Spiritual Disciplines edited by  Richard J. Foster and Julia L. Roller, day 26.

1 – Spiritual Disciplines – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

“A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot do by direct effort…..The Spiritual Disciplines in and of themselves have no merit whatsoever.  They posses no righteousness, contain no rectitude.  Their purpose – their only purpose – is to place us before God….Then the grace of God steps in, takes this simple offering of ourselves, and creates out of it the kind of person who embodies the goodness of God….All disciplines are permeated by the enabling grace of God.”

from A Year with God:  Living out the Spiritual Disciplines edited by  Richard J. Foster and Julia L. Roller, pp xiv – xvi.