Customer Reviews

Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is an excellent introduction to, and survey of, the practice and experience of prayer for Christians. Richard Foster draws from many different traditions and experiences and distills them into this very fine and accessible work. It's very practical, unpretentious and inspiring. Foster helps us examine the many facets of prayer grouped according to three intentions on personal transformation, intimacy with God and ministry to others. Among its 21 chapters you may find aspects of prayer that are very familiar to you (maybe you had never thought of them as prayer before) along with encouragement to focus and deepen your efforts in those areas. Other types of prayer may be completely foreign to you but offer an invitation to explore. For those who want to take prayer more seriously this book is a very good place to begin. It is not an introduction in the sense of being superficial or shallow. It treats each aspect of prayer in enough depth to get the willing reader well on his or her way to a more effective and vital life of prayer. But it also shows us prayer as a vast, life long and life changing endeavor and points to the work of others who have explored the various disciplines of prayer more deeply. This books is essential reading.

This is the best book I have ever read on prayer. Foster describes many different aspects of prayer, some familiar and some less known. I have read many books on prayer, but this stands above all the others in making prayer understandable and usable in the average person's life experience. I have purchased four more copies and given them to friends. After you've read it, you will want to share it, too. This is a book to read, re-read and re-re-read until it becomes a part of the fabric of your life. I can not recommend this book highly enough.

Foster is a master of drawing together all the strengths of the Christian tradition for his readers to benefit from. This book transcends denominationalism--it is a gift to the entire body of Christ. It is a book written from Foster's heart. "Prayer" is a book that demands to be more than read. It needs to be prayed through, meditated on, and re-read. Once again Foster writes with clarity, conviction, and winsomeness. Foster does not merely talk of prayer in this book. Each page seeps with insights that can only come by living a life of prayer. His layout of the book has a rhythm and seemless flow to it. The different descriptions of prayer greatly helped me to have a deeper understanding of the different kinds of approaches we have to God in prayer. Foster's book has invigorated me to hunger for the Holy more and more in my life.

I am an avid reader; but, this is the only book I have ever felt so strongly about that I wanted to express my opinion in a review. I realize that a person's reaction to any book says as much about the reader as it does the book. But I cannot imagine anyone who is genuinely interested in the topic of prayer not feeling satisfied that they got a great exchange for their time and money in this book. It helped me tremendously.

There are a myriad of books available today on prayer. Many of those books are shallow theologically and draw little if any from the rich heritage of the Church. Foster's volume combines a knowledge of church history's classic devotional writers with a freshness appealing to the 21st century.

Foster describes various forms of prayer, dividing them into three general categories: inward-focused prayer provides us with personal transformation, upward-focused prayer offers us intimacy with God, outward-focused prayer places us in the ministries that God would have us fill.

Don't let the title fool you. This volume is NOT just another book on what some persons may call "prayer lite." Foster presents a solid work that is grounded in the theology as well as the history of the Church. I recommend this book highly to all persons desiring a serious treatment of prayer.

Foster has written an amazing eye-opener on the world of prayer. It is not just another dry listing of different types or methods of prayer, but is instead a biography of love's laguage between the Creator and the created; Of how one draws ever closer to the Lover of our souls, and how that deepening communication effects everything else that we do. It can be seen that Foster draws from a lifetime of struggle, searching, and ultimate victory through a divine loving grace. But more than anything else, what is seen is a lifetime of listening to the Father's voice, and responding to the Spirit's call. The Book Will help anyone seeking a fuller dimension in their prayers, as well as a more harmonious relationship with God, themselves, and others.

I was lured to this book after reading Foster's book Celebration of Discipline. His style is intimate and descriptive, but above all else it is honest. The content of this book could have been written from a theological or academic standpoint. Indeed Foster masterfully included enough references and allusions to other great works to take up a large portion of the back pages for bibliography, and each truth he expresses stands firm on scripture. The content is what makes this book essential. The style is what makes it a joy to read, and its pure honesty is what makes you want to apply it to your life.

I have been blessed by this book. The author is very down to earth and honest admitting the most basic troubles he has had in his prayer life and giving suggestions for how to make your personal prayer life grow into a loving relationship with our creator.

This book is both profound in its wisdom and very practical. It is like an instruction manual for many kinds of prayer by a man who has spent a lifetime researching through study and practice. I thought the same author's Celebration of Discipline, his most famous work, to be excellent, but that book does not have the spiritual depth that this book does. Of course the emphasis of this Prayer book is different, but Foster seems to have grown in his spiritual life by the time he wrote this book. I consider it to be one of the most profound spiritual works I have ever read, near my #1 selection of all time, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.

If I were to own one book on prayer, this would be the one. Foster has spent a lifetime teaching prayer and the spiritual disciplines. This book is the distillation of a profound life. His teaching is clear, his thinking incisive. I have used and recommended this volume (and Foster's Celebration of Discipline) for years. After a decade on the shelf, I worked my way through it again this year. I was awed by new insights. It reminded me of Mark Twain's comment about his father, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learnt in seven years."