Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.
Interpretation
Prayer is a way for humans to connect and respond to God's unending love.
This quote by Richard J. Foster emphasizes the concept that prayer serves as a human response to God's continuous and overwhelming love for each individual. It suggests that God's love is so profound and persistent that it calls upon each soul, and prayer becomes a vital means for people to engage with and reciprocate that love.
In practice
In a sermon about devotion, one might say, 'As Richard J. Foster expresses, prayer is our human response to the unending love of God.'
Go another step. Try to live one entire day without words at all. Do it not as a law, but as an experiment. Note your feelings of helplessness and excessive dependence upon words to communicate. Try to find new ways to relate to tohers that are not dependent upon words. Enjoy, savor the day. Learn from it.
Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its way into our experience, then we have missed the point of the Disciplines. We are dealing with actions, not merely states of mind.
Accumulate power in silence and become a dynamo of spirituality.
It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.
The spiritual rest, which God particularly intends in this Commandment, is this: that we not only cease from our labor and trade, but much more, that we let God alone work in us and that we do nothing of our own with all our powers.
Vocal prayer . . . must be accompanied by reflection. A prayer in which a person is not aware of Whom he is speaking to, what he is asking, who it is who is asking and of Whom, I don't call prayer-however much the lips may move.
To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.
Each temple building is an inspiration, magnificent and beautiful in every way, but the temple building alone does not bless. The endowed blessings and divine functions—come through obedience and faithfulness to priesthood authority and covenants made.
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