Sivin Kit’s Garden

 

"Simple Prayer is necessary, even essential, to the spiritual life.  The only way we move beyond "self-centred prayer" (if indeed we ever do) is by going through it, not by making a detour around it.

- Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 11

My earliest memories of prayer is when I prayed for my mom to win the lottery.  It was one of those, "I challenge you, Jesus, to show me you are God and can answer the prayer of a 12 year old!", kind of prayer.

Even when I was "born again" at 13, this lost Lutheran now turned Pentecostal on fire for Jesus brought my needs to him daily in intercession, claiming on the promise that he truly hears prayer.

The climb to grow in prayer had an interesting interlude after being challenged by a Bible study teacher in the church student fellowship who always seems to "hear from the Lord", to pray the Lord’s prayer everyday.  It took me about 5-7 minutes to walk to high school and I recall praying the Lord’s prayer (as opposed to mere reciting it) while I walked passed my neighbors.

Since then, I’ve been exposed to the wide riches of all that the best of church history has to offer from the Spiritual gurus of the old the desert fathers to the best-selling authors of the present … not the millionaires but the mystics! And when one grows in theological understanding, and sharpened by the hard knocks of on the ground praxis, one is suddenly more sensitized by any smell of "self-centeredness".

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