Formation Prayer

Do you sometimes feel like your prayer-life is in a rut?  What causes this experience?  For many of us, the rut comes when we do the same thing over and over.  Many of us tend to practice the same kind of prayer day after day.  This can lead to an experience of emptiness and meaningless.  In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home Richard Foster surveys thousands of years of Christian praying and discovers 21 different kinds of prayer.  Foster offers 21 varieties of prayer.  You could pray every day for three weeks and practice a different form of prayer each day.  That’s likely to get you out of the rut!

One particular form of prayer which Foster focuses on is called “Formation Prayer.”  He introduces this prayer with these words: “The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son” (pg. 57).  That’s a bold statement–the primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do things for us but to get get God to do things to us and in us.  Prayer is mostly about begging God to help us become people who live and look more like Jesus.  Do you agree?

Foster suggests that many of us never quite move into this form of prayer.  Our prayers treat God mostly as Provider (the one who gives us all the things we ask for, even the egocentric things we ask for).  Yet God longs to become our Teacher (the one who shows us a better way of life and frees us from things like avarice, greed, fear, and hostility).  Again, God longs to be active in not simply delivering things to us but remaking the heart within us–forming us and transforming us more and more into his image.  What kind of God do your prayers reveal–Provider or Teacher?  Are you praying more for God to give things to you than you are praying for God to do things within you?

Formation prayer is any practice of prayer in which we seek God’s power to transform us more and more into a Jesus’-like person.  Foster points to The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola through which Ignatius guided people in four weeks of prayer (week 1 = seeking the grace of being loved by God; week 2 = seeking the grace of being formed in the image of Christ; week 3 = seeking the grace to die to the attachments of this world; week 4 = seeking the grace of the power of the Spirit to choose God and God’s way).  This is formation prayer at its most robust!  What do you think might happen in your life if you devoted four weeks to praying for God to remove specific sinful tendencies from your heart and replace them with His virtues?

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to engage in formation prayer.  I’ve found it helpful to practice two habits.  First, I strive to pray through the Sermon on the Mount once a week.  Here’s a prayer I’ve written to aid in this habit:

Sermon on the Mount Prayer

• Enable me to show favor to the poor in spirit who have no one but you in their corner, the mournful so weary of the  wrong in the world, the meek and the missing out, and those who are hungering and thirsting for the world to be made right.
• Empower me to show mercy, to practice a faith that is not merely external and superficial, to pursue your peace for all people, and to be willing to pay the price to do what’s right by others and by you.
• Energize me that I might do the good deeds that act as salt and light.
• In my relationship with others make me the one who does not harbor anger but seeks reconciliation, pays any price to think and act without lust, does not divorce but is faithful, does not deceive but lets my ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and does not respond to evil with violence but with love.
• In my relationship with you assist me that I might give to the poor, pray, and fast for your sake and not mine; and that I might pray for your kingdom to come instead of for my will to be done.
• In my relationship with money help me to not be miserly and serve Money but to be generous and serve you; help me not worry but trust in your caring provision and kingdom purpose.
• May I pursue the strengthening of my own weaknesses rather than pointing out the weaknesses of others.
• May I trust in a God who knows how to give good gifts.
• May I do to others what I would have them do to me.
• Let my path not be the crowded one but the little-traveled one.
• Let me not listen to others because of the fruit on their resumes but because of the fruit in their character.
• Let me not aspire to the claim of sensational spirituality but to the claim of simple obedience.
• Transform me so that I do not merely listen to these words but do live them out.

A second habit I’ve adopted is praying through one of the New Testament vice/virture lists each day.  Here are the ones I use:

Rom. 12:9-21

1 Cor. 13:4-8

Gal. 5:16-23

Col. 3:5-14

Foster warns, however, that formation prayer is only part of a much larger plan for spiritual formation.  Prayers in which we ask God to change us from the inside out must also be accompanied by “holy habits” in which we are partnering with God in this transformation (e.g., solitude, fasting, worship, celebration, etc.).  What other types of practices could you engage in to experience greater spiritual formation?

It is also important, Foster warns, that we understand the real focus of formation prayer: progress not perfection.  Our goal is constant progress in being shaped into the image of Jesus.  We may never, in this life, see ourselves perfectly achieve that image.  Formation prayer is part of this ongoing journey of small but significant steps toward spiritual maturity.

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