{"product_id":"prayer-forty-days-of-practice-isbn-9780525653059","title":"Prayer: Forty Days of Practice","description":"\u003cb\u003eA simple yet profound guide to facilitate the instinctively human desire to pray.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe pray because we are human, not because we are religious. Something in our nature points beyond itself; something in us searches for and desires personal connection with God. Although communicating with our Creator through prayer is innate, the effective practice of it often feels just beyond our reach. \u003cbr\u003e     This unique book guides you to pray in deeper and more authentic ways. The short prayers and thought-provoking imagery, interspersed with contemplative reflections and suggested practices, will stir, inform, and encourage you. The simplicity of the prayers and the aesthetic appeal of the images will inspire people in every facet of life, including those with no real religious background at all.“Moments of prayer, meditation, and quiet seem rarer than ever before in these days of constant distraction, busyness, and noise. Finding those moments is difficult but necessary for our flourishing as humans. This simple but profound book has been one of our favorite tools in our search for God in the midst.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Jay and Katherine Wolf, coauthors and cofounders of \u003ci\u003eHope Heals\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Just one page of \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e could change your life. Deep, beautiful, and centered, this book drives us ever closer to being people who love God and love each other. Justin’s reflections show evidence of someone who has spent a lot of time journeying with Jesus, and Scott’s illustrations are worthy of meditation. This book has helped me move deeper into the presence of God.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Matt Mikalatos, author of \u003ci\u003eGood News for a Change\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Justin and Scott have compiled the most beautiful anthology of prayers and images, interwoven with suggestions for contemplation and spiritual practices. I’ve been using these words and pictures in my own devotional life for a couple of years. They have refreshed and renewed me. This book is a gift.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Michael Frost, author of \u003ci\u003eSurprise the World \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Keep Christianity Weird\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “McRoberts and Erickson are flip artists: they take what is commonly assumed or known and flip it in unexpected ways, all for the sake of greater authenticity and deeper wisdom. Their book \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e surprises, interrupts, explodes, confronts, and inspires. I encourage you to take up their invitation for \u003ci\u003eForty Days of Practice\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003ePrayer \u003c\/i\u003eby Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson is a gift of a book. Its compelling prayers and captivating images resonated deep in my soul. Sacred in its sincerity and simplicity, \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e is a forty-day path we can walk together to live out the spiritual truths that make ourselves—and our world—uncompromisingly whole.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Sarah Thebarge, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Invisible Girls \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWell \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “In my home we have a special shelf where we keep sacred things of beauty. On the shelf are a few icons, seashells, the \u003ci\u003eBook of Common Prayer\u003c\/i\u003e, and this book, \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e. Each person in my family—from children to adults—sits in quiet wonder as they flip these pages. This meditative and practical book brings together prayer, practices, and visual art to provide a feast for the soul. McRoberts and Erickson have created something beautiful, thoughtful, and mesmerizing.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Tish Harrison Warren, priest in the Anglican Church in North America and author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLiturgy of the Ordinary\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “With compelling art and thoughtful prose, this little book, \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e, delivers big inspiration. In addition to personal stories and practical advice, Scott and Justin offer us a fresh path into daily contemplation that is as simple as it is meaningful. I already know I’ll be coming back to these pages again and again.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Jamie Wright, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Very Worst Missionary\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “My friends Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson have prompted us to seek God with our whole selves in their book \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e. I’m grateful for this invitation to prayer and urge others to accept it as well!”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Michael Wear, author of \u003ci\u003eReclaiming Hope\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Prayer empowers us to walk by faith and not by sight. In a world where death, oppression, and violence all too often feel like the final words, we’re prone to forget that prayer truly changes things. Prayer begets revelation, enabling us to see, name, and confess the brokenness within us and our world. Prayer then leads to repentance, which reorients our posture toward God and neighbor. This book prophetically uses art to inspire us to remember God’s faithfulness amid the darkness. It also structures prayer in ways that draw us simultaneously inward and outward, producing a more faithful witness.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Dominique DuBois Gilliard, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eRethinking Incarceration\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Scott and Justin’s book \u003ci\u003ePrayer\u003c\/i\u003e made it to the place of highest honor in our home: the bathroom throne. This is not a book you devour. It’s a book you savor. Each page contains a treasure…like chocolate truffles for the soul.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Shane Claiborne, activist and author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBeating Guns\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003ePrayer \u003c\/i\u003eis beautiful, reflective, and powerfully affecting. What Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson have given us is not simply a book about prayer but rather an invitation to commune with the divine. Using art and words, they offer our minds and hearts fresh thoughts and themes to meditate on, to utter, to believe. This book is an experience, one that will inspire your imagination not just to connect with God but to engage the Creator as the creative being that you are.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Matthew Paul Turner, author of \u003ci\u003eWhen God Made You\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWhen I Pray for You\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJustin McRoberts\u003c\/b\u003e is an author, musician, and retreat leader. He lives in the Oakland\/San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eScott Erickson\u003c\/b\u003e is a touring painter, performance artist, and creative storyteller who mixes autobiography, biblical narrative, and aesthetics to create art that speaks to our deepest experiences. Scott lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and three children.\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBefore You Begin\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCreators of all kinds (particularly authors) tend to refer to our work as “content,” that is, something contained. I’ve come to think that’s a bit of a misnomer. I’d like to suggest that Scott and I make resources and tools that stir, inform, and inspire human lives but that it is what is happening in those human lives that is most rightly understood as content. In that spirit, this book is rooted in the content of two human lives (Scott’s and mine) but should not be, as an artifact, most accurately considered content.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is a piece of art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is an act of love.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is a redemptive tool.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is a resource.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is designed to stir, inform, and inspire you.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is not “content.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe ongoing conversation between you and God is content.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e***\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI remember kneeling next to my mother’s bed, trying to balance a small porcelain statue of Jesus on the lumpy bedspread. When I thought I had set it firmly upright, I folded my hands and closed my eyes to pray, only to be interrupted by the light thump of Jesus toppling over again. I don’t know how many times I repeated the process, but as best as I remember, I never got around to the actual business of praying because I couldn’t set up correctly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs I have with so much else in my process of faith, I had allowed mechanics to trump essence. I thought I needed all the right elements properly executed in order to pray. Instead of seeing those elements as helpful (which they most certainly can be), I treated them as essential (which they most certainly are not). I was like a man who had seen water delivered only in clear glasses and would not, regardless of how deep his thirst, drink from another container. I think you will agree that the method of delivery, be it glass or plastic or the cupped shape of a human hand, can be very helpful and might even be beautiful, but it is the act of drinking that matters first.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI have come to believe that allowing the mechanics of prayer to trump essence presents a grave danger. Having grown distracted or disillusioned by mechanics, I might too easily abandon something I essentially need. You see, I believe I pray because I am human rather than because I am religious. An essential aspect of my nature points me beyond my nature and, I further believe, beyond what I know of nature altogether. Some primal thing urges me to search for and connect with the Divine. Tradition can and does provide language, shape, and space for that primal urge to pray, but the instinct to connect with God does not emanate from that tradition. Having allowed the mechanics of tradition to take a back seat to the essential nature of prayer, I can more readily receive the language and imagery of tradition as a great gift.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur desire in this book is to extend a gift to you from our own practices and traditions by providing language and imagery you may find helpful for your practice of prayer. Herein, you will find us doing that in four ways:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e~  Guided prayers\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e~  Contemplative imagery\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e~  Meditations\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e~  Suggested practices\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGuided Prayers \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSince 1998, as a writer of both prose and song, I have worked to provide language for the process of faith and life. In a sense, I am offering back a gift given to me. I have often needed the words of others to help me see what was in my soul when my own language failed me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom Thomas Merton to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or from my neighbor to immediate family, the gift of others’ words has been like borrowing a cup from someone else so that I could pour my life into it…or pour it out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMay the language herein be that same kind of gift to you. Consider focusing on one guided prayer (and its corresponding image) each day and see what you find in you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eContemplative Imagery \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eScott and I wanted to create something that invites you to do far more than simply read what is written and agree or disagree. The design of this book is an invitation to stop, listen, hear, see, recognize, and contemplate your life, the lives of those you love, and the presence of God in, through, and around all of it. That kind of contemplation takes what Scott likes to call an “excavation of the soul”—the kind of digging good art invites us to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Scott’s words: \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe’ve all read a book that has pictures in it. Most likely the illustrations creatively visualized the words being communicated in the story. If it was a children’s book, the images did all the heavy lifting in keeping your attention. That’s how most of us experience imagery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut I don’t think that’s what these images are for. I think imagery is another language entirely. Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg agrees, writing in his book \u003ci\u003eHow God Changes Your Brain\u003c\/i\u003e, “Drawing is a form of communication that is neurologically distinct from writing and speech.... In essence, words and pictures are two integrated elements of language, and most words…have an ‘image’ quality associated with them. If the right hemisphere is injured, words and pictures lose their meaning.” He continues, “Words are not enough to describe a spiritual experience.”[1]\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrayer is a conversation about everything. Words and images are vital tools that can help us grow in this endless and ongoing conversation, but we must understand that the words and images we use are not the content itself. They are excavation tools that help dig toward and into the real content: the ongoing, ever-present conversation between us and the Divine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eScott has often been asked what his paintings mean. And while questions of intrinsic meaning can lead to interesting conversations, perhaps a better question about visual art is, \u003ci\u003eWhat does the piece draw out of you?\u003c\/i\u003e Henri Nouwen’s remarkable book \u003ci\u003eThe Return of the Prodigal Son\u003c\/i\u003e is a retelling of his interactions with Rembrandt’s iconic work by that same name. Rather than centering the book on what can be found in the painting, Nouwen shares the ways Rembrandt’s work dug into and unearthed pieces of his soul, helping him see things in himself in need of repair, as well as things healed and in the process of restoration.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMay the imagery herein be that same kind of gift to you. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMeditations \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe transitions between the book’s sections are highlighted by meditations on the essence or nature of prayer. By calling them meditations instead of essays or even reflections, we are inviting you to engage with them a touch differently. Rather than asking yourself, \u003ci\u003eWhat do I think about this?\u003c\/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eIs this correct?\u003c\/i\u003e, pay attention to your responses, emotions, and thoughts. What is happening in you as you read through the meditations? In other words, we’re not asking you to come to a conclusion or make a judgment about the content or to agree with the philosophical or theological angle taken. These meditations, much like the brief prayers and images, are intended to stir what is in you rather than to get information into you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSuggested Practices\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEach of the six meditations is paired with a way to practice the discipline of prayer. Our desire is to be a help to you in your long-term process rather than to provide a singular moment of inspiration. Including these suggested practices is a way for us to offer something you can return to and use on the road ahead—the kind of book you keep with you in your bag or on your nightstand.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe suggest allowing yourself some time to practice unfamiliar types of prayer. Not everything works for everyone, but we’ve found that it can take a fair bit of work and honest trial to truly discover what works for you. For both Scott and me, engaging the almost endless variety of methods and shapes of prayer has been a freeing and soul-shaping gift. May the practices suggested herein (journaling, exercise, fasting, meditation, lament, and intercession) be that same kind of gift to you. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMay I…Make an Assumption? \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn putting this book together, Scott and I assume the loving and redemptive activity of the Divine in, around, and through your life. In that light, framing our prayers with “May I…” is a way to enter into the extant movement of God rather than feel we are responsible for chasing God down somewhere we aren’t yet living.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe “May I…” language of these prayers borrows from the jussive mood in the Genesis creation account, wherein God speaks all things into being by saying “Let there be….” The jussive mood suggests that Reality should be the way God desires it, not simply because God says so, but because being shaped and ordered according to the Divine Will is the fullest expression of Reality. Praying “May I…” is a way to enter into the work God is already doing in, around, and through us, according to God’s Will and design.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe join Mary, the mother of Jesus, who prayed, “May Your word be fulfilled in me,” or “May it be with me as You say,” or “Let it be with me according to Your word,” or “May everything You have said about me come true.” Praying “May I…” means leaning into what God is doing and how the Divine Will has set things in and around us in motion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTeach Me to Number My Days \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile there is a great deal of value in prayer guides offering a more structured and chronologically ordered approach to the practice, we’re offering something rather different here. Consider the layout and format of this book an invitation to let your soul, rather than a page number or calendar day, tell you where to stay or move and when. Certainly, you are welcome to start with prayer 1 and work straight through to prayer 40 in linear fashion (the book’s layout allows for that as well). But should you find yourself resonating with a particular prayer, stay there. And if you land on a prayer that just doesn’t connect with or stir anything in you, feel free to move on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause it isn’t the format of this book that matters most.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNor is it the words in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNor its imagery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat’s happening in you is what matters.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat’s happening in you is real content.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e[1] Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, \u003ci\u003eHow God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist \u003c\/i\u003e(New York: Ballantine, 2009), 99–100.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WaterBrook","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300408905957,"sku":"NP9780525653059","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525653059.jpg?v=1767735046","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/prayer-forty-days-of-practice-isbn-9780525653059","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}