The Prayer God Answers
By Eberhard Arnold and Richard J. Foster
3.5/5
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About this ebook
In this spiritual classic, Eberhard Arnold mines the riches of biblical teaching on prayer and the example of Jesus, the Hebrew prophets, and the early Christians to point us back to the prayer that pleases God most – prayer that has the power to transform our lives and our world.
In a new reflective response, much-loved author Richard J. Foster relates Arnold’s words to our contemporary reality.
Eberhard Arnold
Eberhard Arnold (1883–1935) studied theology, philosophy, and education and was widely sought as a speaker at student conferences and other gatherings. In 1920, leaving a promising career as a writer and the privileges of upper-middle- class life in Berlin, he moved with his wife and children to Sannerz, a small village in central Germany, where they founded a Christian community on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount.
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A small book with few pages, nevertheless, packed with illuminating wisdom on prayer.
Book preview
The Prayer God Answers - Eberhard Arnold
Why Pray?
GOD IS LIFE, rich and overflowing life. He is love, and he wants to draw all of us into his life and into his love. Time and again he seeks to lift us into the realm where his life rules.
This is why God stepped out of himself to come to us in his Son. In Jesus, God has opened his heart to us. He has turned his face to us. He comes to us, reveals his thoughts, and shows us who he is and what he wills. He gives us everything we need, and wants to perfect the work he has begun in us. Amazingly, we feeble and insignificant beings are the object of his concern. Out of the incomprehensible love of his heart, God loves each of us quite personally. In his concern for humankind, God seeks out all people and invites them to take part in his new creation.
God wants each of us to respond to him personally and practically. He wants us to know his heart, accept his work, affirm his will, and carry it out. But most of all, God wants to give himself to us. He gives us his spirit so that we might live, act, and work just as his Word did when it became flesh.
God wants us to worship him in the spirit of devotion that grasps the essential and puts it into practice (Matt. 4:10). Since Jesus came to us, we can approach the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24). The spirit of truth frees us from religious superficiality, idolatry, and impure motives, and brings us under God’s rulership. This truth is the clear, authentic Word of God, which has come from God since the beginning of time.
We cannot come to the Father in spirit or in truth if we expend all our strength trying to secure our own salvation, or just keeping our spiritual life above water. People who are so preoccupied with themselves have no strength left to love. But once they are saved from the living death of a separate and selfish life, they will share in the rejuvenating unity and freedom that God promises everyone who is ready to receive Jesus (John 5:24). When they find this freedom, they will devote all they are and have to the One who freed them, giving themselves in love to all people (1 John 3:14). This all-embracing love for others is the mark of those who have an ardent, personal love for Jesus.
THIS PERSONAL LOVE for Jesus finds natural expression in heartfelt prayer. Of course, it is really God whom we love in Christ. If we believe in God as he is, as he lives and works, we shall feel compelled to communicate with him again and again. Those who have faith are filled with unending joy that God can be found now, today.
Through the life, ministry, and death of Jesus, we experience how great and holy God’s love is. Because of this we are always conscious of what separates us and cuts us off from the unity which alone can sustain life. We come before God in prayer to confess the separating sin of our own nature, and to thank God for forgiving our sin (Ps. 32:3–6). Christ’s victory over sin, evil, and the demonic powers of self unites us with God and with his church.
When we experience the death of Christ, our hearts are made pure. Through community in the church, we are released from the guilt of our egoistic lives. Now we can approach God in complete confidence, our hearts intent on him and his kingdom. We know that the baptism of faith has cleansed us of deadly lust. Bound with others, we live in the certainty of eternal life; we know we can trust in God’s faithfulness to his promises (Heb. 10:22–23). And so our hearts overflow with indescribable thankfulness. We cannot help but pray to the One who has delivered us from the blinding darkness, from the sinister spell of Satan’s tyranny, and from the body’s death and disintegration (Col. 1:12–14).
With great joy we come before God in faith to praise and thank him. We recognize in such experiences that the whole nature and character of God