Richard J. Foster

Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

Richard Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home (1992, reissued 2012) is one of the most beloved and comprehensive guides to the life of prayer ever written. Foster's central thesis is deceptively simple: prayer is not a technique to be mastered but a relationship to be entered — specifically, the relationship of a beloved child speaking to a loving Father. Drawing on the great classics of Christian spirituality (from Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross to the Desert Fathers and Julian of Norwich) as well as his own honest personal experience, Foster maps twenty-one distinct forms of prayer, organizing them into three broad movements: Moving Inward (prayers that deepen our inner life), Moving Upward (prayers that adore and commune with God), and Moving Outward (prayers that intercede for and serve the world). The result is not a how-to manual but an invitation into the full, rich terrain of Christian prayer.