Justin McRoberts - Prayer: Forty Days of Practice

Praise for

Prayer

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.

Jay and Katherine Wolf , coauthors and cofounders of Hope Heals

Just one page of Prayer could change your life. Deep, beautiful, and centered, this book drives us ever closer to being people who love God and love each other. Justins reflections show evidence of someone who has spent a lot of time journeying with Jesus, and Scotts illustrations are worthy of meditation. This book has helped me move deeper into the presence of God.

Matt Mikalatos , author of Good News for a Change

Justin and Scott have compiled the most beautiful anthology of prayers and images, interwoven with suggestions for contemplation and spiritual practices. Ive 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.

Michael Frost , author of Surprise the World and Keep Christianity Weird

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 Prayer surprises, interrupts, explodes, confronts, and inspires. I encourage you to take up their invitation for Forty Days of Practice.

Mark Labberton , president of Fuller Theological Seminary

Prayer by 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, Prayer is a forty-day path we can walk together to live out the spiritual truths that make ourselvesand our worlduncompromisingly whole.

Sarah Thebarge , author of The Invisible Girls and Well

In my home we have a special shelf where we keep sacred things of beauty. On the shelf are a few icons, seashells, the Book of Common Prayer, and this book, Prayer. Each person in my familyfrom children to adultssits 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.

Tish Harrison Warren , priest in the Anglican Church in North America and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary

With compelling art and thoughtful prose, this little book, Prayer, 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 Ill be coming back to these pages again and again.

Jamie Wright , author of The Very Worst Missionary

My friends Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson have prompted us to seek God with our whole selves in their book Prayer. Im grateful for this invitation to prayer and urge others to accept it as well!

Michael Wear , author of Reclaiming Hope

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, were 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 Gods faithfulness amid the darkness. It also structures prayer in ways that draw us simultaneously inward and outward, producing a more faithful witness.

Dominique DuBois Gilliard , author of Rethinking Incarceration

Scott and Justins book Prayer made it to the place of highest honor in our home: the bathroom throne. This is not a book you devour. Its a book you savor. Each page contains a treasurelike chocolate truffles for the soul.

Shane Claiborne , activist and author of Beating Guns

Prayer is 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.

Matthew Paul Turner , author of When God Made You and When I Pray for You

Prayer

Hardcover ISBN9780525653059

Ebook ISBN9780525653066

Copyright 2019 by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson

Cover design and image by Scott Erickson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

WaterBrook and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McRoberts, Justin, author.

Title: Prayer : forty days of practice / Justin McRoberts, Scott Erickson.

Description: First Edition. | Colorado Springs : WaterBrook, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018023917 | ISBN 9780525653059 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525653066 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: PrayerChristianity.

Classification: LCC BV215 .M388 2019 | DDC 248.3/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023917

v5.3.2

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In this field there lies a hidden treasure, if only I could find it and dig it up.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

CONTENTS

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Creators of all kinds (particularly authors) tend to refer to our work as content. Ive come to think thats a bit of a misnomer. Id 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 (Scotts and mine) but should not be, as an artifact, most accurately considered content.

This book is a piece of art.

This book is an act of love.

This book is a redemptive tool.

This book is a resource.

This book is designed to stir, inform, and inspire you.

This book is not content.

The ongoing conversation between you and God is content.

I remember kneeling next to my mothers 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 dont 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 couldnt set up correctly.