Augustine Books

“Augustine’s first principle is that before you know what to pray for and how to pray for it, you must become a particular kind of person. “You must account yourself ‘desolate’ in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot may be.” The scales must have fallen from your eyes and you must see clearly that no matter how great your earthly circumstances become, they can never bring you the lasting peace, happiness, and consolation that are found in Christ. Unless you that clearly in view, your prayers may go wrong.
Here again is one of the main themes of Augustine’s theology, applied to prayer. We must see that our heart’s loves are “disordered,” out of order. Things we ought to love third or fourth are first in our hearts. God, whom we should love supremely, is someone we may acknowledge but whose favor and presence is not existentially as important to us as prosperity, success, status, love, and pleasure. Unless at the very least we recognize this heart disorder and realise how much it distorts our lives, our prayers will be part of the problem, not an agent of healing. For example, if we look to our financial prosperity as our main source of safety and confidence in life, then when our wealth is in grave jeopardy, we will cry out to God for help, but our prayers will be little more than “worrying in God’s direction.” When our prayers are finished we will be more upset and anxious than before. Prayer will not be strengthening. It won’t heal our hearts by reorienting our vision and helping us put things in perspective and bringing us to rest in God as our true security.
Augustine goes on. If you have settled this - if you have grasped the character of your heart and admitted your desolation apart from Christ - then, he says, you can begin to pray.”
― Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God by Timothy Keller