"Golden Triangle"

I just read something else in Richard Foster's book on 'Prayer' about the limitation of prayer.
This is what he says on page 58.

"Before proceeding, I must offer a caution. We should not overstate the place of prayer in the formation of "holy habits." Prayer by itself is severely limited in the good it can accomplish. It is only a part-albeit an important part-of a much larger whole."

"Dallas Willard speaks of the three major areas God uses in our continuing transformation-a "golden triangle" of formation, if you will.

The first area is the classical disciplines of the spiritual life: solitude, fasting, worship, celebration, and the like.

The second area is our continual interaction with the movings of the Spirit of God: resistance, disobedience, repentance, submission, faith, obedience, and more.

The third major area is the patient endurance God develops in us by means of the various frustrations, trials, and temptations we face daily.

Therefore, we must never isolate prayer from the rest of Christian devotion and claim more for it than God intended. No, instead we want to see the dynamic interaction of prayer in concert with an overall spiritual life."

Earlier in the chapter, he wrote, "The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son."

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The idea of the 'golden triangle' makes so much sense to me and helps me organize the how's and why's of my life. I hope you find it helpful as well.