Quotes about Prayers

I believe the prayers of 30 years ago are not lost. We may not see the results of our labour or sacrifice immediately, but in due time they will produce much fruit.

It's a big world. Don't get trapped by tiny dreams and feeble problems. Time for big prayers and bold faith.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

A secret dependence upon our prayers, tears, resolutions, repentance and endeavors, prevents us from looking solely and simply to the Savior, so as to ground our whole hope for acceptance upon his obedience unto death, and his whole mediation.

Believers obey Christ as the one whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God's presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.

I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person's theology was the effect it has on one's prayers.

Thus, see Old Testament texts like Pss 68:5; 103:13—14; Isa 63:15—16; Jer 31:9, 20, the famous avinu malkeinu ("Our Father, our King") lines in classic Jewish prayers, like Ahabah Rabah and The Litany for the New Year, and texts like 4Q372 fragment 1:16.

The Psalter is responsible for creating the prayers in the church. It remains the core of all Christian prayers. Whenever we pray with psalms, we are joining the universal Church in prayer.

If you compare the written prayers from the psalms, the Lord's Prayer, or those we find in the prayer books of the church, one thing will immediately strike any reader: The prayers from those sources are theologically rich and aesthetically appropriate. I cannot always say this of the spontaneous prayers of many Christians—and I am not impugning their motives or questioning their hearts.

Till you have savingly believed in Christ, all your desires, and pains, and prayers lay God under no obligation;

tis plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.

If someone believes it is our faith that heals us and forgets that it is God who does it, we should ask that person how much faith Lazarus had. Remember, he was decomposing in a tomb when Jesus raised him from death. His faith obviously didn't matter. It was all God. It is God and God's grace that heals, not our prayers and not our "faith." Though we are exhorted by God to pray to him, we cannot compel him to do what we wish.