Quotes about Prayer

I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.

We pray to obey God, not to 'play God'. We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to 'let God be God'. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt. 7:7).

Prayer is not only conversation, it is transformation. It is not only light, it is fire. And the closer you get to Him, the hotter the fire gets. Words begin to melt. The first word that melts in His presence is the word 'I.' That is His unique name. The closer you get to Him, the harder it is to begin a sentence with 'I.' It melts in the fire of 'thou.

It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.

Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.

I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.

When we pray, instead of trying to produce love in our souls toward God, we should be basking in God's love for us. How foolish to stay indoors in the cold, dark little room off the self, trying to turn on the light and turn up the heat, when we can just go outside into God's glorious Sonlight and receive his rays! How silly to fuss with artificial tanning salons and lotions and lights when the Son is out!

Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.

We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.

There is something in us that fears prayer as a maggot fears light. We must do violence to this voice, for it is not ourselves. It is our Enemy.

Three reasons God commands us to pray correlate to our three deepest needs, the fundamental needs of the three powers of our soul: prayer gives truth to our mind, goodness to our will, and beauty to our heart . 'The true, the good, and the beautiful' are the three things we need and love the most, because they are the three attributes of God.

You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.