Quotes about Prayer

Although Jesus' prayers do not offer a foolproof formula, they do give clues as to how God works — and does not work — on this planet. Especially when trouble strikes, we want God to intervene more decisively, but Jesus' prayers underscore God's style of restraint out of respect for human freedom.

Jesus' prayers for Peter — and perhaps for Judas as well — express God's unfathomable respect for human freedom.

According to Gallup polls, more Americans will pray this week than will exercise, drive a car, have sex, or go to work. Nine in ten of us pray regularly, and three out of four claim to pray every day. To

How odd, that prayer seems foolish to some people who base their lives on media trends, superstition, instinct, hormones, social propriety, or even astrology.)

Jesus' prayer for Peter shows the same pattern in sharp relief. Satan partially got his way with Peter, sifting him like wheat. But in answer to Jesus' prayer, the sifting rid Peter of his least attractive qualities: blustery self-confidence, a chip on his shoulder, a propensity to violence.

prayer incorporates the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of God's grace.

In a letter to his brother, C. S. Lewis mentioned that he prayed every night for the people he was most tempted to hate, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini heading the list. In another letter he wrote that as he prayed for them, he meditated on how his own cruelty might have blossomed into something like theirs. He remembered that Christ died for them as much as for him, and that he himself was not "so different from these ghastly creatures.

Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.

Now if you want a book about prayer, this one's probably not for you. You can find some wonderful books on prayer by some scholarly writers, books that are well worth the time spent reading them. In fact, I highly suggest you do. Can't really learn too much about prayer, can you? But here, in these pages, we aren't going to merely talk about prayer or think about praying. No. Get ready.

Prayer is how we isolate the real problems. And prayer is how we get up behind those problems and attack them at the roots. It's how we isolate the real enemy. It's how we keep him on his heels and off our man.

Strategy 1—Against Your Passion He seeks to dim your whole desire for prayer, dull your interest in spiritual things, and downplay the potency of your most strategic weapons (Eph. 6:10—20). Strategy 2—Against Your Focus He disguises himself and manipulates your perspective so you end up focusing on the wrong culprit, directing your weapons at the wrong enemy (2 Cor. 11:14). Strategy 3—Against Your Identity