Quotes about Prayer

So prayer is a total activity, incorporating many elements essential to a personal relationship between two persons—persons different from and related to one another as the Father is to his children on earth. But still the heart of prayer is the request.

What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer, and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God.

Prayer is, above all, a means of forming character. It combines freedom and power with service and love.

Reign is no doubt wording that is a little too grand for the contemporary mind, though what it refers to is what everyone actually pursues in life. We have been trained to think of "reigning" as exclusionary of others. But in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God.

That is one reason it is hard to get people to pray at church and why prayer meetings are often dead. People don't see that prayer—real, two-way conversation with God—makes any difference.

We are not only asking to be forgiven, we are asking for guidance and wisdom and strength to respond differently tomorrow.

Nowhere is it more important to be in a conversational relationship with God than in our prayer life.

He teaches us how to be in prayer what we are in life and how to be in life what we are in prayer.

The real Jesus, as is now commonly said, is "one who identified with and loves oppressed people and those who are different," calling us to do the same. These words now express the redemptive vision of the Christian left, just as "trusted Christ for forgiveness" or "prayed to receive Jesus" does for the right.

Prayer and speaking with God must be carefully distinguished from superstition in how they work.

We do all we do in the knowledge that we are working alongside him. Moreover, we do this kind of work hand in hand with the cultivation of the mind and spirit through art and imagination, poetry and song, praise, prayer, and worship. These all help our minds to lay hold of this God, this most lovable being in all of reality.

When I put my faith in Jesus Christ as my savior, and I asked him to forgive and to come into my life, and He does — from that moment forward I have established a personal relationship with God that I have to develop, you know, through Bible reading and prayer, and living my life for him.