Quotes about Prayer

Prayer helps us to regain the proper priorities, discern biblical wisdom, and make right judgments. Without prayer, Glaspey might say, we live as temporal people with temporal values. Prayer pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant to the way we live our lives. Prayer pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant to the way we live our lives.

God has much to say to us, but we are often too busy to listen. Our minds have a tendency to get too occupied during the day, or sometimes we are too busy praying to God with our own agendas and have lost our listening ears. Dreams are one way God can "break in" and get something across to us that we might not be open to hearing during the day.

Abraham's servant prayed for success: "O LORD, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham" (Gen. 24:12 NASB). This is the first time in Scripture that we read of someone asking God for specific guidance.

When I first began spending daily time in prayer, I often grew frustrated at how I could forget about God's presence by lunchtime, even after praying for an hour in the morning. Shorter but more frequent times of prayer may actually help us to live with an increasing awareness of God's presence in our lives. How difficult would it be for us to set aside five minutes in the morning, five minutes at noon, and five minutes before or after dinnertime to meet God in prayer?

Paul urges us to pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This puts prayer on a far higher plane than mere intercession. It marks prayer as the heart of our devotion, the constant awareness of God's presence, our consistent submission to his will, and our frequent expressions of adoration and praise.

I ache for the day when people make such wise marital choices that they can pray through where to live to make the most significant impact for Christ instead of praying that they could merely be able to exist in the same house without yelling and fighting.

A captivated heart, a bridled tongue, a limited curiosity, and a slow reentry after prayer are necessary disciplines of simplicity.

What I'm suggesting is that we connect our marriages with our faith in such a way that our experience in each feeds the other. By learning to respect others, meet each other's sexual needs, overcome dissension, and use the analogies of marriage to foster more creative prayer, we can build and maintain active, growing, and meaningful prayer lives while at the same time developing stronger marriages.

Rejecting the notion that God creates one person just for us doesn't discount the reality that God can lead us toward someone and help us make a wise choice when we seek Him in prayer.

And so, for the first of many times, I said the Prayer of God's Smuggler: 'Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.

As you consider God's mission for your life, where do you feel inadequate? Talk to God about this. Then listen for His answer—how has He provided what you need?

A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray every day for every other member, individually and by name, interceding for his personal needs as well as for the success of a particular mission. But what is to prevent twenty, fifty, one hundred such groups from springing up wherever the call is heard—each obedient to its own particular genius, each working in its different way for the coming of the one Kingdom. And