Quotes about Prayer

Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.

If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.

Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, recieveth. And he that seeketh, findeth. And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.

In his work The Book of Church Growth, Thom Rainer explained, "Prayer is the power behind the principles. There simply is no more important principle in church growth than prayer. The prayers of the early church unleashed the power of God to add thousands to the church. It happened then. It is happening in some churches today. And it can happen in your church."

Prayer: outputting spiritual/gospel concern.

In prayer, we bring to Jesus those anxieties and insecurities that would otherwise fuel our outrage. The discipline of prayer prevents us from venting, flaming, or savaging others, either in person or online. I've never seen people go after someone they're praying for.

The discipline of prayer actually guards our hearts and minds in Christ.

In essence, we cannot hope to engage the age of outrage unless we are properly devoted to the habit of prayer. Without it, we will inevitably succumb to the temptations and pressures that give rise to outrage rather than proclaim the victory and peace of Christ.

Through Scripture, we hear Christ's voice speaking into the outrage, giving us wisdom rather than forcing us to seek it from the chaotic masses. Through prayer, we cast our anxieties and fears upon Christ rather than pouring them out into a vat of outrage. Through fasting, we remind ourselves of the soul's dependence upon Christ and the insufficiency of everything else.

Maybe the first thing we need to pray about is for God to help us see the huge field of people waiting to be harvested and to give us an incredible love for those people.

Oswald Chambers puts it all in perspective when he writes, "Remember, no one has time to pray; we have to take time from other things that are valuable in order to understand how necessary prayer is. The things that act like thorns and stings in our personal lives will go away instantly when we pray; we won't feel the smart anymore, because we have God's point of view about them. Prayer means that we get into union with God's view of other people."

Dedicating ourselves to Scripture reading, prayer, and fasting enables us to reset our minds, steering us away from the road toward outrage and onto the path of peace.