Quotes about Prayer

Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you. Just place yourself before, and look up into, His face; think of His love, His wonderful, tender, pitying love. Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all is: it is the Father's loving heart will give light and warmth to yours. O do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to thy Father, which is in secret.

There is a twofold use of prayer: the one is to obtain strength and blessing for our own life; the other is intercession - the higher, true glory of prayer for which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching. This is where prayer is the royal power of a child of God who exercises in heaven on behalf of others and even of the kingdom.

Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible.

If once believers were to awake to the glory of the work of intercession, and to see that in it, and the definite pleading for definite gifts on definite spheres and persons, lie our highest fellowship with our glorified Lord, and our only real power to bless men, it would be seen that there can be no truer fellowship with God than these definite petitions and their answers, by which we become the channel of His grace and life to men.

As my guarantee, He won it for me by His consent to have His petition unanswered.

Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to His mercy or an indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite need. It is not that His loving heart does not understand our cry or is not ready to hear, but He desires it for our own sake. Such definite prayer teaches us to know our own needs better. It demands time and thought and self-scrutiny to find out what really is our greatest need.

Do not serve God half-heartedly. Pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to the wonder of a life wholly surrendered to God's service.

We seek God's gifts; God wants to give Himself to us first. We think of prayer as the power to draw good gifts from heaven and Jesus as the means to draw ourselves to God. We want to stand at the door and cry; Jesus wants us to enter first and realize that we are friends and children.

The relationship among the members of the church depends on united and unceasing prayer. This relationship is spiritual and can only be maintained by unceasing prayer.

In not granting an answer, the Father tells us that there is something wrong in our praying. He wants to teach us to discover it and confess it; He wants to educate us about true believing and prevailing prayer. He will only attain His objective when He brings us to see that we are to blame for the withholding of the answer - our aim, or our faith, or our life is not what it should be.

And wherever faith has accepted the Father's love, obedience accepts the Father's will. The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the feeble child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which man can rise.