We are feeble, weak and impoverished because of our failure to pray. God is restrained in doing because we are restrained by reason of our non-praying. All failures in securing heaven are traceable to lack of prayer or misdirected petition.
I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness.
In Lincoln’s day a President’s religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln’s countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.
Prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God’s work and is powerless to project God’s cause in this world.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a selfish prayer. Prayer puts you in communication so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Let no one profess to trust in God, and yet lay up for future wants, otherwise the Lord will first send him to the hoard he has amassed, before He can answer the prayer for more.
Prayer is not a substitute for work. First we have to do all we can ourselves to understand a situation. Then when we ask for help, sometimes it is very evident, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we may well be helped by not getting a decision.
I always said a prayer before I ran, and my prayer was to win. My prayer was that God would allow me to run my best on that day, or better than my best. So whatever the outcome is, I have to be satisfied with it if I know I gave it my best effort.
Each heartfelt prayer, each Church meeting attended, each worthy friend, each righteous decision, each act of service perfomed all precede that goal of eternal life.
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user’s manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest – and yet it is all these things.
Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they’re thirsty. That’s prayer. They don’t live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along.
I can remember coming downstairs before school every day and my mom would be reading her Bible and doing her devotion and praying. Both my parents were prayer warriors.
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer.
Through the 1980s and ’90s, evangelicals sought to turn back the forces of secularization. Groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition pressed for laws recognizing Christianity’s unique place in American life, including laws that would allow prayer in public schools and Christian displays in public places.
Man’s access in prayer to God opens everything and makes his impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer.
Prayer is an act of love; words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts from thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love.
Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.
Prayer doesn’t work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I’ve paid attention. I’ve pictured what I want to happen in my life. I’ve meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn’t work for me about them.
You can meditate on almost anything: a prayer, song, image or word. Close your eyes; sit in a comfortable position. Take a breath, and say the word out loud, emphasizing the humming sound at the end. When you come to the end of the breath, take another one and say the word again. And so on.
While doing centering prayer, the practice is to let go of any thought or perception. The priority is to be as silent as possible and when that is not possible to let the noise of the thoughts be the sacred symbol for a while, without analyzing them.
If I could have one prayer answered, I would pray for patience. I move so fast sometimes. I try to slow down.
The Latin root of ‘precariousness’ is ‘to obtain by prayer.’ The precariat must ask for favours, for charity, to show obsequiousness, to plead with figures of authority. It is degrading and stigmatizing.
It’s very important to have that prayer life. It’s very important to communicate always.
We spend millions of dollars per year supplying more than adequate meals and a Koran to every detainee along with a prayer rug that meets their religious standards.
The most common phrase bandied about these days is ‘Oh my God’. People say it automatically all the time – not realising that that’s a form of prayer.
When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.
When we were kids, we said the Pledge of Allegiance because we were proud of this country, and we said prayer. You know, we thanked the good Lord above.
Men of prayer, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth. No other sort will fit in the scheme or do the deed. Men, great and influential in other things but small in prayer, cannot do the work Almighty God has set out for His Church to do in this, His world.
Think of God; attachments will gradually drop away. If you wait till all desires disappear before starting your devotion and prayer, you will have to wait for a very long time indeed.
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.
All my time not devoted to my master’s service was spent either in prayer, or in making experiments in casting different things in moulds made of earth, in attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other experiments, that, although I could not perfect, yet convinced me of its practicability if I had the means.
When I come out of my dressing room, I go to my heart and say a little prayer and go out on stage. There I am, coming to lift you up and to motivate you. I want to bring joy. It’s gospel, and gospel is the truth. It’s what I do. I’m going to bring you the truth and lift up your spirit.
The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
I still say the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ every day. It covers a lot of ground in our relation to the world.
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained – through prayer, study, and careful analysis – to manifest the divine event of God’s saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time – nor ever will.
All I’m saying is, is God the god who we look to for comfort during tragedies? Is he the god who can control all those things, or is he the god that we don’t even trust with our daily lives… As long as there’s prayer and exams, as long as there’s games, there will be prayers.
When fathers come home after a tough day at work, they should come home to serve, like my father did, teaching lessons around the dinner table and leading the family in worship and prayer.
Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.
My father was an Episcopalian minister, and I’ve always been comforted by the power of prayer.
Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian’s relationship with God. It’s how we communicate and fellowship with Him. But a surprising number of people, young and old, new and even long-time Christians, say they’re not satisfied with their prayer life.
‘Cover Me.’ ‘Take Time To Know Her.’ ‘Warm and Tender Love.’ ‘Out Of Left Field.’ ‘Dark End Of The Street.’ ‘Tears Me Up.’ ‘My Special Prayer.’ All points back to one song. ‘When A Man Loves A Woman.’ The Grand-daddy to all of my songs. The boss of all of my songs. I have great respect for that song. Always will.
I write in my study, where I also have my prayer altar. I believe that keeps me focused and gives me positive energy and reminds me that I’m merely the instrument of greater creative forces.
When my children were growing up, we began every family meal – which included breakfast and dinner every day – with a prayer. We are Jewish and so it was the prayer over bread, when we were having bread, or the catch-all prayer for everything when we weren’t.
Some of us pray demands. Some of us pray complaints. Some of us pray knowing, and some of us pray not knowing. But prayer is the attitude that you hold in your heart.
If I had to pick, I’d say my favorite book is ‘A Prayer For Owen Meany’, by John Irving.
