Quotes about Prayer

The Creator works in a thousand ways, but one central way is through people—people who think, who pray, who make difficult decisions, who work hard, especially in prayer. That is part of what it means to be image-bearers. The question of divine action and human action is seldom a zero-sum game. If the worlds of heaven and earth have rushed together in Jesus and the spirit, one should expect different layers of explanation to reside together, to reinforce one another.

Hope" in this sense is not a feeling. It is a virtue. You have to practice it, like a difficult piece on the violin or a tricky shot at tennis. You practice the virtue of hope through worship and prayer, through invoking the One God, through reading and reimagining the scriptural story, and through consciously holding the unknown future within the unshakable divine promises.

If we spend time in the prayer of lament, new light may come, rather than simply the repetition of things we might have wanted to say anyway.

This is the context within which the hilast?rion means what it means: the place where God and his people come together. That place is Jesus himself. And Jesus himself, the focus of belief, invoked in prayer, loved in answer to his own love, is the ultimate answer to the problem of idolatry. "He is the image of God, the invisible one" (Col. 1:15), the reality of which all other "images" are at best distorted parodies.

Moral effort needs mental effort, and the mental effort needs to be focused on that victory and turned into prayer for the victory to be applied today and tomorrow. The sacraments will help here, but spiritual guidance and counsel will help a great deal too.

your praying and your preaching should be of the same length. You don't want to find yourself limping, with one leg shorter than the other. God works as a result of prayer and faithfulness, not technique and cleverness. But

There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls 'myself.' Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well.

The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world ... The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship.

If you want to encourage your spiritual leaders (and their wives!) let them know you are praying for them. Ask them periodically for any specific prayer requests and assure them you will pray accordingly. Use the following prayer guide with accompanying scriptures, to suggest practical ways to pray for those who provide spiritual leadership for the flock.

Please work out that surrender in my life—every day, in every matter, until I bow before You in eternity. Amen.

I often wonder what supernatural acts God would perform in our world-things He is ready, willing, eager, and able to do-if we would just approach Him and make our requests known.

You have no idea when or how God will answer your prayers, but don't stop praying.