Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling, arising within the mind of the one praying.
A culture that does not teach prayer soon runs mad with desire.
The smile that covered a "multitude of pains" was no hypocritical mask. She was trying to hide her sufferings - even from God! - so as not to make others, especially the poor, suffer because of them. When she promised to do "a little extra praying & smiling" for one of her friends, she was alluding to an acutely painful and costly sacrifice: to pray when prayer was so difficult and to smile when her interior pain was agonizing.
The goal of prayer is the ear of God.
We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.
This was my prayer: an adequate portion of land with a garden and a spring of water and a small wood to complete the picture.
Don't tell me that you have a Reformed Church in the tradition of Calvin until you have the preaching of the Word every day of the week, devote Wednesday's to prayer and have the church gather together for prayer.
Prayer lets God do what he does best. Take a pebble & kill a Goliath. Take the common, make it spectacular! Pray & see what He can do.
Those whose lives were lost on September 11 will remain in our thoughts and prayers forever.
People would never begin to pray if they could not ask for earthly things like riches and health and honours; He says to Himself: If they ask for such things the desire for something better will awaken in them, and finally they will only care about the higher things.
Prayer-though it is often draining, even an agony-is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible.
The Christian's heart must be soaked in prayer before the true spiritual fruits begin to grow.
Goddess-nurse of the young, give ear to my prayer, and grant that this woman may reject the love-embraces of youth and dote on grey-haired old men whose powers are dulled, but whose hearts still desire.
. . . the goodness of God is the highest object of prayer and it reaches down to our lowest need.
The home is under siege. So many families are being destroyed. . . If anyone can change the dismal situation into which we are sliding, it is you. Rise up, oh women of Zion, rise up to the great challenge which faces you. My message to you, my challenge to you, my prayer is that you will rededicate yourselves to the strengthening of your homes.
Men lose their birthrights for a mess of pottage only if they stop using the gifts given them by God for their betterment. By prayer. That is the first and greatest gift. Use the gift of prayer. Ask for strength of mind, and a clear vision. Then sense. Use your sense. … Think long and well. By prayer and good thought you will conquer all enemies.
The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.
In order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer, is, to continue praying; for the less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
How dare we, all these stupid evangelists walking around telling men after they've made some little prayer that they need to write their name in the back of their Bible, and put the date and if the devil ever comes to them, they need to show him that. That is Roman superstition, it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. You see, we've turned the gospel into a flu-shot.
To pray well one must pray much.
