You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer.
Fasting with a pure heart and motives, I have discovered, brings personal revival and adds power to our prayers. Personal revival occurs because fasting is an act of humility. Fasting gives opportunity for deeper humility as we recognize our sins, repent, receive God's forgiveness, and experience His cleansing of our soul and spirit. Fasting also demonstrates our love for God and our full confidence in His faithfulness.
Prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires, as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires.
Blessings are the spiritual equivalent of breathing in, and prayer is the spiritual equivalent of breathing out.
On the ground of our own goodness we cannot expect to have our prayers answered. But Jesus is worthy, and for His sake we may have our prayers answered. There is nothing too choice, too costly, or too great for God to give Him. He is worthy. He is the spotless, holy Child, who under all circumstances acted according to the mind of God. And if we trust in Him, if we hide in Him, if we put Him forward and ourselves in the background, depend on Him and plead His name, we may expect to have our prayers answered.
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past security?
If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
Transform your sex into love, and transform your love into prayer
His voice leads us not into timid discipleship but into bold witness.
Organized religion has a part in the evolution of personal religion. It is the material upon which personal religion is grafted, but the process of grafting must be individual. Every human soul must, through thought, prayer, and study, cultivate his [sic] own religion to suit himself.
The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally beginning to be men. We do not have a high enough opinion of our own nature. We think we are at the gates of heaven and we are only just beginning to come into our own realm as free and intelligent beings.
Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words), regulation should not "be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly"
Prayer is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service - praying is harder than doing, at least I find it so, but the dynamic lies that way to advance the Kingdom.
Bernard always had a few prayers in the hall and some whiskey afterwards as he was rather pious.
Prayer is climbing up into the heart of God.
The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.
We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
If I could give you one line about writing worship songs, it would be ‘Sing your prayers. ’
It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God's glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head and humble prayer, yet it silently adores.