Prayer Quotes

For Your Edification

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another. (William Law)

It is good for us to keep some account of our prayers, that we may not unsay them in our practice. (Matthew Henry)

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers. (Teresa of Avila)

Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon God for ten days, that the Spirit’s power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power. (Hudson Taylor)

There is no power like that of prevailing prayer, of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah pouring out her hurting heart, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat of blood. Add to this list from the records of the church your personal observation and experience, and always prevailing prayer includes the cost of perseverance and passion unto blood. But such prayer prevails. It turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings the power of God to specific situations and settings. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God, himself. (Samuel Chadwick)

I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time; no matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the least I would have devised, it came. (Adoniram Judson)

Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart.  (Martin Luther).

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men . . . and so we ought to be men of prayer.  (E. M. Bounds)

Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means for getting something for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. (Oswald Chambers)

There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.  (Brother Lawrence)

It is in the field of prayer that life's critical battles are lost or won. We must conquer all our circumstances there. We must first of all bring them there. We must survey them there. We must master them there. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the Presence of God and we fight them there. Have you tried that? Or have you been satisfied to meet and fight your foes in the open spaces of the world? (J. H. Jowett)

There are thousands of prayers daily offered that God does not answer. There are faithless prayers. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” There are selfish prayers, proceeding from a heart that is cherishing idols. “If any man regard iniquity in his heart, the Lord will not hear him.” There are petulant, fretful prayers, murmuring because of the burdens and cares of life, instead of humbly seeking grace to endure them. Those who offer such petitions are not abiding in Christ. They have not submitted their will to the will of God. They do not comply with the condition of the promise, and it is not fulfilled to them. They that are abiding in Jesus have the assurance that God will hear them, because they love to do his will. They offer no formal, wordy prayer, but come to God in earnest, humble confidence, as a child to a tender father, and pour out the story of their grief and fears and sins, and in the name of Jesus present their wants; they depart from his presence rejoicing in the assurance of pardoning love and sustaining grace.  

What poor humans are we, that God must needs let us be driven into the stress of necessity and helplessness because in no other way can He constrain us to betake ourselves to prayer to Him! Yet it is even so. Do we pray when the wind is a-beam, the skies fair, and our ship running free before the breeze? No, but when the mast is overboard, the rudder gone, and the ship in the trough – then we pray. Do we pray when our loved ones are in prosperity, health, and strength? No, but when the sober-faced physician shakes his head, and says he has done all he can, and death’s shadow settles down over the chamber of a precious one – then we pray. Strength is self-reliant and thinks it needs no God. But weakness is driven to God-reliance, and there learns the secrets of the prayer life. Helplessness begets dependence. Dependence leads to prayer, and prayer brings power. Out of our own insufficiency into God’s sufficiency, by the pathway of prayer, is the secret of power. Wherefore self-strength is worse than weakness. For the weak man learns to cling and pray. But the strong one stays self-assured and misses God.

There are two kinds of prayer – the prayer of form and the prayer of faith. The repetition of set, customary phrases when the heart feels no need of God, is formal prayer. We should be extremely careful in all our prayers to speak the wants of the heart and to say only what we mean. All the flowery words at our command are not equivalent to one holy desire. The most eloquent prayers are but vain repetitions if they do not express the true sentiments of the heart. But the prayer that comes from an earnest heart, when the simple wants of the soul are expressed just as we would ask an earthly friend for a favor, expecting that it would be granted – this is the prayer of faith. The publican who went up to the temple to pray is a good example of a sincere, devoted worshiper. He felt that he was a sinner, and his great need led to an outburst of passionate desire, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

Psalm 139:23-24 - Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; [24] and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Each time your spirit goes under and faints in the testing and trials which come to you, you lose mastery over the powers of darkness, i.e. you get below them instead of abiding above them in God. Every time you take the earth standpoint – think as men think, talk as men talk, look as men look – you take a place below the powers of darkness. The mastery of them depends upon your spirit abiding in the place above them, and the place above them means knowing God's outlook, God's view, God's thought, God's plan, God's ways. You do this by abiding with Christ in God, through prayer, meditation on the Word and ways of God, submission to the will of God, resisting the devil, and drawing ever nearer to God – and more so after having moved a distance away. Now do you see how much of this is done in and along with prayer?          (James Fraser from Behind the Ranges by Mrs. Howard Taylor)

The Church always fails at the point of self-confidence. When the Church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah. That is why prayer is the test of faith and the secret of power. The Spirit of God travails in the prayer-life of the soul. Miracles are the direct work of His power, and without miracles the Church cannot live. The carnal can argue, but it is the Spirit of God that convicts. Education can civilize, but it is being born of the Spirit that saves. The energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements, and raise millions; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes our bodies and Christ’s Body a Temple of the Living God. The root-trouble of the present distress is that the Church has more faith in the world and in the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to seeking His presence and power. The breath of the four winds would turn death into life and dry bones into mighty armies, but if it is to happen here, we must pray, and pray together!             Samuel Chadwick

The prayer-meeting is an institution which ought to be very precious to us, and to be cherished by us as a Church, for to it we owe everything. When our comparatively little chapel was all but empty, was it not a well-known fact that the prayer-meeting was always full? And when the Church increased, and the place was scarcely large enough, it was the prayer meeting that did it all. When we then met at Exeter Hall, we were a praying people, indeed; and when we entered into an even larger arena, the Surrey Music-hall, what cries and tears went up to heaven for the continued work of the Holy Spirit among us! And so it has been ever since. It is in the spirit of prayer that our strength lies; and if we lose this, the hair will be cut off from Samsons head, and God’s Holy Church will become weak as water. And though we, as Samson did, go and try to shake ourselves as at other times when we hear the cry, “The Philistines are upon you,” our eyes will be put out, and our glory will depart, unless we continue mightily and earnestly in prayer.                Charles Spurgeon

If God is the center of attraction, the treasure for which we would sell everything to obtain, it would not be long before we understood that prayer is the path that leads to fellowship with God and needed help from God. Those who see and practice this truth do not pray occasionally, not a little at regular or at odd times; but they so pray that their prayers enter into and shape their characters; they so pray as to affect their own lives and the lives of others; they so pray as to make the influence of the Church the current of the times. They spend much time in prayer, not because they mark the shadow on the dial or the hands on the clock, but because it is to them so momentous and engaging that they could scarcely do otherwise.

We are to cast all of our care upon Him; and we have the reason: “For He careth for you.” Blessed position. How may I know whether I have cast my burden upon God? One says, by prayer! Well, right or wrong, just as you understand it. Right, if it is believing prayer, if you exercise faith in the power and willingness of God to carry the burden for you. But simply praying will not do. We know we have rolled our burden upon God, if after praying, the heart is easy, the heart is light. If this is not the case, then we are still carrying the burden ourselves instead of casting it on God, and have need to go again to Him, and in believing prayer exercise faith with regard to the power and willingness of God to carry the burden for us.”             George Muller

Does the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” mean that we are to do nothing to secure our bread, lest we show no faith in God, and simply wait in idleness for God to repeat the miracle of sending it by a raven? or, does it mean that with thankful hearts to God for the ability he has given us to work, that we go forth diligently fulfilling our task in the use of all appropriate means to secure that which his loving bounty has made possible for us in the fruitful seasons of the earth, and return with devout recognition that He is the Creator, Upholder and Giver of all, bringing our sheaves with us. When seed-time and harvest fail and death is on the land, when corn fails in Egypt and there is no bread, when we have obeyed him and sought to toil with our hands and no man has given unto us, then we will expect his interposition and will have faith that he who has fed us by use of means, will supply us without means, and that He alone is the living God."              Daniel Whittle

I desire that all the children of God may be lead to increased and more simple confidence in God for everything which they may need under any circumstances. I trust that my experience with answered prayer may encourage them to pray, particularly as it regards the conversion of their friends and relatives, their own progress in grace and knowledge, the state of the saints who they know personally, the state of the church of God at large, and the success of the preaching of the Gospel. Especially I affectionately warn them against being led away by the device of Satan, to think that such prayer and answers to prayer cannot be enjoyed by all the children of God, for all believers are called upon, in the simple confidence of faith, to cast all their burdens upon Him, to trust in Him for everything, and not only to make every thing a subject of prayer, but to expect answers to their petitions which they have asked according to His will, and in the name of the Lord Jesus.                     George Muller