Quotes on Prayer

"Unceasing prayer is a cultivated attentiveness to the God who is always and everywhere with us. Speaking all of our words, thinking all of our thoughts, taking all our actions, in the mindfulness that God hears, knows, sees. Praying without ceasing, then, is not so much something we do. It is a way we are, the way we inhabit our skin, move in the world. It is simply being awake to the reality that, though we can't see it all we know by faith it is there . . . It is a constant awareness. It is a continual, though usually silent, dialogue. It is a fixed habit of mind, a conscious and deliberate gesturing toward and response to God that after long practice becomes unconscious and instinctive." Mark Buchanan Your God is Too Safe.

"Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him." William Barclay

"True, whole prayer is nothing but love." St. Augustine

"Make me what Thou wouldst have me be. I bargain for nothing. I make no terms. I seek for no previous information whither Thou art taking me. I will be what Thou wilt make me, and all that Thou wilt make me. I say not, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, for I am weak, but I give myself to Thee, to lead me anywhither." John Henry Newman

"Teach me. O God, to use all the circumstances of my life today that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin.
Let me use disappointment as material for patience:
Let me use success as material for thankfulness:
Let me use suspense as material for perseverance:
Let me use danger as material for courage:
Let me use reproach as material for longsuffering:
Let me use praise as material for humility:
Let me use pleasures as material for temperance:
Let me use pains as material for endurance." John Baillie

"Prayer is ruin's remedy, doubt's destroyer, the cure of all cares, the antidote to all anxieties, the grand panacea for all pains, and the golden key that can open the gate of mercy!" Charles Spurgeon

"Prayer is the lifting of an eye, the falling of a tear, the outdarting of an arm as if it would snatch a blessing from on high. You do not need long sentences, intricate expressions, elaborate and innumerable phrases; a look may be a battle half won. You may pray now or in the crowded street or in the busiest scene—you can always have a word with God—you can always wing a whisper to the skies. Pray without ceasing. Live in the spirit of prayer. Let your life be one grand desire, Godward and heavenward. Then use as many words or as few as you please. Your heart is itself a prayer, and your look a holy expectation." Joseph Parker

"Prayer need not be upbeat and optimistic. The true believer does not always rise from his knees full of encouragement and fresh hope. There are times when one may remain down in the dumps and yet still have prayed well. For what God wants from us is not the observance of a religious protocol, but just that we be real with Him. What He wants is our heart." Mike Mason from The Gospel of Job

"Prayer and waiting are intrinsically linked, joined at the hip. Prayer makes no sense apart from waiting. Prayer is about being made in the likeness of Christ. Conformed, reformed, transformed. If prayer was only about getting things—getting even, getting rich, getting well, getting justice—then we would call it something else. We have lots of names to describe the quest and method for getting those things: magic, medicine, capitalism, lobbying. But prayer is not about bartering and bargaining with God, haggling for the best deal; a pound of piety for remission of sickness. Prayer, at its heart, is about becoming like the crucified and risen Christ. And that is a work like wind carving stone. It is slow, painful, toiling work, rarely swift or easy. It is riddled with wrenching setbacks, and its break- throughs are more serendipitous than calculated. There are disciplines for prayer, to be sure, but no mechanisms. Gimmicks and panaceas—like glittery gimcrack lures for fishermen—are widely available and equally useless. There is simply no substitute for becoming like Christ other than being with Christ, and especially with Him in solitude and suffering and sorrow. And so prayer, like fishing, is about waiting. Prayer is the poetry of waiting. It is the language of those who know that what is now is not what should be and not what will be, if we wait." Mark Buchanan, from Your God is Too Safe