Inspirational Quotes on Prayer

“The suppliant, whose fears prevent his words, will be well understood by the Most High.”

“See, loving heart, how He delights in you. When you lean your head on His bosom, you not only receive, but you give Him joy; when you gaze with love upon His all-glorious face, you not only obtain comfort, but impart delight.”

“Meditation puts the telescope to the eye, and enables us to see Jesus after a better sort than we could have seen Him if we had lived in the days of His flesh.”

“If it pleases Him to bid our patience exercise itself, shall He not do as He wills with His own!”

“The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow; he may be sickly to-day and well to-morrow; he may be in happiness to-day, to-morrow he may be distressed-but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If He loved me yesterday, He loves me to-day.”

“Dear brethren, if we shut our ears to what Jesus tells us, we shall never have power in prayer, nor shall we enjoy intimate communion with the Well-beloved.”

“I never expect, until I get to heaven, to be able to cease confessing sin every day and every time I stand before God.”

“The prayer of the Christian reaches beyond its set time and extends into the heart of his work. It includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes it, affirms it, and lends it meaning and joy. Thus every word, every work, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer; not in the unreal sense of a constant turning away from the task that must be done, but in a real breaking through the hard "it" to the gracious Thou. "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Col. 3: 17).”

“The sign that the Holy Ghost is in us is that we realise, not that we are full, but that we are empty, there is a sense of absolute need.”

“[M]editation is the life of of most other duties; and the view of heaven is the life of meditation (559).”

“Like some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him.”

“When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker:—‘Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!’ that is a prayer—a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.”

“By nature, we get more pleasure from God's gifts then from Himself.”

“God aims to exalt himself by working for those who wait for him. Prayer is the essential activity of waiting for God: acknowledging our helplessness and his power, calling upon him for help, seeking his counsel.”

“It’s fairly simple. When can we pray? All the time. When should we praise God? Whenever we pray.”

“When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.”

“Matthew Henry said, "When God intends great mercy for His people, He sets them apraying." Indeed, when God wants anything accomplished in His Kingdom, He moves men to pray. God is always the initiator. All effectual prayer was moving in the heart of God before ever it began to move in the heart of man. What Kepler said as he unlocked the secrets of the heavens, could well be said by the man who prays in the Spirit: "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee.”

“... the intercessor is not so much like a lamp in the electric circuit as a radio which is both a receiver and transmitter. The receiving aspect is often quite overlooked in the ministry of intercession. Communion with God should surely be a two-way traffic. We speak of prayer as our ‘coming to the mercy seat’, but when God first spoke about this to Moses He said nothing about it as a place where Moses would speak with Him, but rather as a place where He would speak with Moses (Exod. 2 5 : 22). In other words, the mercy seat was to be first a place of revelation, and then a place of intercession. This revelation may indeed be given to the intercessor as he prays, but it will often be necessary to tune in and hear what eaven is saying that he may know how to pray. To learn how to talk to God we must first learn how to listen to God.”

“He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.”

“We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask. What is prayer like for you? Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit? Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be? Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your “shopping list” to God in order to have your needs met? Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence?”