Quotes about Prayer

We need to ask for God's wisdom, revelation, and intervening power to be an integral part of our food choices from now on.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

The nature of the praise and prayer in the Psalms indicates how memory is key to praise and prayer.

You cannot force people to walk with God. You cannot force them to repent. All you can do is live with integrity and invite them to do so as well. Take things a step at a time. Give them consequences when they refuse to deal with serious issues, and pray. Pray like the dickens. Pray every step of the way.

Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and openly as we can; we want to be our truest selves before him. Prayer lets us be in a place of need.

That is exactly what we need. Eyes to see. Isn't that what Jesus offered us—clarity? Recovery of sight for the blind (Luke 4:18)? We need clarity and we need it badly. A simple prayer rises from my heart: Jesus, take away the fog and the clouds and the veil, and help me to see... give me eyes to really see.

If you do not know the power of his indwelling life in you, shaping your personality, healing your brokenness, enabling you to live as he did—you have been plundered. This is why we pray

Pray for people who are in a better situation than you are, who are more gifted than you are, or who currently have wonderful circumstances coming their way. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Pray for someone else's promotion, someone else's pregnancy, someone else's healing. That crucifies envy.

And certainly we see that God wants not merely an adventure, but an adventure to share. He didn't have to make us, but he wanted to. Though he knows the name of every star and his kingdom spans galaxies, God delights in being a part of our lives. Do you know why he often doesn't answer prayer right away? Because he wants to talk to us, and sometimes that's the only way to get us to stay and talk to him. His heart is for relationship, for shared adventure to the core.

Most people don't even try to learn the ways of the kingdom; they just go about their days with a practical agnosticism, hoping things work out, tossing up prayers like they hope to score on a Jesus lottery ticket.

Oswald Chambers, a man who wrote profoundly and elegantly on prayer, made a radical statement when he said, "The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God." Good heavens—it's not? What then is the purpose? "Prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God." A mighty truth is being uncovered here.

Pause when you are offered beauty and make the conscious decision, I receive this grace. We open our clenched soul to let it in. To find God in it. I will often pray, Thank you for this beauty. I receive it into my soul. And with it I receive you, in it, by it, through it—your love, your goodness, your life.