Quotes about Prayer
Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah's generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!
— Elie Wiesel
Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot under-stand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and re-main there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself. And why do you pray, Moishe? I asked him. I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.
— Elie Wiesel
One of his [Rebbe Mikhal of Zlotchev] prayers: I have but one request; may I never use my reason against truth.
— Elie Wiesel
Why do you pray? he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?
— Elie Wiesel
Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. I was dying to talk to Jim and about Jim. But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.
— Elisabeth Elliot
Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.
— Elisabeth Elliot
If your faith rests in your idea of how God is supposed to answer your prayers, your idea of heaven here on earth or pie in the sky or whatever, then that kind of faith is very shaky and is bound to be demolished when the storms of life hit it. But if your faith rests on the character of Him who is the eternal I AM, then that kind of faith is rugged and will endure.
— Elisabeth Elliot
And so it often is. Faith, prayer, and obedience are our requirements. We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world's woes. What we are offered has to do with another world altogether.
— Elisabeth Elliot
What we don't have now we don't need now. Possibly His very withholding is in order that the boy may learn, at this crucial juncture in his life, to turn to God in prayer for a deeply felt need.
— Elisabeth Elliot
Suffering creates the possibility of growth in, holiness, but only to those who, by letting all else go, are open to the training—not by arguing with the Lord about what they did or did not do to deserve punishment, but by praying, "Lord, show me what You have for me in this.
— Elisabeth Elliot
I don't pray when I'm in the mood anymore then I wash dishes when I'm in the mood. Pray 'til you feel like praying.
— Elisabeth Elliot
The word suffering is much too grand to apply to most of our troubles, but if we don't learn to refer the little things to God how shall we learn to refer the big ones? A definition which covers all sorts of trouble, great or small, is this: having what you don't want, or wanting what you don't have. The vicissitudes of travel furnish plenty of what Janet Erskine Stuart calls "blessed inconveniences," occasions which fit both categories in our definition.
— Elisabeth Elliot