“The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not the answer.” — Oswald Chambers who launches this week’s Soul Food for Friday with quotes on prayer that seek to lead us to grow deeper in this gift God gives in coming to Him in prayer. Jesus tells us to ask, seek and kock in Matthew 7 and Luke 11. In other words, He invites us to pray.
“When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t pray, they don’t.” — William Temple
“Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray. Your helplessness is your best. prayer.” — Ole Hallesby
“Peace comes not because your prayer has been answered exactly as you prayed it, but because you shifted your focus and the burden of responsibility on to Him.” — Christopher Parkening
“The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between my knees and the floor.” — Chuck Melton
“Pray to God in the storm — but keep on rowing.” — Danish Proverb
“Just pray for a tough hide and a tender heart.” — Ruth Graham
“You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.” — Teresa of Avila
“Prayer is climbing up into the heart of God.” — Martin Luther
“A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayers, but unoffered prayer.” — F. B. Meyer
“Prayer is a declaration of dependence on God.” — Philip Yancey
“We pray besst when we are no longer aware of praying.” — Cassian
“Prayer does not equip us for great works — Prayer is the greater work.” — Oswald Chambers
“Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our pesons, but they are helpless against our prayers.” — Sidlow Baxter
“We are too busy to pray, and so we are to busy to have power.” — R. A. Torrey
“Prayer is the contemplation of life from the highest point of view.” — William James
“Prayer may not change things for you, but it for sure changes you for things.” — Samuel M. Shoemaker
“I assure you, where prayer focuses power falls.” — Howard Hendricks
“Prayerless leaders are like ship captains without compasses; they can make their best guess at which direction to go, but they have no assurance they are heading the right way. Prayer keeps leaders focused on the one absolutely consistent factor in life — God.” — Henry T. Blackaby and Richard Blackaby
“Prayer opens our lives for God so his will can be done in and through us, because in true prayer we habitually put ourselves into the attitude of willingness to do whatever God wills.” — Harry Emerson Fosdick
“The purpose of prayer is to find God’s will and to make that will our prayer.” — Catherine Marshall
“Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think of a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings.” — Philips Brooks
“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” — Abraham Lincoln
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” — Karl Barth
“You do more then pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” — John Bunyon
“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” — Corrie ten Boom
“Prayer is the way to both the heart of God and the heart of the world — precisely because they have been joined through the suffering of Jesus Christ … Praying is letting one’s own heart become the place where the tears of God’s children merge and become tears of hope.” — Henri Nouwen
“Prayer is the way to die to our own wishes and surrender everything to God.” — Scot McKnight
How do we learn to pray? “By praying … If you want to pray better, you must pray more.” — Mother Teresa
So what quotes motivate you to pray? What is God leading you to pray for today?
Richard Burkey 