Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.
Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart.
About four days a week, I do pretty good at having a morning prayer time. But even at that, it's a rambling sort of thing. What I have learned to do better is to try to keep my mind turned toward God and ear inclined toward God throughout the day, and I think I'm doing better at that ,but I've got a long way to go.
To appeal to God is to appeal to the action of universal love. Love never fails to come when we call to it, but it will always seem to fail us when our bidding is self-centered. The most powerful prayers are simply for God's will to be done, because God's will is healing for all living things.
When I started out on my pilgrimage, I was using walking for two purposes at that time. One was to contact people, and I still use it for that purpose today. But the other was as a prayer discipline. To keep me concentrated on my prayer for peace. And after a few years I discovered something. I discovered that I no longer needed the prayer discipline. I pray without ceasing now. My personal prayer is: Make me an instrument through which only truth can speak.
It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last of the evening.
How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out of doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light.
When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts.
When revelation comes write it down.
If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one.
I am one who believes that with God nothing is hopeless - that all things are possible through prayer.
Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.
Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button.
Where there is no peace, prayers are not heard.
It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.
Negligence in prayer withers the inner man. Nothing can be a substitute for it, not even Christian work. Many are so preoccupied with work that they allow little time for prayer. Hence they cannot cast out demons. Prayer enables us first inwardly to overcome the enemy and then outwardly to deal with him.
God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer-to know that He loves me, that I have been created for greater things.