Quotes About Prayer

Ambrose Bierce's witty definition of the verb 'to pray': 'to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy'.

With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean—in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written—with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the note of my soul, redoubling my own voice by their power.

I began to pray for help with what I needed and wanted as well as for the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry it out. Immediately, I felt a heightened sense of spiritual companionship.

Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer. DR. JOSEPH MURPHY

YOU PRAY for guidance and then doubt that I answer your prayers. I am always listening, always ready to guide you when you will be led.

You cannot pray a prayer I cannot hear. There is no wrong way to reach out to me.

YOU HAVE the right to my help. I am your creator. Your problems are my problems. Ask me for help. I give it to you gladly. I am saddened when you try to live alone. My desire for you is union and fulfillment. I am your answered prayer. I am always what you seek.

took pen to page, praying for guidance.

I took pen to page, praying for guidance.

My God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him. —ERIC CLAPTON

I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.

I have never looked to religion for comfort—belief is just not in my genes. But reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking—childishly simple and dauntingly complex, incantatory and comforting—I thought this was what prayer must feel like.

Let there be a time in the future, I prayed, when he laughs with his children, and plays on the shore with them, and spends all his nights in loving arms. Let us have that. To whom I was praying I did not know. The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.

Faolan launched himself across the bridge, uttering a prayer to any deity that might be prepared to listen. Let me reach her in time, let her keep hold, let this wretched apology for a bridge not crumble under my feet...

One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with betrayal and cruelty. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problems of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over, it was time for the evening prayer.

Thomas Aquinas may have given the impression that God was just another item—albeit the highest—in the chain of being, but he had personally been convinced that these philosophical arguments bore no relation to the mystical God he had experienced in prayer. But by the beginning of the seventeenth century, leading theologians and churchmen continued to argue the existence of God on entirely rational grounds.

Ideas about God come and go, but prayer, the struggle to find meaning even in the darkest circumstances, must continue.

Everybody knew that Allah had created the world; that he quickened each human embryo in the womb; and that he was the giver of rain. But these remained abstract beliefs. Arabs would sometimes pray to Allah in an emergency, but once the danger had passed they forgot all about him.23 Indeed, Allah seemed like an irresponsible, absentee father; after he had brought men and women into being, he took no interest in them and abandoned them to their fate.

It was better to avoid ostentatious piety and pray in the privacy of one's cell because 'if we pray when others are present, their approbation may rob our prayer of . . . its effect'.25 There would be no sudden illumination;

We pray for what is "to come," not for what already exists. The "event" does not require "belief" in a static, unchanging deity who "exists" but inspires us to make what is "astir" in the name "God"— absolute beauty, peace, justice, and selfless love—a reality in the world.

Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips. (Psalm 141:3)

there is a direct correlation between our prayer life and our conversations. Perhaps if we spent more time and energy on our prayer life, we would use our tongues more wisely.

When someone gets you hot and bothered, turn on the prayer conditioner.

Sometimes, all you could do was pray for the strength to carry on.