Quotes About Prayer

a simple wagon-driver stops his cart at the side of the road to speak the Hebrew alphabet, one letter at a time. 'God,' he cries out, 'I don't know the prayers, so I am sending you the alphabet. You must know the prayers. Make them up out of the letters I am sending.

People pray for rain, then complain about the flood. They pray for it to stop raining, then bitch about the drought.

For Jesus, just as it is for us, prayer and vigorous fighting are the means to overcome temptation.

If my church or your church isn't praying, we shouldn't be boasting in our orthodoxy or our Sunday morning attendance figures.1

This certainly wasn't an isolated incident, but it is indicative of Jesus' ferocious ambition to walk with His Father by trusting in Him to overcome temptation. For Jesus, just as it is for us, prayer and vigorous fighting are the means to overcome temptation. Jesus' manhood in this particular instance is awe inspiring; He fought against the greatest temptation imaginable, in regard to His most challenging responsibility, and yet didn't drop the ball:

He . . . said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.

May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself. . .

The questions that are seriously put to us today by young theologians are: How do I learn to pray? How do I learn to read the Bible? If we cannot help them there we cannot help them at all.

It had been Luther's idea that Christians should confess to one another instead of to a priest. Most Lutherans had thrown that baby out with the bathwater and didn't confess to anyone. Confession of any kind was considered overly Catholic, just as extemporaneous prayer was criticized as too pietistic. But Bonhoeffer successfully instituted the practice of confessing one to another.

It's much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

if we appeal to Mary and the other saints before we appeal to Jesus himself, are we not effectively denying the Incarnation itself?

What made him stand out, to some as an inspiration, to others as an oddity, and to others as an offense, was that he did not hope that God heard his prayers, but knew it.

For Luther, any appeal to Mary and the saints instead of to Jesus himself became a satanic

Behold, the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, what it accomplishes while we are silent, suffer, and pray. Is not the word of Moses true: "You will be silent and the Lord will fight for you"?

by praying "his" prayers—the Psalms of the Old Testament, which Jesus prayed—we effectively piggyback on them all the way to heaven.

We can pray only in Jesus Christ, with whom we shall also be heard.

From the beginning of his time until the end, Bonhoeffer maintained the daily discipline of scriptural meditation and prayer he had been practicing for more than a decade. Each morning he meditated for at least half an hour on a verse of Scripture. And he interceded for his friends and relatives, and for his brothers in the Confessing Church who were on the front lines or in concentration camps.

It's only logical that if God always answered our prayers as we wanted him to, those answers to our prayers could hardly be considered miraculous. They would only be part of a predictable system that we could manipulate, if only we knew how. It really makes God not God, but a "God" or a god whom we are ultimately able to control through our efforts, whether via prayer or via our "moral" actions designed to elicit a favorable response.

In one conversation that September in Geneva, Visser 't Hooft asked Bonhoeffer what he prayed for. "If you want to know the truth," Bonhoeffer replied, "I pray for the defeat of my nation. For I believe that is the only way to pay for all the suffering which my country has caused in the world.

It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

And one cannot simply think about God in one's own strength, one has to enquire of him.

Theological work and real pastoral fellowship can only grow in a life which is governed by gathering round the Word morning and evening and by fixed times of prayer. Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic . . . Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it . . . Trust to the Word. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Theological work and real pastoral fellowship can only grow in a life which is governed by gathering round the Word morning and evening and by fixed times of prayer.

Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer