Quotes About Prayer

It is then I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices. I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life. Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God. And learn to pray.

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

From that moment on, no Christian can ever say one form of prayer is as good as another or one religion is as good as another.

When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.

Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't.

Prayer is simply relaxing and delighting in Jesus with no agenda except celebrating the deep affection between you. This interpersonal encounter deepens the sense of our own belovedness and alters our relationships with others.

The cardinal rule in prayer remains the dictum of Don Chapman: "Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't.

I HAVE GIVEN THEM THE GLORY YOU GAVE TO ME, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE AS WE ARE ONE. WITH ME IN THEM AND YOU IN ME, MAY THEY BE SO PERFECTED IN UNITY THAT THE WORLD WILL RECOGNIZE THAT IT WAS YOU WHO SENT ME AND THAT YOU HAVE LOVED THEM AS YOU HAVE LOVED ME. (JOHN 17:22–23 NJB)

For Foucauld and the Little Brothers, life in the desert was not a flight from the world but rather a school of love and prayer to learn to enter more deeply into humanity. Their goal was to shout the gospel not so much with their mouths as with their lives.

In the next few minutes, I prayed with her for healing. Then I asked her if she would find a quiet place every morning for the next thirty days, sit down in a chair, close her eyes, upturn her palms, and pray this one phrase over and over: ABBA, I BELONG TO YOU.

What I created today was a god, but it was not You. Forgive this sin of mine, I pray.

As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.

Praying demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.

Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now.

a spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ.

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.

In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God.

I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. This grief is so deep not just because the human sin is so great, but also—and more so—because the divine love is so boundless. To become like the Father whose only authority is compassion, I have to shed countless tears and so prepare my heart to receive anyone, whatever their journey has been, and forgive them from that heart.

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.

When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day.

The paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift. We cannot plan, organize or manipulate God; but without a careful discipline, we cannot receive him either.

Prayer for others, therefore, cannot be seen as an extraordinary exercise that must be practiced from time to time. Rather, it is the very beat of the compassionate heart.

Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. These too are times for your community.

Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.