Prayer Quotes

George Allen

• I’ve prayed many prayers when no answer came, 
  I’ve waited patient and long; 
  But answers have come to enough of my prayers 
  To make me keep praying on. (The Secret of Abundant Living)

Archibald Alexander

• Prayer is no more inconsistent with the unchangeable purposes of God, than the use of any other means; for God in forming his purposes had respect to all appropriate means of producing the intended ends, and among these prayer has an important place.
   
• It is as natural and reasonable for a dependent creature to apply to its Creator for what it needs, as for a child thus to solicit the aid of a parent who is believed to have the disposition and ability to bestow what it needs.

Charles Allen

• If your knees are shaking, kneel on them.

Richard Alleine

• The reason why we obtain no more in prayer is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.

Leith Anderson

• There come times in our lives when we in our desperation and pain run to God and dial our 911 prayers. Sometimes we're hysterical. Sometimes we don't know the words to speak. But God hears. He knows our number and he knows our name and he knows our circumstance. That help is already on the way; God has already begun to bring the remedy to us.

M.E. Andross

• Time spent alone with God is not wasted. It changes us; it changes our surroundings; and every Christian who would live the life that counts, and who would have power for service must take time to pray.
   
• Make time to pray. The great freight and passenger trains are never too busy to stop for fuel. No matter how congested the yards may be, no matter how crowded the schedules are, no matter how many things demand the attention of the trainmen, those trains always stop for fuel.
   
• There is no other activity in life so important as that of prayer. Every other activity depends upon prayer for its best efficiency.
   
• If the Christian does not allow prayer to drive sin out of his life, sin will drive prayer out of his life. Like light and darkness, the two cannot dwell together.
   
• “…the man on his knees has a leverage underneath the mountain which can cast it into the sea, if necessary, and can force all earth and heaven to recognize the power there is in 'His name.
   
• When prayer has become secondary, or incidental, it has lost its power. Those who are conspicuously men of prayer are those who use prayer as they use food, or air, or light, or money."

Augustine

• Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying.
   
• Remove from prayer much speaking, not much praying.
   
• Do you wish to pray in the temple? Pray in your own heart. But begin by being God's temple, for He will listen to those who invoke Him in His temple. 
   
• Pray as though everything depended on God; work as though everything depended on you.
   
• It was your Lord who put an end to long-windedness, so that you would not pray as if you wanted to teach God by your many words. Piety, not verbosity, is in order when you pray, since He knows your needs. Now someone perhaps will say: ‘But if He knows our needs, why should we sate our requests even in a few words? Why should we pray at all? Since He knows, let Him give what He deems necessary for us.’ Even so, He wants you to pray so that He may confer His gifts on one who really desires them and will not regard them lightly.
   
• We may pray most when we say least, and we may pray least when we say most.
   
• The nature of the divine goodness is not only to open to those who knock, but also to cause them to knock and ask.
   
• We may pray when we say least, and we may pray least when we say most
• What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!
   
• He that loveth little prayeth little, he that loveth much prayeth much.
• Lord, thou madest us for thyself, and we can find no rest till we find rest in thee.
   
• Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer
   
• If faith fails, prayer perishes.

Charles Baudelaire

• The man who says his prayers in the evening is a captain posting his sentries. After that, he can sleep.

William Barclay 

• I do not think that prayer is ever evasion, that prayer saves us from having to face things that we do not want to face and that are going to hurt if we face them. Jesus in Gethsemane discovered that there was no evasion of the cross.
   
• God will not do for me what I can do for myself. Prayer must never be regarded as a labor-saving device.
   
• Prayer is not flight; prayer is power. Prayer does not deliver a man from some terrible situation; prayer enables a man to face and to master the situation.
   
• Real prayer is simply being in the presence of God. When I am in trouble, and when I go to my friend, I don’t want anything from him except himself. I just want to be with him for a time, to feel his comradeship, his concern, his caring round me and about me, and then to go out to a world warmer because I spent an hour with him. It must be that way with me and God. I must go to him simply for himself.
   
• Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.
   
• We are trying not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to him; we are trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what he wants us to do. It so often happens that in prayer we are really saying, 'Thy will be changed,' when we ought to be saying, 'Thy will be done.' The first object of prayer is not so much to speak to God as to listen to him.
   
• Prayer will never do our work for us; what it will do is to strengthen us for work which must be done.
   
• True prayer is asking God what He wants.

Sidlow Baxter

• Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons—but they are helpless against our prayers.
   
• I care not what black spiritual crisis we may come through or what delightful spiritual Canaan we may enter, no blessing of the Christian life becomes continually possessed unless we are men and women of regular, daily, unhurried secret lingerings in prayer.
   
• My pail I’m often dropping
  Deep down into this well,
  It never touched the bottom,
  However deep it fell;
  And though I keep on dipping
  By study, faith and prayer,
  I have no power to measure
  The living water there.

Richard Baxter

• You shall find this to be God’s usual course: not to give his children the taste of his delights till they begin to sweat in seeking after them.
   
• Lord, what Thou wilt, where Thou wilt, and when Thou wilt. (Ed: A prayer that opens the windows of heaven to a flood of grace!)
   
• Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.
   
• Prayer is the breath of the new creature.
   
• Above all be much in secret prayer and meditation. By this you will fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifice: remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone, many will be losers by it as well as you.
   
• Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.

Joseph Bayly

• Lord, burn eternity into my eyeballs!

Henry Ward Beecher

• It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
   
• Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.
   
• His nature is such that our often coming does not tire him. The whole burden of the whole life of every man may be rolled on to God and not weary him, though it has wearied man.
   
• I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.
   
• Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence.
   
• I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.
   
• There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer.
   
• Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
   
• I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent
   
• I used to think the Lord’s Prayer was a short prayer; but, as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. “Our Father”—there would be a wall a hundred feet high in just those two words to most men. If they might say, “Our Tyrant,” or “Our Monarch,” or even “Our Creator,” they could get along with it; but “Our Father”—why, a man is almost a saint who can pray that! You read, “Thy will be done,” and you say to yourself, “O, I can pray that”; and all the time your mind goes round and round in immense circuits and far-off distances; but God is continually bringing the circuits nearer to you, till he says, “How is it about your temper and your pride? How is it about your business and daily life?” This is a revolutionary petition. It would make many a man’s shop and store tumble to the ground to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, “Thy will be done,” crashing down through it? I think it is the most fearful prayer to pray in the world.

Charles Bent

• Intercessory prayer might be defined as loving our neighbour on our knees.
   
• The real end of prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God.
   
• Prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires, as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires.

John Berridge

• No heart thrives without much secret converse with God, and nothing will make amends for the want of it.

Paul E. Billheimer

• Satan does not care how many people read about prayer if only he can keep them from praying. (Ed: Or how many pithy quotes we quote!)

Henry Blackaby

• God speaks through a variety of means. In the present God primarily speaks by the Holy Spirit, through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church.
   
• If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience.
   
• All revival begins, and continues, in the prayer meeting. Some have also called prayer the "great fruit of revival." In times of revival, thousands may be found on their knees for hours, lifting up their heartfelt cries, with thanksgiving, to heaven.
   
• Prayer is designed to adjust you to God's will, not to adjust God to your will.
   
• Why is it that when we talk to God, it's called 'prayer,' but when God speaks to us, it's called schizophrenia?
   
• 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.
   

John Blanchard (Complete Gathered Gold - recommended) 

• We need more Christians for whom prayer is the first resort, not the last.
   

• No answer to prayer is an indication of our merit; every answer to prayer is an indication of God’s mercy.

• Waiting for an answer to prayer is often part of the answer.

• There is a great difference between praying to God about something and mentioning it to him in passing.

• The real secret of prayer is secret prayer.

• We cannot expect to live defectively and pray effectively.

• No man can pray Scripturally who prays selfishly.

• Prayer is not the least we can do; it is the most.

• The secret of reaching men is to know the secret of reaching God.

• The place for prayer is everywhere.

• To attempt any work for God without prayer is as futile as trying to launch a space probe with a peashooter.

• We need more Christians for whom prayer is the first resort, not the last.

• The Holy Spirit turns prayer from activity into energy.

• When problems get Christians praying they do more good than harm.
   
• When we miss out on prayer we cause disappointment to Christ, defeat to ourselves and delight to the devil.
   
• Effective prayer is a quartet—the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the Christian.
   
• Prayer is not wrestling with God’s reluctance to bless us; it is laying hold on his willingness to do so.
   
• We dare not limit God in our asking, nor in his answering.
   

• You stand tall when you kneel to pray.

• When in prayer you clasp your hands, God opens His.

• There are no depths from which the prayer of faith cannot reach heaven.
   
• We are encouraged to come freely to God but not flippantly.
   
• We dare not limit God in our asking, nor in his answering.
   
• Prayer is not so much submitting our needs to God but submitting ourselves to Him.
   
• Praying is much more difficult than saying words to God.
   
• We need to agonize as well as organize (Ed: When we pray). (Col 4:12)

Lionel Blue

• A prayer is not holy chewing gum and you don’t have to see how far you can stretch it.

James Montgomery Boice

• If you are praying for something and God is not answering your request with a ‘Yes,’ ask what you can accomplish in the meantime and give yourself to that. It does not mean that God may not give you what you are asking for eventually, but in the meantime you will be doing good work.

David Bolt

• Anyone who has ever tried to formulate a private prayer in silence, and in his own heart, will know what I mean by diabolical interference. The forces of evil are in opposition to the will of God. And the nearer a man approaches God’s will, the more apparent and stronger and more formidable this opposition is seen to be. It is only when we are going in more or less the same direction as the devil that we are unconscious of any opposition at all.

Andrew Bonar

• Andrew Bonar kept a card on his mantel that read, “He who has truly prayed has completed the half of his study.” 
   
• Oh brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper - and sleep too - than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber."
   
• God likes to see his people shut up to this, that there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the church’s power against the world.
   
• The Prince of the power of the air seems to bend all the force of his attack against the spirit of prayer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• The Lord's Prayer is not merely the pattern prayer, it is the way Christians must pray.... The Lord's Prayer is the quintessence of prayer. 
   
• Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
   
• The richness of God’s Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
   
• 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.
   
• It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.
   
• The right way to pray is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
   
• The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
   
• The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.
   
• If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
   
• The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.
   
• Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in the fear of men, but only in the sight of God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work.
   
• True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lenghtily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs.
   
• Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.
   
• If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ...It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray.
   
• The Psalter is the great school of prayer.
   
• A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.
   
• The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time...we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God's own Word, precisely because here we encounter the praying Christ...because those who pray the psalms are joining in with the prayer of Jesus Christ, their prayer reaches the ears of God. Christ has become their intercessor...
   
• Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.

William Booth

• Work as if everything depended upon your work, and pray as if everything depended upon your prayer.
   
• You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God...This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame.

E. M. Bounds 

• Prayer should not be regarded "as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.
   
• The men in the pew given to praying for the pastor are like poles which hold up the wires along which the electric current runs. They are not the power, neither are they the specific agents in making the Word of the Lord effective. But they hold up the wires upon which the divine power runs to the hearts of men. They make conditions favorable for the preaching of the Gospel.
   
• It was claimed for Augustus Caesar that he found Rome a city of wood, and left it a city of marble. The pastor who succeeds in changing his people from a prayerless to a prayerful people has done a greater work than did Augustus. And after all, this is the prime work of the preacher.
   
• God's willingness to answer our prayers exceeds our willingness to give good and necessary things to our children, just as far as God's ability, goodness and perfection exceed our infirmities and evil." 
   
• Prayer honors God, acknowledges his being, exalts his power, adores His providence, secures his aid.
• To be little with God is to be little for God.
   
• Importunate (persistent or pressing) praying is the earnest inward movement of the heart toward God.
   
• The word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong.
   
• A life growing in its purity and devotion will be a more prayerful life.
   
• Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God's saints have been held.
   
• Four things let us ever keep in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer.
   
• Praying gives sense, brings wisdom, and broadens and strengthens the mind. The prayer closet is a perfect schoolteacher and schoolhouse for the preacher. Thought is not only brightened and clarified in prayer, but thought is born in prayer.
   
• The prime need of the church is not men of money nor men of brains, but men of prayer.
   
• To give prayer the secondary place is to make God secondary in life’s affairs.
   
• A holy mouth is made by praying.
   
• Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither can survive alone. The absence of the one is the absence of the other.
   
• Prayer goes by faith into the great orchard of God’s exceeding great and precious promises, and with hand and heart picks the ripest and richest fruit.
   
• Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear.
   
• God’s greatest movements in this world have been conditioned on, continued and fashioned by prayer. God has put Himself in these great movements just as men have prayer. Persistent, prevailing, conspicuous and mastering prayer has always brought God to present. How vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide its reach! It lays its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not do if prayer was not offered. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises.
   
• Nothing whatever can atone for the neglect of praying.
   
• Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd out prayer. ‘Choked to death’ would be the coroner’s verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual calamity.
   
• Prayer can do anything that God can do.
   
• The church upon its knees would bring heaven upon the earth.
   
• The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees.  He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. 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.
   
• Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance.
   
• The closet is not an asylum for the indolent and worthless Christian. It is not a nursery where none but babes belong. It is the battlefield of the church, its citadel, the scene of heroic and unearthly conflicts. The closet is the base of supplies for the Christian and the church. Cut off from it there is nothing left but retreat and disaster. The energy for work, the mastery over self, the deliverance from fear, all spiritual results and graces, are much advanced by prayer. The difference between the strength, the experience, the holiness of Christians is found in the contrast of their praying.  
   
• The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a "sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need.
   
• Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing.
   
• We are obliged to pray if we are citizens of God’s Kingdom. . . . The gospel cannot live, fight, or conquer without prayer—prayer unceasing, instant, and ardent.
   
• Prayer is not learned in a classroom but in the closet.  
   
• Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.  
   
• Be not afraid to pray; to pray is right;
  Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray,
  Though hope be weak or sick with long delay;
  Pray in the darkness if there be no light;
  And if for any wish thou dare not pray
   Then pray to God to cast that wish away.
   
• No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.
   
• The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.
   
• God's cause is committed to men; God commits Himself to men. Praying men are the vice-regents of God; they do His work and carry out His plans.
   
• What the Church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.
   
• No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.
   
• The pulpit of this day is weak in praying. The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer. Prayer is with the pulpit too often only official—a performance for the routine of service. Prayer is not to the modern pulpit the mighty force it was in Paul’s life or Paul’s ministry. Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God’s work and is powerless to project God’s cause in this world.
   
• Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.  
• Perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.  
   
• In reality, the denial of prayer is a denial of God himself.
   
• I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go.
   
• God is waiting to be put to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put to the test on His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to prove the reliability of His promises.
   
• To say prayers in a decent, delicate way is not heavy work. But to pray really, to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke, to pray till the iron gates of difficulty are opened, till the mountains of obstacles are removed, till the mists are exhaled and the clouds are lifted, and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightens-this is hard work, but it is God's work, and man's best labor.
   
• Trust perfected is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless or that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So, what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.
   
• The ministry of prayer, if it be anything worthy of the name, is a ministry of ardor, a ministry of unwearied and intense longing after God and after his holiness.
   
• The goal of prayer is the ear of God, a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him, and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and find that presence a constant and ever-increasing delight.
   
• Every mighty move of the Spirit of God has had its source in the prayer chamber.
   
• There is power through prayer. For many Christians, prayer is nothing special, just something we're supposed to do - go to church, tithe, read the Bible, pray. But prayer should be so much more than an item on our "to do" lists.
   
• They are not leaders because of brilliancy. ...but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God.
   
• Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil.
   
• Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays through His people. Had there been Importunate, universal, and continuous prayer by God's people, long ere this the earth had been possessed for Christ.
   
• We can learn more in an hour praying, when praying indeed, than from many hours of rigorous study.
   
• Prayer is no fitful, short-lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things.
   
• The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest.
   
• A holy life does not live in the closet, but it cannot live without the closet.
   
• God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed to death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; they outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.
   
• The stream of praying cannot rise higher than the fountain of living.
   
• That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying. They are God heroes, God's saints, God's servants, God's vicegerents.
   
• Importunate praying is the earnest inward movement of the heart toward God.
   
• A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past; the man of many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming generation.
   
• The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need.
   
• Public prayers are of little worth unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.
   
• The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil.
   
• When trust is perfect and there is no doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand ready to receive.
   
• The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer.
   
• Faith, and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.
   
• If we would have God in the closet, God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God, but by living to God.
   
• Prayer puts God's work in his hands-and keeps it there.
   
• Love is kindled in a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything rather than a feeble flame; but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals. True prayer must be aflame.
   
• Prayer is not learned in a classroom but in the closet.
   
• I feel it is far better to begin with God, to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another. In general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else.
   
• Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.
   
• By prayer, the ability is secured to feel the law of love, to speak according to the law of love, and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.
   
• Trouble and prayer are closely related. Trouble often drives men to God in prayer, while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.
   
• We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him by brief repetitions that are requests for personal favors, and nothing more.
   
• It is hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God answers.
   
• Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails.
   
• Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer.
   
• It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.
   
• Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.
   
• Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit praying, or quit bad conduct.
   
• Importunity is a condition of prayer. We are to press the matter, not with vain repetitions, but with urgent repetitions. We repeat, not to count the times, but to gain the prayer. We cannot quit praying because heart and soul are in it. We pray "with all perseverance." We hang to our prayers because by them we live. We press our pleas because we must have them, or die.
   
• Prayer, like faith, obtains promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their results.
   
• Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it. Painstaking care, much thought, practice and labour are required to be a skillful tradesman in praying. Practice in this, as well as in all other trades, makes perfect.
   
• Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.
   
• Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God's footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.
   
• Prayer is our most formidable weapon, the thing which makes all else we do efficient.
   
• We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by Importunate prayer. It surmounts or removes all obstacles, overcomes every resisting force and gains its ends in the face of invincible hindrances.
   
• Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter of prayer; but a capacity for faith, the power of a thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God.
   
• We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God.
   
• The possibilities of prayer are found in its allying itself with the purposes of God, for God's purposes and man's praying are the combination of all potent and omnipotent forces.
   
• if the devil can get the church to withdraw from prayer by believing reasonable excuses, the church is under his dominion.
   
• It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing.
   
• Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.
   
• Prayer is the greatest of all forces, because it honors God and brings him into active aid.
   
• Prayer in Jesus' name puts the crowning crown on God, because it glorifies Him through the Son and it pledges the Son to give to men 'whatsoever and anything' they shall ask.
   
• God shapes the world by prayer. The prayers of God's saints are the capitol stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work upon the earth.
   
• There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous, urgent, ardent. Flamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.
   
• Prayer is the highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious, the most powerful of all vocations.
   
• Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.
   
• Pray for 'all men.' We usually pray more for things than we do for men. Our prayers should be thrown across their pathway as they rush in their downward course to a lost eternity.
   
• True praying has the largest results for good. Poor praying the least. We cannot do too much of real praying. We cannot do too little of the sham. If we would learn the wondrous power of prayer, we must not give a fragment here and there - A little talk with Jesus, as the tiny saintlets sing - but we must demand and hold with an iron grasp the best hours of the day for God and prayer, or there will be no praying worth the name.
   
• Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer. Prayer is an appeal from the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency of heaven.
   
• Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.
   
• The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray. Prayers do not die, prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them.
   
• No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.
   
• Prayer is God's plan to supply man's great and continuous need with God's great and continuous abundance.
   
• Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic prayer. Men of God, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth
   
• No insistence in the Scripture is more pressing than that we must pray...How clear it is, when the Bible is consulted, that the almighty God is brought directly into the things of this world by the prayers of His people.
   
• Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him "the mind of Christ," the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying.
   
• Walking with God down the avenue of prayer we acquire something of His likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His beauty and His grace.
   
• Prayer is far-reaching in its influence and worldwide in its effects. It affects all men, affects them everywhere, and affects them in all things. It touches man's interest in time and eternity. It lays hold upon God and moves Him to interfere in the affairs of earth. It moves the angels to minister to men in this life. It restrains and defeats the devil in his schemes to ruin man. Prayer goes everywhere and lays its hand upon everything.
   
• Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.
   
• Praying that does not result in right thinking and right living is a farce. We have missed the whole office of prayer if it fails to purge our character and correct conduct. We have failed entirely to understand the virtue of prayer, if it does not bring about the revolutionizing of life. In the very nature of tings, we must either quit praying or quit our bad conduct.
   
• Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.
   
• The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy.
   
• Prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying.
   
• Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither can survive alone. The absence of the one is the absence of the other.
   
• Prayer thrives in the atmosphere of true devotion.
   
• The sanctity of prayer is needed to impregnate business. We need the spirit of Sunday carried over to Monday and continued until Saturday. But this cannot be done by prayerless men, but by men of prayer.
   
• Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need.
   
• It is true that Bible prayers in word and print are short, but the praying men of the Bible were with God through many a sweet and holy wrestling hour. They won by few words but long waiting.
   
• Mans access in prayer to God opens everything and makes his impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer.
   
• To give prayer the secondary place is to make God seconday in life's affairs.

Samuel Logan Brengle

• All great soul-winners have been men of much and mighty prayer, and all great revivals have been preceded and carried out by persevering, prevailing, knee-work in the closet.
   

• Keep me, O Lord, from waxing mentally and spiritually dull and stupid. Help me to keep the physical, mental, and spiritual fiber of the athlete, of the man who denies himself daily and takes up his cross and follows Thee. Give me good success in my work, but hide pride from me. Save me from the self-complacency that so frequently accompanies success and prosperity. Save me from the spirit of sloth, of self-indulgence, as physical infirmities and decay creep upon me."

Bill Bright

• Show me a church or a Christian organization that emphasizes prayer, and I'll show you a ministry where people are excited about Jesus Christ and are witnessing for Him.

Phillips Brooks

• Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. (Warren Wiersbe - "That is the way the early Christians prayed, and that is the way God’s people should pray today.")
   
• Pray for and work for fullness of life above every thing; full red blood in the body; full honesty and truth in the mind; and the fullness of a grateful love for the Saviour in your heart.
   
• If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing; it is an infinitely foolish thing.
   
• Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of God’s willingness.
   
• Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings.
   
• It does not need to be a formal prayer: the most stumbling and broken cry—a sigh, a whisper, anything that tells the heart’s loneliness and need and penitence—can find its way to him.
   
• If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.
   
• Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.
   
• Pray not for crutches but for wings.
   
• I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.
   
• If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing, it is an infinitely foolish thing.
   
• Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
   
• A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

David Brainerd

• The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.
   
• Lord, to Thee I dedicate myself. Oh, accept of me be Thine forever. Lord, I desire nothing else; I desire nothing more.
   
• Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.
   
• This morning about nine I withdrew to the woods for prayer. I was in such anguish that when I arose from my knees I felt extremely weak and overcome. ...I cared not how or where I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls for Christ.
   
• I love to live alone in my own little cottage, where I can spend much time in prayer, etc
   
• God enabled me to so agonize in prayer that I was quite wet with perspiration, though in the shade and the cool wind. My soul was drawn out very much from the world, for multitudes of souls.
   
• In prayer I was exceedingly enlarged, and my soul was as much drawn out as I ever remember it to have been in my life. I was in such anguish, and pleaded with so much earnestness and importunity, that when I rose from my knees I felt extremely weak and overcome; I could scarce walk straight; my joints were loosed; the sweat ran down my face and body; and nature seemed as if it would dissolve....

Jerry Bridges

• Prayer is the most tangible expression of trust in God.
   
• The great antidote to anxiety is to come to God in prayer. We are to pray about everything. Nothing is too big for Him to handle, and nothing is too small to escape His attention.
   
• We ought to be as earnest and frequent in our prayers of thanksgiving when the cupboard is full as we would be in our prayers of supplication if the cupboards were bare.
   
• Prayer assumes the sovereignty of God. If God is not sovereign, we have no assurance that He is able to answer our prayers. Our prayers would become nothing more than wishes. But while God's sovereignty, along with his wisdom and love, is the foundation of our trust in Him, prayer is the expression of that trust.
   
• Prayer is the most tangible expression of trust in God. If we would trust God for our persecuted brothers and sisters in other countries, we must be diligent in prayer for their rulers. If we would trust God when decisions of government in our own country go against our best interests, we must pray for His working in the hearts of those officials and legislators who make those decisions. The truth that the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord is meant to be a stimulus to prayer, not a stimulus to a fatalistic attitude.

Thomas Brooks

• Cold prayers always freeze before they reach to heaven.
   
• Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit His returns to our requests. Lifeless, services shall have lifeless answers. When men are dull, God will be dumb.
   
• Look, as a painted man is no man, and as painted fire is no fire, so a cold prayer is no prayer.
   
• God's hearing of our prayers doth not depend upon sanctification, but upon Christ's intercession; not upon what we are in ourselves, but what' we are in the Lord Jesus; both our persons and our prayers are acceptable in the beloved [Eph 1.6]." 
   

• If you would have God hear you when you pray, you must hear him when he speaks.|

• The best Christian is he that is the greatest monopolizer of time for private prayer.

• God looks not at the oratory of your prayers, how elegant they may be; nor at the geometry of your prayers, how long they may be; nor at the arithmetic of your prayers, how many they may be; not at logic of your prayers, how methodical they may be; but the sincerity of them he looks at.

• Prayer is nothing but the breathing that out before the Lord, that was first breathed into us by the Spirit of the Lord.

• The best and sweetest flowers of paradise God gives to His people when they are upon their knees. Prayer is the gate of heaven.

• A family without prayer is like a house without a roof, open and exposed to all the storms of heaven.

• Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory due to His name, and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. The most praying souls are the most assured souls.

• Christ choosing solitude for private prayer, doth not only hint to us the danger of distraction and deviation of thoughts in prayer, but how necessary it is for us to choose the most convenient places we can for private prayer. Our own fickleness and Satan's restlessness call upon us to get into such places where we may freely pour out our soul into the bosom of God [Mark 1.35].

• God sees us in secret, therefore, let, us seek his face in secret. Though heaven be God's palace, yet it is not his prison.

• The root-trouble of the present distress is that the Church has more faith in the world and the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to His realized presence and power.

Frederick Bruner

• For the brevity of prayer can naturally lead to the frequency of prayer and more frequent prayer might lead to more fervent prayer. And that’s what we want. It is of no value to pray for prayer’s sake.
   
• The paradox of prayer is that only when it is relieved of the necessity of much will people experience the freedom for much. When disciples know they don’t have to pray much, they will, surprisingly, desire to pray more

David Bryant

• Pursuing prayer is prayer on a mission. It is diligent, fervent, constant, persevering, determined, and convinced.
• Prayer is action. By it we step out in advance of all other results . . . Praying is an activity upon which all others depend. By prayer we establish a beachhead for the kingdom among peoples where it has never been before. Prayer strikes the winning blow. All other missionary efforts simply gather up the fruits of our praying.
   
• Lack of world vision in any Christian produces a 'pea-sized Christianity'.
   
• One is not old until Dreams become Regrets.
   
• The president of International Concerts of Prayer, David Bryant, told of arriving in a major city to help conduct a time of prayer. As he entered the building where the meeting was to take place, he noticed that the huge hall was being shared by another event. In one room was the prayer meeting; in the other room there was going to be a boxing match. Two signs greeted visitors, each with arrows pointing the way. In bold letters, one said BOXING; the other said PRAYER. Bryant said it occurred to him that this was the first time he had ever been in a situation where people had to choose between boxing and wrestling (cp Ge 32:24, 25, 26-30)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
  And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face.
  A gauntlet with a gift in ’t.

John Bunyan

• He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.
   
• We can do more than pray after we have prayed, but we cannot do more than pray before we have prayed.
   
• Far away from the Bible's example are most people when they pray! Prayer with earnestness and urgency is genuine prayer in God's account. Alas, the greatest number of people are not conscious at all of the duty of prayer. And as for those who are, it is to be feared that many of them are very great strangers to sincere, sensible, and affectionate-- emotional--pouring out of their hearts or souls to God. Too many content themselves with a little lip-service and bodily exercise, mumbling over a few imaginary prayers. When the emotions are involved in such urgency that the soul will waste itself rather than go without the good desired, there is communion and solace with Christ. And hence it is that the saints have spent their strength, and lost their lives, rather than go without the blessings God intended for them.
   

• John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress wrote: About the midst of this valley I perceived the mouth of hell to be, and it stood also hard by the wayside. Now thought Christian, what shall I do? And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises (things that cared not for Christian’s sword, as did Apollyon before), that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called “All-Prayer.” (cp Eph 6:18)

• In prayer it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart.
   
• You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. (also attributed to S. D. Gordon)
   
• Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. (Mt 6:13)
   
• Pray often; for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan. (Eph 6:18)
   
• Prayer is “a sincere, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to his Word, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.”
   
• Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
   
• The best prayers often have more groans than words.
   
• When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words than thy words without a heart.
   
• Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
   
• Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Spirit, for such things as God has promised.
   
• Prayer is only true when it is within the compass of God’s Word.
   
• The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.
   
• A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God. It prevails with Him unspeakably.
   
• Prayer is a shield to the soul
   
• The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin to damn the whole world.
   
• Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled with God.
   
• Here is the life of prayer, when in or with the Spirit, a man being made sensible of sin, and how to come to the Lord for mercy; he comes, I say, in the strength of the Spirit, and crieth Father. That one word spoken in faith is better than a thousand prayers, as men call them, written and read, in a formal, cold, lukewarm way.
   
• Prayer is an ordinance of God, that must continue with a soul so long as it is on this side glory.
   
• It is not the mouth that is the main thing to be looked at in prayer, but whether the heart is so full of affection and earnestness in prayer with God, that it is impossible to express their sense and desire; for then a man desires indeed, when his desires are so strong, many, and mighty, that all the words, tears, and groans that can come from the heart, cannot utter them.
   
• We know not the matter of the things for which we should pray, neither the object to whom we pray, nor the medium by or through whom we pray; none of these things know we, but by the help and assistance of the Spirit.
   
• In prayer, it is better to have heart without words, than words without heart. Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin entice a man to cease from prayer. The spirit of prayer is more precious than treasures of gold and silver. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan.
   
• To pray rightly, you must make God your hope, stay, and all. Right prayer sees nothing substantial or worth being concerned about except God.
   
• In all your prayers forget not to thank the Lord for his mercies.
   
• To despise the world is the way to enjoy heaven; and blessed are they who delight to converse with God by prayer.

George Buttrick

• Prayer is not a substitute for work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.
   
• Prayer is not a vain attempt to change God's will; it is a filial desire to learn God's will and to share it. Prayer is not a substitute for work: it is the secret spring and indispensable ally of all true work.
   
• Prayer is listening as well as speaking, receiving as well as asking; and its deepest mood is friendship held in reverence. So the daily prayer should end as it begins - in adoration.
   
• Prayer is not a substitute for work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.

Lord Earl Cairns, Lord Chancellor of England

• If I have had any success in life, I attribute it to the habit of giving the first two hours of each day to Bible study and prayer.

John Calvin

• Since this is a holy exercise both for the humbling of men and for their confession of humility, why should we use it less than the ancients did?
   
• Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them."
   
• To pray rightly is a rare gift.
   
• Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
   
• Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.
   
• Prayer flows from doctrine.
   
• God can never be expected to undertake a cause which is unworthy of defence.
   
• We are not at liberty in calling upon God to follow the suggestions of our own mind and will, but must seek God only in so far as he has invited us to approach him.
   
• Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.
   
• God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us - as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray.
   
• Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
   
• Joy and patience are far above our strength... We must persevere in prayer that he may not permit our hearts to faint... Prayer and perseverance are necessary in our daily conflicts. The best remedy to the weariness is diligence in prayer.
   
• Prayer unaccompanied by perseverance leads to no result.
   
• We must resist wandering thoughts in prayer. Raising our hands reminds us that we need to raise up our minds to God, setting aside all irrelevant thoughts.
   
• The door is closed to prayer unless it is opened with the key of trust.

Alexis Carrel

• As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer.

William Carey

• Prayer - secret, fervent, believing prayer - lies at the root of all personal godliness.
   
• I cannot go to India on my feet, but I can go to India on my knees.
   
• The most glorious works of grace that have ever took place, have been in answer to prayer; and it is in this way, we have the greatest reason to suppose, that the glorious out-pouring of the Spirit, which we expect at last, will be bestowed.
   
• One of the first, and most important of those duties which are incumbent upon us, is fervent and united prayer.
   
• I am very defective in all duties... In prayer I wander and am formal... I soon tire; devotion languishes; and I do not walk with God.

Amy Carmichael

• God always answers us in the deeps, never in the shallows of our soul.
   
• We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.
   
• It is a solemn thing to find oneself drawn out in prayer which knows no relief till the soul it is burdened with is born. It is no less solemn afterwards, until Christ is formed in them.
   
• When an answer I did not expect comes to a prayer which I believed I truly meant, I shrink back from it; if the burden my Lord asks me to bear be not the burden of my heart's choice, and I fret inwardly and do not welcome His will, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
   
• Prayer is the core of the day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse ...
   
• Every work undertaken in obedienced to a divine command, whether the work be that form of conflict with the powers of darkness that we call prayer, or whether it be the action that follows, leads sooner or later to a new demand on personal devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ.

D A Carson

• All of us would be wiser if we would resolve never to put people down, except on our prayer lists.
   
• We do not drift into spiritual life or disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray.
   
• Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.
   
• Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.
   
• Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciousl y set aside time to do nothing but pray. (see similar comment by John Piper)
   
• Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher's sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.
   
• The person who prays more in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God's approval than in human praise. Not piety but a reputation for piety is his concern.
   
• Draw nigh to God, so that you may dread the grave as little as your bed. Draw nigh to God, that you may live a happy and useful life. Drawing nigh to God is the most concentrated energy of the soul. Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.
   
• Prayer is God's appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.
   
• Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.

George Washington Carver

• My prayers seem to be more of an attitude than anything else. I indulge in no lip service, but ask the great God silently, daily, and often many times a day, to permit me to speak to Him. I ask Him to give me wisdom, understanding and bodily strength to do His will. Hence, I am asking and receiving all the time.

Louis Cassels

• Adoration is the highest form of prayer.

Samuel Chadwick

• Hurry is the death of prayer.
   
• There is no better way to serve others than to pray for them. There is nothing about which I do not pray. I go over all my life in the presence of God. All my problems are solved there.
   
• Nothing would turn the nation back to God so surely and so quickly as a Church that prayed and prevailed. The world will never believe in a religion in which there is no supernatural power. A rationalized faith, a socialized Church and a moralized gospel may gain applause, but they awaken no conviction and win no converts.
   
• We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frownLet no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified and aflame with the fire of the Holy Ghost.
   
• To pray in the name of Christ is to pray as one who is at one with Christ, whose minid is the mind of Christ, whose desires are the desires of Christ, and whose purpose is one with that of Christ.
   
• In these days there is no time to pray; but without time, and a lot of it, we shall never learn to pray.
   
• Satan laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
   
• Prayer turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.
   
• It takes us long to learn that prayer is more important than organization, more powerful than armies, more influential than wealth and mightier than all learning.
   
• The reason so many people do not pray is because of its cost. The cost is not so much in the sweat of agonizing supplication as in the daily fidelity to the life of prayer.
   
• True prayer is a lonely business.
   
• The great souls who became mighty in prayer and rejoiced to spend three and four hours a day alone with God were once beginners.
   
• Intensity is a law of prayer. God is found by those who seek Him with all their heart. Wrestling prayer prevails. The fervent effectual prayer of the righteous is of great force.
   
• The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.
   
• There is no way of learning to pray but by praying. No reasoned philosophy of prayer ever taught a soul to pray. We know not what we should pray for as we ought, and if prayer waits for understanding it will never begin. We discover by using. We learn by practice. Though a man should have all knowledge about prayer, and though he should understand all mysteries about prayer, unless he prays he will never learn to pray.
   
• The Church gives more time, thought, and money to recreation and sport than to prayer.
   
• Great grief prays with great earnestness. Prayer is not a collection of balanced phrases; it is the pouring out of the soul. What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul. In them men wrestle with principalities and powers... ”The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.
   
• Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer. He had the unlimited certainty of knowing that prayer is always answered.
   
• God answers prayer in the best way—not just sometimes, but every time....Do we expect God to answer prayer?
   
• Prayer is the acid test of devotion.
   
• Satan dreads nothing but prayer. . . . The Church that lost its Christ was full of good works. Activities are multiplied that meditation may be ousted, and organizations are increased that prayer may have no chance. Souls may be lost in good works, as surely as in evil ways. The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
   
• There is no power like that of prevailing prayer, of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat of blood. Add to this list from the records of the church your personal observation and experience, and always there is the cost of passion unto blood. Such prayer prevails. It turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.
   
• The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.
   
• To pray as God would have us pray is the greatest achievement on earth. Such a prayer life costs. It takes time….All praying saints have spent hours every day in prayer….In these days, there is no time to pray; but without time, and a lot of it, we shall never learn to pray.
   
• Great supplicants have sought the secret place of the Most High, not that they might escape the world, but that they might learn to conquer it.

Thomas Chalmers

• Prayer does not enable us to do a greater work for God. Prayer is a greater work for God.
   
• I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness.

Oswald Chambers

• Prayer is an effort of will. (Ed: Yes, but an effort enabled by the Spirit giving us the desire and power! Phil 2:13NLT-note).
   
• Prayer is simple, as simple as a child making known its wants to its parents.
   
• Our Lord in His teaching regarding prayer never once referred to unanswered prayer; He said God always answers prayer. If our prayers are in the name of Jesus, that is, in accordance with His nature, the answers will not be in accordance with our nature, but with His. We are apt to forget this, and to say without thinking that God does not always answer prayer. He does every time, and when we are in close communion with Him, we realize that we have not been misled. (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• Remember, no one has time to pray; we have to take time from other things that are valuable in order to understand how necessary prayer is. The things that act like thorns and stings in our personal lives will go away instantly when we pray; we won’t feel the smart any more, because we have God’s point of view about them. Prayer means that we get into union with God’s view of other people.  (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• Prayer to us is not practical, it is stupid, and until we do see that prayer is stupid, that is, stupid from the ordinary, natural, common sense point of view, we will never pray. ‘It is absurd to think that God is going to alter things in answer to prayer.’ But that is what Jesus says He will do. It sounds stupid, but it is a stupidity based on His redemption. The reason that our prayers are not answered is that we are not stupid enough to believe what Jesus says."  (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• Prayer alters a man on the inside, alters his mind and his attitude to things. The point of praying is not that we get things from God, but that we learn by prayer to detect the difference between God’s order and God’s permissive will. God’s order is—no pain, no sickness, no devil, no war, no sin; His permissive will is all these things. What a man needs to do is to get hold of God’s order in the kingdom on the inside, and then he will begin to see how to handle the riddle of the universe on the outside.  (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God equally present all the time in every condition.
   
• Men always ought to pray, and not lose heart. Jesus also taught the disciples the prayer of patience. If you are right with God and God delays the answer to your prayer, don’t misjudge Him. Don’t think of Him as an unkind friend, or an unnatural father, or an unjust judge, but keep at it. Your prayer will certainly be answered, for ‘everyone who asks receives.’ Pray and do not cave in. Your heavenly Father will explain it all one day. He cannot just yet because He is developing your character.  (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• It is not so true that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me, and then I change things; consequently we must not ask God to do what He has created us to do. For instance, Jesus Christ is not a social reformer; He came to alter us first, and if there is any social reform to be done on earth, we must do it.   (Prayer: A Holy Occupation)
   
• Beware of placing the emphasis on what prayer costs us; it cost God everything to make it possible for us to pray.
   
• We take for granted that prayer is preparation for work, whereas prayer is the work. Intercessory prayer is God's chosen way of working.
   
• Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer. 
   
• One of the reasons for our sense of futility in prayer is that we have lost our power to imagine. We can no longer even imagine putting ourselves deliberately before God. It is actually more important to be broken bread and poured-out wine in the area of intercession than in our personal contact with others. The power of imagination is what God gives a saint so that he can go beyond himself and be firmly placed into relationships he never before experienced.
   
• If in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door back and let God in, every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
   
• The primary thought in the area of religion is—keep your eyes on God, not on people. Your motivation should not be the desire to be known as a praying person. Find an inner room in which to pray where no one even knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret. Have no motivation other than to know your Father in heaven. It is impossible to carry on your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.
   
• In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.
   
• The old Puritans used to pray for ‘the gift of tears.’ If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry. (Repentance)
   
• Prayer is not simply getting things from God—that is only the most elementary kind of prayer. Prayer is coming into perfect fellowship and oneness with God. (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• It is impossible to carry on your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.  (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• God wants to instruct us in regard to His Son, He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration, and we will not let Him.  (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• Am I continually in touch with the reality of God, or do I pray only when things have gone wrong— when there is some disturbance in my life?   (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• The point of prayer is not to get answers from God, but to have perfect and complete oneness with Him. If we pray only because we want answers, we will become irritated and angry with God. We receive an answer every time we pray, but it does not always come in the way we expect, and our spiritual irritation shows our refusal to identify ourselves truly with our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove that God answers prayer, but to be living trophies of God’s grace. (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• Prayer is not only asking, but an attitude of mind which produces the atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural. “Ask, and it shall be given you.” (My Utmost for His Highest)
   
• Think of the last thing you prayed about—were you devoted to your desire or to God? Determined to get some gift of the Spirit or to get at God? “Your Heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him.” (Mt 6:8) The point of asking is that you may get to know God better. “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” (Ps 37:4) Keep praying in order to get a perfect understanding of God Himself.
   
• We make prayer the preparation for work, it is never that in the Bible. Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. Don’t say—‘I will endure this until I can get away and pray.’ Pray now; draw on the grace of God in the moment of need. Prayer is the most practical thing, it is not the reflex action of devotion. Prayer is the last thing in which we learn to draw on God’s grace.
   
• If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don’t say, “I’ll do it”— just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary “gray” day according to what we saw on the mountain.
   
• Are we so wedded to Jesus Christ’s idea of prayer—“Thy will be done”—that we catch the secrets of God? The things that make God dear to us are not so much His great big blessings as the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us; He knows every detail of our individual lives.
   
• The purpose of God is not to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God, and this is revealed in John 17. There is one prayer God must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus—“that they may be one, even as We are one.” (John 17:11, 21, 22) Are we as close to Jesus Christ as that?
   
• We think rightly or wrongly about prayer according to the conception we have in our minds of prayer. If we think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts, we think rightly. The blood flows ceaselessly, and breathing continues ceaselessly; we are not conscious of it, but it is always going on. We are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect joint with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is. Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life. 
   
• Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer. “Pray without ceasing…”— maintain the childlike habit of offering up prayer in your heart to God all the time.
   
• We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
   
• Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.
   
• Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.
   
• If God sees that my spiritual life will be furthered by giving the things for which I ask, then He will give them, but that is not the end of prayer. The end of prayer is that I come to know God Himself.
   
• The revelation of our spiritual standing is what we ask in prayer; sometimes what we ask is an insult to God; we ask with our eyes on the possibilities or on ourselves, not on Jesus Christ.
   
• Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.
   
• When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different.
   
• Prayer is simple, as simple as a child making known its wants to its parents.
   
• The armor is for the battle of prayer. The armor is not to fight in, but to shield us while we pray. Prayer is the battle.
   
• The battle of prayer is against two things in the earthlies: wandering thoughts, and lack of intimacy with God's character as revealed in His word. Neither can be cured at once, but they can be cured by discipline.
   
• The prayer of the feeblest saint on earth who lives in the Spirit and keeps right with God is a terror to Satan. The very powers of darkness are paralyzed by prayer; no spiritual séance can succeed in the presence of a humble praying saint. No wonder Satan tries to keep our minds fussy in active work till we cannot think in prayer.
   
• We are ill-taught if we look for results only in the earthlies when we pray. A praying saint performs far more havoc among the unseen forces of darkness than we have the slightest notion of.
   
• We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
   
• We impoverish God in our minds when we say there must be answers to our prayers on the material plane; the biggest answers to our prayers are in the realm of the unseen.
   
• Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
   
• Spiritual lust--'I must have it at once'--causes me to demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God himself who gives the answer. Is today 'the third day' and He has still not done what I expected? Whenever we insist that God should give us an answer to prayer we are off track. The purpose of prayer is that we get a hold of God, not of the answer.
   
• God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them. In this way God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.
• God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.
   
• The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God.
   
• We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work
   
• Prayer is the evidence that I am spiritually concentrated on God.
   
• See that you do not use the trick of prayer to cover up what you know you ought to do.
   
• When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality.
   
• Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.
   
• We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours. (Prayer A Holy Occupation)
   
• Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.
   
• It is impossible to live the life of a disciple without definite times of secret prayer. You will find that the place to enter in is in your business, as you walk along the streets, in the ordinary ways of life, when no one dreams you are praying, and the reward comes openly, a revival here, a blessing there.
   
• Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.
   
• Our prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered.
   
• God's "nothings" are His most positive answers. We have to stay on God and wait. Never try to help God to fulfill His word.
   
• Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.
   
• Prayer is simple, prayer is supernatural, and to anyone not related to our Lord Jesus Christ, prayer is apt to look stupid.
   
• What a blessed habit I have found my prayer list, morning by morning, it takes me via the Throne of all Grace straight to the intimate personal heart of each one mentioned here, and I know that He Who is not prescribed by time and geography answers immediately.
   
• The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God, and that alters my view of actual things.
   
• Too often we treat prayer as the preparation for the work of the church. Do you not see? Prayer IS the work of the church.
   
• When we pray "in the Name of Jesus" the answers are in accordance with His nature, and if we think our prayers are unanswered it is because we are not interpreting the answer along this line.
   
• Pray because you have a Father, not because it quietens you, and give Him time to answer.
   
• Some prayers are followed by silence (from God) because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than one can understand. It will be a wonderful moment for some of us when we stand before God and find that the prayers we clamored for in early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way, and that God's silence has been the sign of the answer.
   
• Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.
   
• Our true character comes out in the way we pray.
   
• God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.
   
• Ask God for what you want, but you cannot ask if you are not asking for a right thing. When you draw near to God, you cease from asking for things."Your Father knows what things you have need of, before you ask him." Then, why ask? That you may get to know Him.
   
• Our understanding of God is the answer to prayer; getting things from God is God's indulgence of us. When God stops giving us things, He brings us into the place where we can begin to understand Him.
   
• Prayer is not only asking, it is an attitude of heart that produces an atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural, and Jesus says, "every one that asketh receiveth."
   
• There is nothing to be valued more highly than to have people praying for us; God links up His power in answer to their prayers.
   
• Intercessory prayer for one who is sinning prevails. God says so! The will of the man prayed for does not come into question at all, he is connected with God by prayer, and prayer on the basis of the Redemption sets the connection working and God gives life.
   
• God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace.
   
• Prayer is the practice of drawing on the grace of God. Don't say, "I will endure this until I can get away and pray." Pray now - draw on the grace of God in your moment of need. Prayer is the most normal and useful thing; it is not simply a reflex action of your devotion to God. We are very slow to learn to draw on God's grace through prayer.
   
• Prayer is not getting things from God. That is a most initial stage; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God: I tell Him what I know He knows in order that I may get to know it as He does.
   
• Prayer is not logical, it is a mysterious moral working of the Holy Spirit.
   
• There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.
   
• We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.
   
• If we rely on the Holy Spirit, we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate; and when they are inarticulate, reverence grows deeper and deeper.
   
• We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life is he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God within him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer...Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.
   
• Watch your motive before God; have no other motive in prayer than to know Him.
   
• It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.
   
• If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.
   
• One of the most subtle burdens God ever puts on us as saints is this burden of discernment concerning other souls. He reveals things in order that we may take the burden of these souls before Him and form the mind of Christ about them. It is not that we bring God into touch with our minds, but that we rouse ourselves until God is able to convey His mind to us about the one for whom we intercede.
   
• Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.
   
• Our Lord never referred to unanswered prayer; he taught that prayers are always answered. He ever implied that prayers were answered rightly because of the Heavenly Father's wisdom.
   
• Prayer is God's answer to our poverty, not a power we exercise to obtain an answer.
   
• Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it.
   
• We lean to our own understanding, or we bank on service and do away with prayer, and consequently by succeeding in the external we fail in the eternal, because in the eternal we succeed only by prevailing prayer.
   
• You say, "But He has not answered." He has, He is so near to you that His silence is the answer. His silence is big with terrific meaning that you cannot understand yet, but presently you will.
   
• One great effect of prayer is that it enables the soul to command the body. By obedience I make my body submissive to my soul, but prayer puts my soul in command of my body.
   
• Prayer is the supreme activity of all that is noblest in our personality, and the essential nature of prayer is faith.
   
• The inattentive, slovenly way we drift into the presence of God is an indication that we are not bothering to think about Him. Whenever our Lord spoke of prayer, He said, "Ask." It is impossible to ask if you do not concentrate.
   
• Worship and intercession must go together, the one is impossible without the other. Intercession means that we rouse ourselves up to get the mind of Christ about the one for whom we pray.
   
• The men with God's 'go' in them have these three characteristics-a saving experience, the evidence of supernatural power at work, and the spiritual efficacy of success in prayer.
   
• When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible's idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
   
• Prayer is the answer to every problem there is.
   
• The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer.
   
• God answers prayer on the ground of Redemption and on no other ground.
   
• The prayer of the saints is never self-important, but always God-important.

Walter J. Chantry

• Self must be denied as to time and attention for prayer. All-prayer cannot be wielded without the expenditure of time. "A minute with God" seldom lays hold of Him. Sustained prayer is necessary. Such time may only be found by snatching it from personal pursuits, however legitimate they may be.

J Wilbur Chapman

• It was a season of prayer with John ("Praying") Hyde that made me realize what real prayer was. I owe to him more than I owe to any man for showing me what a prayer life is and what a real consecrated life is. Jesus Christ became a new ideal to me, and I had a glimpse of His prayer life, and I had a longing which has remained to this day to be a real praying man.

Evelyn Christianson

• Praying together is like riding a bike. You can read how to do it or have someone tell you; but until you try it yourself, you'll never learn how to do it.
• Have you ever seen a bright blue iceberg? In Alaska I stared in awe at a mountain lake filled with beautiful blue icebergs that had broken off Portage Glacier. Immediately my mind went back to an article in a Family Time magazine that compared our secret praying to an iceberg. The “Absolutely No Boating” on the edge of the lake reminded me that eight-ninths of the bulk of an iceberg is below the waterline—out of sight. Only one-ninth is visible above the surface. The next day at our prayer seminar in Anchorage I explained how prayer should be like those icebergs, with about one-ninth showing in our public group praying and eight-ninths out of sight in our secret closets. (from A Journey Into Prayer)

John B Coburn

• Be yourself. Be natural before God. Do not pretend to emotions you do not feel. Tell him whatever is on your heart and mind with whatever words are most natural to you. You do not have to speak to him in “religious” language about “spiritual” matters only . . . Speak as naturally and as easily as you would to a friend, since God is just that. . . . This natural expression of yourself at the outset is the guarantee that you can go on to a creative, free, and mature relationship with God.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Prayer is the very highest energy of which the mind is capable.
   
• He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
   
• I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.

Thomas Constable - Talking to God, 124 page book

• There is no verse in the Bible that gives us a definition of prayer per se. Consequently we must discover what it is by examining the prayers and references to prayer in the Bible if we want a biblical definition. Essentially prayer is talking to God. It is expressing our thoughts and feelings to deity.

Chrysostom

• The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it has bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.
   
• (Modernized Version) The potency of prayer has subdued the strength of fire, it has bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the fates of heaven, assuaged diseases, dispelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. There is (in it) an all-sufficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings!

William Culbertson

• Keep praying, but be thankful that God’s answers are wiser than your prayers!

Jim Cymbala

• The reason "other churches" don't grow: "Jim, the truth is, I couldn't have a real prayer meeting in my church. I'd be embarrassed at the smallness of the crowd..."
   
• No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer.
   
• Anything, and I mean anything, becomes a blessing if it drives us to prayer.
   
• You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning. You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night. But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting.
   
• What does it say about our churches today that God birthed the church in a prayer meeting, and prayer meetings today are almost extinct?
   
• God says to us, "Pray, because I have all kinds of things for you; and when you ask, you will receive. I have all this grace, and you live with scarcity. Come unto me, all you who labor. Why are you so rushed? Where are you running now? Everything you need, I have."
   
• Prayer is the opening of the heart so we can receive all these good things that God has for us every day. It's like sitting down at a table that God has prepared for us. He says, 'I have everything you need today - all the grace, all the wisdom, all the provision that you need - but sit down at the table and eat. Don't be so rushed and so busy and try to live without My supply.'
   
• The birth of the church was during a prayer meeting, not preaching, not singing, but prayer.
   
• Prayer cannot truly be taught by principles and seminars and symposiums. It has to be born out of a whole environment of felt need. If I say, "I ought to pray," I will soon run out of motivation and quit; the flesh is too strong. I have to be driven to pray. (from Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)
   
• Prayer begets Revival, which begets more prayer.
   
• Persistent calling upon the name of the Lord breaks through every stronghold of the devil, for nothing is impossible with God. For Christians in these troubled times there is simply no other way.
   
• The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray!
   
• The Bible does say, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations." Preaching, music, the reading of the Word-these things are fine-but they must never override prayer as the defining mark of God's dwelling.
   
• Does the Bible ever say anywhere from Genesis to Revelation, 'My house shall be called a house of preaching'? Does it ever say, 'My house shall be called a house of music'? Of course not. The Bible does say, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations'. Preaching, music, the reading of the Word - these things are fine; I believe in and practice all of them. But they must never override prayer as the defining mark of God's dwelling. the honest truth is that I have seen God do more in people's lives during ten minutes of real prayer than in ten of my sermons. Watch Jim Cymbala's message My House Shall be Called a House of Prayer

Dennis J De Haan

• "Lord, make me sensitive" is a prayer that should always be on our hearts. 

A C Dixon

• We are tempted to let other good things displace prayer: hours, days and weeks for other things, and only minutes for prayer. Knowing how and what is not sufficient. We must take time to do it, for GOD works in answer to prayer, and GOD at work is our greatest need. (from How to Pray)
   
• When we rely upon organization, we get what organization can do; when we rely upon education, we get what education can do; when we rely upon eloquence, we get what eloquence can do. And so on. But when we rely upon prayer, we get what God can do.
   
• Prayer is the key to success. Not to pray is to fail. To pray aright is never to fail.
   
• Luther's motto gives us the secret of success along all lines: "To have prayed well is to have studied well." To have prayed well is to have preached well, to have written well, to have worked well, to have resisted well, to have lived well and to have died well. Prayer is the key to success. Not to pray is to fail. To pray aright is never to fail.  (from How to Pray)
   
• When we have accepted Jesus Christ, we have become akin to the Father; having become real children of God, we then have the spirit of sonship by which we can come into His presence and make known our wants in a familiar way.
   
• What we need now for quickening is not so much money and wisdom as the spirit of supplication. Pray for yourself until the new life is infused. When that new life comes, it will lead you to pray for others.

John Donne

• A Christian is more music
  When he prays,
  Than spheres, or angel’s praises be,
  In panegyric alleluias.

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevski 

• Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education

Wesley L. Duewel (or here) 

• All you need to do to learn to pray is to pray.
   
• Prayer is God's ordained way to bring His miracle power to bear in human need.
   
• Many Christians are so spiritually frail, sickly, and lacking in spiritual vitality that they cannot stick to prayer for more than a few minutes at a time.
   
• The greatest privilege God gives to you is the freedom to approach Him at any time.
   
• "God waits for you to communicate with Him. You have instant, direct access to God. God loves mankind so much, and in a very special sense His children, that He has made Himself available to you at all times.
   
• Many Christians are so spiritually frail, sickly, and lacking in spiritual vitality that they cannot stick to prayer for more than a few minutes at a time.
   
• "The more you praise God, the more you become God-conscious and absorbed in His greatness, wisdom, faithfulness, and love. Praise reminds you of all that God is able to do and of great things He has already done
   
• There is unusual power in united prayer. God has planned for His people to join together in prayer, not only for Christian fellowship, spiritual nurture, and growth, but also for accomplishing His divine purposes and reaching His chosen goals.
   
• Fasting in the biblical sense is choosing not to partake of food because your spiritual hunger is so deep, you determination in intercession so intense, or your spiritual warfare so demanding that you have temporarily set aside even fleshly needs to give yourself to prayer and meditation.
   
• The prayer of faith is a prayer willing to believe and prevail for God's answer in a situation that is utterly impossible. Regardless of the difficulty of the situation, you require no external confirmation but believe God in spite of appearance. Your eyes are on God, not on the situation.
   
• Prayers prayed in the Spirit never die until they accomplish God's intended purpose. His answer may not be what we expected, or when we expected it, but God often provides much more abundantly than we could think or ask. He interprets our intent and either answers or stores up our prayers. Sincere prayers are never lost. Energy, time, love, and longing can be endowments that will never be wasted or go unrewarded.
   
• No form of Christian service is both so universally open to all and so high in Christ’s priority for all Christians as prevailing prayer.
   
• The Spirit does not lead you to pray for useless goals.
   
• Prayer is the master strategy that God gives for the defeat and rout of Satan.
   
• Nothing is more calculated to begat a spirit of prayer than to unite in social prayer with one who has the Spirit himself.
   
• Prayer has mighty power to move mountains because the Holy Spirit is ready both to encourage our praying and to remove the mountains hindering us. Prayer has the power to change mountains into highways.
   
• Prayer is God’s ordained way to bring His miracle power to bear in human need.
   
• Prayer is the only adequate way to multiply our efforts fast enough to reap the harvest God desires.
   
• Prayer is the supreme way to be workers together with God.
   
• Prayer is your way, often the only way, to water the harvest. By prayer you can bring the Holy Spirit's blessing on any Gospel effort anywhere in the world. 
   
• Prayerless pulpits will produce prayerless and powerless congregations.
   
• Prayerlessness means unavailability to God.
   
• Prayerlessness proves that the person has very little love for God.
   
• Prevailing prayer is almost always for the sake of others. Prevailing prayer is prayer that pushes right through all difficulties and obstacles, drives back all the opposing forces of Satan, and secures the will of God. Its purpose is to accomplish God’s will on earth. Prevailing prayer is prayer that not only takes the initiative but continues on the offensive for God until spiritual victory is won.
   
• Prevailing prayer is the most divine ministry you will ever have.
   
• The more you intercede, the more intimate will be your walk with Christ and the stronger you will become by the Spirit’s power.
   
• The more you prevail, the more you will learn the secrets of God’s grace and the powers of His kingdom.
   
• There is no easier sin to commit than the sin of prayerlessness. It is a sin against God and against Man.
   
• We have been so busy depending on our own natural strengths, our good training and our busyness for God that we are near spiritual bankruptcy. 

Jonathan Edwards

• Resolved, never to count that a prayer, nor to let that pass as a prayer, nor that as a petition of a prayer, which is so made, that I cannot hope that God will answer it; nor that as a confession, which I cannot hope God will accept.
   
• Many pray with their lips for that for which their hearts have no desire.
   
• When God is about to do a mighty new thing He always sets His people praying.
   
• He that lives a prayerless life, lives without God in the world.
   
• It is God’s will through His wonderful grace, that the prayers of His saints should be one of the great principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for His church, it is His will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of His people....and it is revealed that, when God is about to accomplish great things for His church, He will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication.
   
• That which God abundantly makes the subject of his promises, God’s people should abundantly make the subject of their prayers.
   
• I had vehement longing of soul after God and Christ, and after more holiness, wherewith my heart seemed to be full, and ready to break.… I spent most of my time in thinking of divine things, year after year; often walking alone in the words, and solitary places, for meditation, soliloquy, and prayer, and converse with God; and it was always my manner, at such times, to sing forth my contemplations. I was almost constantly in ejaculatory (an exclamatory utterance of) prayer, wherever I was. Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart had vent.

Elisabeth Elliot

• A prayerful heart and an obedient heart will learn, very slowly and not without sorrow, to stake everything on God Himself.
   
• Prayer lays hold of God's plan and becomes the link between His will and its accomplishment on earth. Amazing things happen, and we are given the privilege of being the channels of the Holy Spirit's prayer.
   
• This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness - in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us.
   
• Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn't easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens - I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself.
   
• For one who has made thanksgiving the habit of his life, the morning prayer will be, 'Lord, what will you give me today to offer back to you?'
   
• What God gives in answer to our prayers will always be the thing we most urgently need, and it will always be sufficient.
   
• Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn't it? We can't be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.
   
• Things happen which would not happen without prayer. Let us not forget that.
   
• I asked Him to give me the prayers He wants me to pray and to give or withhold anything according to his plan for me. Nothing is too big to ask of Him, not even an ocean lot. It is God's business to decide if it is good for me. It is my business to obey Him.
   
• The heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer.
   
• Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.
   
• All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them.

Jim Elliot

• God is still on His throne, we’re still His footstool, and there’s only a knee’s distance between!
   
• That saint who advances on his knees never retreats.
   
• Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.
   
• I have felt the impact of your prayer in these past weeks. I am certain now that nothing has had a more powerful influence on this life of mine than your prayers.
   
• Live every day as if the Son of Man were at the door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats.

E. Schuyler English

• Prayer is more than asking things from God. It is an exercise in the worship of God, to extol His name and to offer thanks for all His benefits. The child of God is assured that in prayer he is approaching a throne of grace, not a throne of judgment (Heb. 4:16). The Christian enters the divine presence in the name of Christ (John 14:14, 16:23). If he prays under the control of the Holy Spirit, he will offer petitions within the will of his Heavenly Father (Romans 8:26, 27). Prayer should be made in faith and with thanksgiving (Phil. 4:6; Col. 4:2). The prayer that Christ taught His disciples, known as the Lord’s Prayer, is a model to guide His followers concerning proper principles and goals of prayer (Matt. 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4).

Eusebius

• He records the testimony of Hegesippus that James “used to enter alone into the temple and be found kneeling and praying for forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s because of his constant worship of God, kneeling and asking forgiveness for the people. So from his excessive righteousness he was called the Just.” (Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History)

Christmas Evans

• Prayer is the rope up in the belfry: we pull it, and it rings the bell up in heaven.—Christmas Evans

Tony Evans 

• For many of us, prayer is like the National Anthem before a football game. It gets the game started, but simply has no connection with what’s happening on the field. It’s a courtesy.
   
• FOR MANY of us, prayer is like a AAA card. It’s there if you need it, but you really don’t plan to use it very much—unless you’re in an emergency.
   
• For some of us, prayer is like putting four quarters in a Coke machine, pushing the button, and not getting a Coke. We push the button again and again, waiting for our Coke, which never comes. Finally, kicking the machine, we just wave our hand and walk away. Many of us have given up on prayer because while it is something we know we are supposed to do, we feel it just doesn’t work
   
• A LADY came to the great preacher of the last century G. Campbell Morgan and she said, “I only take the big things to God. I don’t take the little things to God.” G. Campbell Morgan looked at her and said, “Lady, anything you take to God is little.” That is precisely the case. You can bring everything to God because anything you bring to God is little to Him, even if it is big to you.716

Del Fehsenfeld Jr

• If revival in this land depended on your prayers, your faith, your obedience, would we ever experience revival?

Francois Fenelon

• God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without and the tumult of our passions within bewilder us and prevent us from listening to him.
   
• How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections?
   

• Talk to him in prayer of all your wants, your troubles, even of the weariness you feel in serving him. You cannot speak too freely, too trustfully to him.

• Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart to a dear friend. People who have no secrets from each other never want subjects of conversations; they do not weigh their words because there is nothing to be kept back.

• If God bores you, tell him that he bores you; that you prefer the vilest amusements to his presence; that you only feel at your ease when you are far from him.

• Even if no command to pray had existed, our very weakness would have suggested it.

• Time spent in prayer is never wasted.

John Flavel

• Providence so orders the case, that faith and prayer come between our wants and supplies, and the goodness of God may be the more magnified in our eyes thereby.
   
• That which begins not with prayer, seldom winds up with comfort.
   
• No repentance, obedience, self-denial, prayers, tears, reformation or ordinances, without the new creation, avail any thing to the salvation of thy soul.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

• God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
   
• In the foothills of the Himalayas, one hears the prayer: "Oh Lord, we know not what is good for us. You know what it is. For it we pray."
   
• 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.

P. T. Forsyth 

• Prayer is the highest use to which speech can be put.
   
• Prayer is a weapon, a mighty weapon in a terrible conflict. Our prayers are to be a continual, conscious, earnest effort of battle, the battle against whatever is not God’s will.
   
• We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God's great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer.
   
• All religion is founded on prayer, and in prayer it has its test and measure.
   
• The greatest element in life is not what occupies most of its time, else sleep would stand high in the scale. Nor is it what engrosses most of its thought, else money would be very high. The two or three hours of worship and preaching weekly has perhaps been the greatest signal influence on English life. Half an hour of prayer, morning or evening, every day, may be a greater element in shaping our course than all our conduct and all our thought.

George Fox

• I prayed to God that He would baptize my heart into all conditions so I might be able to enter the needs and conditions of all.

James O Fraser

• Believers at home can do as much for overseas missions as those actually on the field. I believe it will only be known on the last day how much has been accomplished in overseas missions by the prayers of earnest believers at home.
   
• Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees.
   
• Praying without faith is like trying to cut with a blunt knife - much labor expended to little purpose.
   
• The aim of Satanic power is to cut off communication with God. To accomplish this aim he deludes the soul with a sense of defeat, covers him with a thick cloud of darkness, depresses and oppresses the spirit, which in turn hinders prayer and leads to unbelief - thus destroying all power.

Frank Gaebelein

• Maintain at all costs a daily time of Scripture reading and prayer. As I look back, I see that the most formative influence in my life and thought has been my daily contact with Scripture over sixty years.

S. D. Gordon

• The greatest thing anyone can do for God and for man is to pray.
   
• Prayer strikes the winning blow; service is simply picking up the pieces.
   
• The greatest thing anyone can do for God and man is pray. It is not the only thing, but it is the chief thing. The great people of earth are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who say they believe in prayer; nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time to pray.
   
• You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. (also attributed to John Bunyan)
   
• Prayer wonderfully clears the vision; steadies the nerves; defines duty; stiffens the purpose; sweetens and strengthens the spirit.
   
• If there are two persons praying, there are three. If three meet to pray, there are four praying. There is always one more than you can see.
   
• The great people of the earth today are the people who pray! I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who say they believe in prayer; nor those who explain prayer; but I mean those who actually take the time to pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. That something else is important, very important and pressing, but still, less important and pressing than prayer. There are people who put prayer first, and group the other items in life's schedule around and after prayer. These are the people today who are doing the most for God in winning souls, in solving problems, in awakening churches, in supplying both men and money for mission posts, in keeping fresh and strong their lives far off in sacrificial service on the foreign field, where the thickest fighting is going on, and in keeping the old earth sweet a little while longer.
   
• If there be anything that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is this simple and childlike repose in the arms of God.
   
• The greatest thing anyone can do for God and man is pray. It is not the only thing; but it is the chief thing. The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; not those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time and pray.
   
• Prayer is partnership with God in His planet-sized purposes, and includes the "all things" beside, as an important detail of the whole.
   
• One should never initiate anything that he cannot saturate with prayer.
   
• The real victory in all service is won in secret beforehand by prayer.

Billy Graham  

• Heaven is full of answers to prayer for which no one ever bothered to ask!
   
• Prayer is the rope that pulls God and man together. But it doesn’t pull God down to us: it pulls us up to him.
   
• Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly; others give only an occasional jerk at the rope. But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously with all his might.
   
• The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, 'O God, forgive me,' or 'Help me.'
   
• Prayer is crucial in evangelism: Only God can change the heart of someone who is in rebellion against Him. No matter how logical our arguments or how fervent our appeals, our words will accomplish nothing unless God's Spirit prepares the way.
   
• To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.
   
• Many times I have been driven to prayer. When I was in Bible school I didn’t know what to do with my life. I used to walk the streets . . . and pray, sometimes for hours at a time. In His timing, God answered those prayers, and since then prayer has been an essential part of my life.
   
• Prayers have no boundaries. They can leap miles and continents and be translated instantly into any language.
   
• May our prayers today, and every day, be from our hearts and with the focus of our whole being.
   
• It is not the body's posture, but the heart's attitude that counts when we pray.
   
• Prayer is spiritual communication between man and God, a two-way relationship in which man should not only talk to God but also listen to Him. Prayer to God is like a child's conversation with his father. It is natural for a child to ask his father for the things he needs.
   
• Remember that you can pray any time, anywhere. Washing dishes, digging ditches, working in the office, in the shop, on the athletic field, even in prison - you can pray and know God hears!
   
• Be careful before leaving someone in a sorrowing situation. Say a word of prayer with them and share even a brief word of encouragement from the Scriptures.
   
• Sometimes I'm asked to list the most important steps in preparing for an evangelistic mission, and my reply is always the same: prayer... prayer... prayer.
   
• Prayer shouldn't be casual or sporadic, dictated only by the needs of the moment. Prayer should be as much a part of our lives as breathing.
   
• The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.
   
• If there are any tears shed in heaven, they will be over the fact that we prayed so little
   
• In the morning, prayer is the key that opens to us the treasures of God’s mercies and blessings; in the evening, it is the key that shuts us up under His protection and safeguard.|
   
• Sometimes I’m asked to list the most important steps in preparing for an evangelistic mission, and my reply is always the same: prayer . . . prayer . . . prayer.
   
• We are slaves to our gadgets, puppets of our power, and prisoners of our security. The theme of our generation is: “Get more, know more, and do more,” instead of “Pray more, be more, and serve more.”
   
• Prayer is crucial in evangelism: Only God can change the heart of someone who is in rebellion against Him. No matter how logical our arguments or how fervent our appeals, our words will accomplish nothing unless God’s Spirit prepares the way.
   
• We should not pray for God to be on our side, but pray that we may be on God’s side.
   
• We must repent of our prayerlessness. We must make prayer our priority. Even our churches today have gotten away from prayer meetings.
   
• You cannot pray for someone and hate them at the same time.
   
• Prayer is for every moment of our lives, not just for times of suffering or joy. Prayer is really a place, a place where you meet God in genuine conversation.
   
• No matter how dark and hopeless a situation might seem, never stop praying.
   
• Prayers have no boundaries. They can leap miles and continents and be translated instantly into any language.
   
• True prayer is a way of life, not just for use in cases of emergency. Make it a habit, and when the need arises you will be in practice.
   
• Persecution, whether it is physical, social, or mental, is one of the worst types of pain, but those who persecute us are to be the objects of our prayers.
   
• Prayer is powerful, but if our prayers are aimless, meaningless, and mingled with doubt, they will be of little hope to us.
   
• Prayer is more than a wish; it is the voice of faith directed to God.
   
• Prayer should not be merely an act, but an attitude of life.
   
• [Jesus] prayed briefly when He was in a crowd; He prayed a little longer when He was with His disciples; and He prayed all night when He was alone. Today, many in the ministry tend to reverse that process.
   
• [Jesus] had only three years of public ministry, but He was never too hurried to spend hours in prayer . . . No day began or closed in which He was not in communion with His Father.
   
• If we are to depend on prayer during tough times, we should be people of prayer before the crisis hits.
   
• Have you ever said, “Well, all we can do now is pray”? . . .When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.
   
• I realize more than ever that this ministry has been a team effort. Without the help of our prayer partners, our financial supporters, our staff, and our board of directors—this ministry and all of our dreams to spread the Good News of God’s love throughout the world would not have been possible.
   
• No matter where we are, God is as close as a prayer. He is our support and our strength. He will help us make our way up again from whatever depths we have fallen.
   
• The most eloquent prayer is often prayed through hands that heal and bless.
   
• When we know Him, we can be sure God hears our prayers.
   
• When troubles come may prayer be your automatic response.
   
• We were created to live a life of prayer. (Ed: Or "re-created/redeemed" to live a life of prayer.)
   
• We can change the course of events if we go to our knees in believing prayer.
   
• Someone has said, “Prayer is the highest use to which speech can be put.” 
   
• I firmly believe God continues to answer the prayers of His people even after He has taken them to heaven. Never forget that God isn’t bound by time the way we are. We see only the present moment; God sees everything. We see only part of what He is doing; He sees it all.
   
• Prayer is key to our effort to communicate the Gospel and win men and women to Christ.
   
• Prayer is the Christian’s greatest weapon.
   
• I believe we should pray that God will take possession of our lives totally and completely. We should pray that we will be emptied of self—self-love, self-will, self-ambition—and be placed completely at His disposal.
   
• Long after you and I are gone, God will still be at work—and many of the things we prayed for will finally come to pass.
   
• Prayer is not just asking. It is listening for God’s orders.
   
• Nothing will drive us to our knees quicker than trouble.
   
• Our prayers must be in accordance with [God’s] will. He knows better what is good for us than we know ourselves.
   
• The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s hymnbook. It will show you what it means to walk with God in prayer and praise.
   
• The devil will tremble when you pray.
   
• We are to pray in times of adversity, lest we become faithless and unbelieving. We are to pray in times of prosperity, lest we become boastful and proud. We are to pray in times of danger, lest we become fearful and doubting. We need to pray in times of security, lest we become self-sufficient.
   
• A prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian.
   
• If [Jesus] felt that He had to pray, how much more do we need to pray!
   
• You cannot afford to be too busy to pray.
   
• As I close my eyes in prayer, let me see the faces of those who need to know You, beloved Savior.
   
• Whether prayer changes our situation or not, one thing is certain: Prayer will change us!
   
• Prayer is more than a plea, it is a place where we must spend time if we are to learn its power.
   
• It is not the posture of the body, but the attitude of the heart that counts when we pray . . .The important thing is not the position of the body but the condition of the soul.
   
• This should be the motto of every follower of Jesus Christ. Never stop praying no matter now dark and hopeless it may seem.
   
• Our prayers must be in accordance with the will of God for the simple reason that God knows better what is good for us than we know ourselves.
   
• At its deepest level, prayer is fellowship with God: enjoying His company, waiting upon His will, thanking Him for His mercies . . .listening in the silence for what He has to say to us.
   
• Pray frequently as you read [the Bible] and you will discover a fellowship with God.
   
• That “the Spirit Himself intercedes” indicates that it is actually God pleading, praying, and mourning through us.
   
• God Himself is the power that makes prayer work.
   
• The men upon whose shoulders rested the initial responsibility of Christianizing the world came to Jesus with one supreme request. They did not say, “Lord, teach us to preach”; “Lord, teach us to do miracles”; or “Lord, teach us to be wise” . . .but they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
   
• To the Son of God prayer was more important than the assembling of great throngs . . .He often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed [Luke 5:15–16].
   
• The reason many . . . close their eyes while praying is to shut out the affairs of the world so that their minds can be completely concentrated on God . . .it certainly lends itself to the attitude of prayer.
   
• Prayer is more than a wish turned heavenward . . .it is the voice of faith directed Godward.
   
• Obedience is the master key to effectual prayer.
   
• If we are to have our prayers answered, we must give God the glory.
   
• Prayer and Bible study are inseparably linked. Effective prayer is born out of the prompting of God’s Spirit as we read His Word.
   
• Too often we use petty little petitions, oratorical exercises, or the words of others rather than the cries of our inmost being. When you pray, pray!
   
• Those you know the least may need your prayers the most. Don’t let the fact that you don’t know someone keep you from praying for them.
   
• Prayer by itself is like a diet without protein! Prayer is important to our spiritual growth—but of even greater importance is God’s Word, the Bible.
   
• Often, we try to tell God what we want Him to do—but ask Him to help you guard against this, and to seek His will instead of your own. Pray and ask God to guide you.
   
• How can you keep your mind from wandering when you pray? Remember what you are doing: talking to God. If you had the opportunity to talk with the president, I doubt if your mind would wander. [We] have the privilege of talking to someone far greater: the King of kings!
   
• Prayer is not our using of God; it more often puts us in the position where God can use us.
   
• God welcomes our prayers. He is much more concerned about our hearts than our eloquence.
   
• A friend of mine defines prayer as “a declaration of dependence.”
   
• Ask God to give you a greater hunger for Himself and a deeper desire for His fellowship. Then be honest about whatever is keeping you from prayer, and ask God to help you deal with it.
   
• Pray because Christ died to give us access to the Father. Pray because God is worthy of our praise. Pray because we need His forgiveness, cleansing, guidance, and protection. Pray because others need our prayers.
   
• Nothing can replace a daily time spent alone with God in prayer. We can also be in an attitude of prayer throughout the day—sitting in a car or at our desks, working in the kitchen, even talking with someone on the phone.
   
• Prayer is speaking to God—but sometimes He uses our times of prayerful silence to speak to us in return.
   
• Be sure that your motive in praying is to glorify God.
   
• Jesus demonstrated the importance of prayer by His own example. His whole ministry was saturated with prayer.
   
• We have not yet learned that we are more powerful on our knees than behind the most powerful weapons that can be developed.
   
• A life taught in the Scriptures, and tuned in to God in prayer, produces an outflowing of grace and power.
   
• God urges us to bring our concerns to Him—not just petitions about our own needs, but also intercessions for others. [The apostle] Paul said . . . “Brothers, pray for us” [1 Thessalonians 5:25NIV].
   
• Many doctors today prescribe yoga as a helpful stress reliever but would not consider prescribing prayer to the One who calms our fears and anxieties.
   
• Why do we need to pray? Because the Christian life is a journey, and we need God’s strength and guidance along the way.
   
• [God] says to pray for our enemies. How many of us have ever spent time praying for our enemies? 
   
• A survey reported that the majority of the seminaries [in the United States] had no classes on prayer. That really shouldn’t surprise us when we consider how many local churches offer classes on gardening and the “Art of Conversation” instead of the study of God’s Word and prayer.
   
• Prayer is our lifeline to God.
   
• Prayer is not an option but a necessity. (Ed: Prayer is not "plan B" but "plan A!")
   
• Prayer is the most powerful weapon we have in our spiritual arsenal to stand against the world’s greatest enemy, the one who presents himself as an angel of light [2 Corinthians 11:14].
   
• The best way to pray is to open the Bible and pray Scripture back to the Lord, claiming His promises and asking that He strengthen and guide [us] in obeying His Word.
   
• Prayer shouldn’t be a burden but a privilege—God wants our fellowship. (Ed: A prayer burden is a privilege!)
   
• Prayer is the companion of Bible study.
   
• Before prayer changes others, it first changes us.
   
• I listened to a discussion of religious leaders on how to communicate the Gospel. Not once did I hear them mention prayer. And yet I know of scores of churches that win many converts each year by prayer alone.
   
• I have never met anyone who spent time in daily prayer, and in the study of the Word of God, and was strong in faith, who was ever discouraged for very long.
   
• I can tell you that God is alive because I talked with him this morning.

• On persevering prayer:"I look at a stone cutter hammering away at a rock a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the 101st blow it splits in two. I know it was not the one blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

• God looks not at the pomp of words and variety of expression, but at the sincerity and devotion of the heart. The key opens the door, not because it is gilt but because it fits the lock.

Franklin Graham

• No judge can stop us from praying for our country and I pray that on May 6, millions of Americans will join me in praying for our President, all of our elected leaders, and even for this unjust judge and all those who rule from the bench - that God would guide them and give them wisdom.
   
• I don't believe our country will last the way we know it much longer unless there's a change. And we just continue this moral decline going down, and the only hope, I believe, is God. We just hope and pray that maybe he'll hear our prayers and give us some godly leadership.
   
• For those who have already experienced the grace of Almighty God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, prayer becomes the catalyst for fellowship with the Lord of our souls, redeemed by his blood. By tapping into the channel by which we commune with the One who calls his children “friends,” we can receive his strength in our weakness; his guidance in our steps; and his mercy when we stumble along life's path.
   
• Prayer is the most powerful resource we have in this life; yet, many only turn to it as a last resort. When unbelievers pray for repentance of sin and ask for God’s forgiveness, prayer is the spiritual dynamite that obliterates the darkness and despair of a sin-soaked soul.
   
• At a time when our country is waging two wars, approval ratings for Congress are at historic lows, unemployment is at a 70-year high and financial institutions have collapsed around us, I can't imagine anyone seriously opposing a National Day of Prayer.
   
• Prayer is our essential lifeline to God's throne and heart.
   

Ruth Bell Graham

• God has not always answered my prayers. If he had, I would have married the wrong man—several times!
   
• Just pray for a tough hide and a tender heart.
   
• We cannot pray and remain the same.

J D Grear

• Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.
   
• The Gospel Prayer - In Christ, there is nothing I can do that would make You love me more, and nothing I have done that makes You love me less. Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy. As You have been to me, so I will be to others. As I pray, I'll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.
   
• Surveys show that more than 50 percent of people in the U.S. have prayed the sinner's prayer and think they're going to heaven because of it even though there is no detectable difference in their lifestyles from those outside of the church. On this issue- the most important issue on earth- we have to be absolutely clear. We need to preach salvation by repentance before God and faith in the finished work of Christ.
   
• What would your prayers look like if you believed that the cross really was the measure of God's compassion for someone?

Richard Greenham

• The more godly a man is, and the more graces and blessings of God are upon him, the more need he hath to pray, because Satan is busiest against him, and because he is readiest to be puffed up with a conceited holiness. (Col 4:2)

Edward Griffin

• What an awful (awesome) place is the Christian’s closet. The whole Trinity is about it every time he kneels.

William Gurnall 

• When people do not mind what God speaks to them in His Word, God doth as little mind what they say to Him in prayer.
   
• Pray often rather than very long at a time. It is hard to be very long in prayer, and not slacken in our affections.
   
• Furnish thyself with arguments from the promises to enforce thy prayers, and make them prevalent with God. The promises are the ground of faith, and faith, when strengthened, will make thee fervent, and such fervency ever speeds and returns with victory out of the field of prayer. The mightier any is in the Word, the more mighty he will be in prayer.
   
• Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed, or God's Word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again.
   
• When people do not mind what God speaks to them in His word, God doth as little mind what they say to Him in prayer.
   
• Job's friends chose the right time to visit him, but took not the right course of improving their visit; had they spent the time in praying for him which they did in hot disputes with him, they would have profited him, and pleased God more.
   
• Never was a faithful prayer lost. Some prayers have a longer voyage than others, but then they return with their richer lading at last, so that the praying soul is a gainer by waiting for an answer.
   
• Prayer, it is the very natural breath of faith.
   
• Praying is the same to the new creature as crying is to the natural. The child is not learned by art or example to cry, but instructed by nature; it comes into the world crying. Praying is not a lesson got by forms and rules of art, but flowing from principles of new life itself.
   
• It is not only our duty to pray for others, but also to desire the prayers of others for ourselves.
   
• Cease to pray and thou will begin to sin. Prayer is not only a means to prevail for mercy but also to prevent sin.
   
• Sometimes, perhaps, thou hearest another pray with much freedom and fluency, whilst thou canst hardly get out a few broken words. Hence thou art ready to accuse thyself and admire him, as if the gilding of the key made it open the door the better.
   

• Satan cannot deny but that great wonders have been wrought by prayer. As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down. Satan's strategems against prayer are three. First, if he can, he will keep thee from prayer. If that be not feasible, secondly, he will strive to interrupt thee in prayer. And, thirdly, if that plot takes not, he will labour to hinder the success of thy prayer.

• O Christian, stand to your prayer in a holy expectation of what you have begged upon the credit of the promise.

Thomas Guthrie

• Prayer flies where the eagle never flew.
   
• If you find yourself loving any pleasure more than your prayers, any book better than the Bible, any house better than the house of the Lord, any table better than the Lord's table, any persons better than Christ, or any indulgence better than the hope of heaven – be alarmed.
   
• The Christian is not always praying; but within his bosom is a heaven-kindled love--fires of desire, fervent longings--which make him always ready to pray, and often engage him in prayer.

Robert Haldane

• To pray without labouring is to mock God: to labour without prayer is to rob God of his glory.

Bishop Joseph Hall

• It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; not the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they may be; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they may be; nor the music of our prayers, how sweet our voice may be; nor the logic of our prayers, how argumentative they may be; nor the method of our prayers, how orderly they may be; nor even the divinity of our prayers, how good the doctrine may be;–which God cares for.  Fervency of spirit is that which availeth much. (James 5:16)

Ole Hallesby 

• Begin to realize more and more that prayer is the most important thing you do. You can use your time to no better advantage than to pray whenever you have an opportunity to do so, either alone or with others; while at work, while at rest, or while walking down the street. Anywhere!
   
• Prayer should be the means by which I receive all that I need, and for this reason, be my daily refuge, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy.
   
• Prayer is the conduit through which power from heaven is brought to earth.
   
• Be sure to remember that nothing in your daily life is so insignificant and so inconsequential that the Lord will not help you by answering your prayer.
   
• See to it, night and day, that you pray for your children. Then you will leave them a great legacy of answers to prayer, which will follow them all the days of their life. Then you may calmly and with a good conscience depart from them, even though you may not leave them a great deal of material wealth.
   
• To pray is to let God into our lives. He knocks and seeks admittance, not only in the solemn hours of secret prayer. He knocks in the midst of your daily work, your daily struggles, your daily grind. That is when you need Him most.
   
• If we will make use of prayer to call down upon ourselves and others those things which will glorify the name of God, then we shall see the strongest and boldest promises of the Bible about prayer fulfilled. Then we shall see such answers to prayer as we had never thought were possible.
   
• As impossible as it is for us to take a breath in the morning large enough to last us until noon, so impossible is it to pray in the morning in such a way as to last us until noon. Let your prayers ascend to Him constantly, audibly or silently, as circumstances throughout the day permit.
   
• The secret prayer chamber is a bloody battleground. Here violent and decisive battles are fought out. Here the fate of souls for time and eternity is determined, in quietude and solitude.
   
• To strive in prayer means to struggle through those hindrances which would restrain or even prevent us entirely from continuing in persevering prayer. It means to be so watchful at all times that we can notice when we become slothful in prayer and that we go to the Spirit of prayer to have this remedied. In this struggle, too, the decisive factor is the Spirit of prayer.
   
• The shower of answers to your prayers will continue to your dying hour. Nor will it cease then. When you pass out from beneath the shower, your dear ones will step into it. Every prayer and every sigh which you have uttered for them and their future welfare will, in God's time, descend upon them as a gentle rain of answers to prayer.
   
• As white snowflakes fall quietly and thickly on a winter day, answers to prayer will settle down upon you at every step you take, even to your dying day. The story of your life will be the story of prayer and answers to prayer.
   
• Pray a little each day in a childlike way for the Spirit of prayer. If you feel that you know, as yet, very little concerning the deep things of prayer and what prayer really is, then pray for the Spirit of prayer. There is nothing He would rather do than unveil to you the grace of prayer.
   
• We need to learn to know Him so well that we feel safe when we have left our difficulties with Him.
   
• Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. He hears it from the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness.
   
• There come times when I have nothing more to tell God. If I were to continue to pray in words, I would have to repeat what I have already said. At such times it is wonderful to say to God, "May I be in Thy presence, Lord? I have nothing more to say to Thee, but I do love to be in Thy presence."
   
• Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray. Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas.
   
• The Spirit of prayer makes us so intimate with God that we scarcely pass through an experience before we speak to Him about it, either in supplication, in sighing, in pouring out our woes before Him, in fervent requests, or in thanksgiving and adoration.
    
• Notice carefully every word here. It is not our prayer which draws Jesus into our hearts. Nor is it our prayer which moves Jesus to come in to us. All He needs is access. He enters in of His own accord, because He desires to come in. To pray is nothing more involved than to let Jesus into our needs, and permitting Him to exercise His own power in dealing with them. And that requires no strength. It is only a question of our wills. Will we give Jesus access to our needs?

Richard Halverson

• Intercession is truly universal work for the Christian. No place is closed to intercessory prayer. No continent - no nation - no organization - no city - no office. There is no power on earth that can keep intercession out.

Vance Havner

• Any house wife knows that the best way to remember the things she meant to do and forgot is to start praying. They will come to her and divert her from prayer. The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.
   
• It is not that God is stingy and must be coaxed, for He "giveth liberally and upbraideth not." It is that we ourselves are so shallow and sinful that we need to tarry before Him until our restless natures can be stilled and the clamor of outside voices be deadened so that we can hear His voice. Such a state is not easily reached, and the men God uses have paid a price in wrestlings and prevailing prayer. But it is such men who rise from their knees confident of His power and go forth to speak with authority.
   
• If you can't pray as you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean.
   
• We carry checks on the bank of heaven and never cash them at the window of prayer - we lie to God when we pray rather than rely upon him after we pray.
   
• The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting.
   
•  We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God. We ought to be praying, ‘Lord, take the Word; Spirit of God, set it on fire.’
   
• Many a man who would never think of dashing out in the morning without his breakfast, his vitamins and his briefcase, plunges headlong into a perilous day with an unprepared soul. "A little talk with Jesus" readies the body, the mind and the spirit for whatever comes.
   
• 'Lord of the years that are left to me,
  I give them to Thy hand;
  Take me and make me and mold me
  To the pattern Thou hast planned.' 
   
• If you can't pray like you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean. And you have good help—the Advocate who is God's Son and the Paraclete who is God's Spirit. They will take your feeblest prayer and make it perfect.
   
• The devil is in constant conspiracy against a preacher who really prays, for it has been said that what a minister is in his prayer closet is what he is, no more, no less.
   
• God is not impressed by length or loudness in our prayer. He sees the heart and when we have prayed our hearts into acceptance of His will and our wills into obedience to it, we may calmly wait for the answer.
   
• When we go to our meeting with God, we should go like a patient to his doctor, first to be thoroughly examined and afterwards to be treated for our ailment. Then something will happen when you pray.
   
• The measure of any Christian is his prayer life.
   
• The Holy Spirit prays for us with unutterable groanings. If He groans for us, we might well agonize in prayer for ourselves!
   
• We may get a secret satisfaction out of praying that makes prayer only an end in itself. "Early will I seek Thee"—that is true prayer.
   
• Prayer may not get us what we want, but it will teach us to want what we need.
   
• When a man makes alliance with the Almighty, giants look like grasshoppers.
   
• We carry checks on the bank of heaven and never cash them at the window of prayer.

Matthew Henry

• As long as we continue living we must continue praying.
   
• Prayer-time must be kept up as duly as meal-time.
   
• Though we cannot by our prayers give God any information, yet we must by our prayers give him honor.
   
• We read of preaching the Word out of season, but we do not read of praying out of season, for that is never out of season.
   
• Praying in the Spirit is to pray "under His guidance and influence, according to the rule of His word, with faith, fervency, and earnestness; this is praying in the Holy Ghost."
   
• You may as soon find a living man that does not breath, as a living Christian that does not pray.
   
• If we cannot go to the house of the Lord we can go by faith to the Lord of the house.
   
• If you love God, you cannot be at a loss for something to say to him, something for your hearts to pour out before him, which his grace has already put there.
   
• When God intends great mercy for his people, the first thing he does is set them a-praying.
   
• It is not much praying that is condemned … but much speaking; the danger of this error is when we only say our prayers, not when we pray them.
   
• It is good for us to keep some account of our prayers, that we may not unsay them in our practice. (Ed: And keep a prayer journal of specific request with date and space to write in God's answer! You will be encouraged to pray more!)
   
• God’s promises are to be our pleas in prayer.
   
• We cannot expect too little from man, nor too much from God.
   
• The Bible is a letter God has sent to us; prayer is a letter we send to him.
   
• Days of trouble must be days of prayer.
   
• You may as soon find a living man who does not breathe, as a living Christian who does not pray.
   
• Prayer is the midwife of mercy, that helps to bring it forth.
   
• We read of preaching the Word out of season, but we do not read of praying out of season, for that is never out of season.
   
• God's promises are to be our pleas in prayer.
   
• Prayer is the breath of the new man, drawing in the air of mercy in petitions, and returning it in praises; it proves and maintains the spiritual life.
   
• Prayer is a salve for every sore, a remedy for every malady; and when we are afflicted with thorns in the flesh, we should give ourselves to prayer. If an answer be not given to the first prayer, nor to the second, we are to continue praying. Troubles are sent to teach us to pray; and are continued, to teach us to continue instant in prayer.
   
• The best we can say to God in prayer, is what He has said to us.
   
• When God is about to give His people the expected good, He pours out a Spirit of prayer, and it is a good sign that He is coming towards them in mercy.
   
• The prayers and supplications that Christ offered up were, joined with strong cries and tears, herein setting us example not only to pray, but to be fervent and importunate in prayer. How many dry prayers, how few wet ones, do we offer up to God!
   
• God's Word must be the guide of your desires and the ground of your expectations in prayer.

George Herbert 

• O thou who has given us so much, mercifully grant us one thing more—a grateful heart.
   
• Who goes to bed and does not pray, maketh two nights to every day.

Charles Hodge

• Prayer is the converse of the soul with God.  Therein we manifest or express to Him our reverence, and love for His divine perfection, our gratitude for all His mercies, our penitence for our sins, our hope in His forgiving love, our submission to His authority, our confidence in His care, our desires for His favor, and for the providential and spiritual blessings needed for ourselves and others.

Thomas Hooker

• Prayer is my chief work, and it is by means of it that I carry on the rest.

R. F. Horton

• Therefore, whether the desire for prayer is on you or not, get to your closet at the set time; shut yourself in with God; wait upon Him; seek His face; realize Him; pray.

Victor Hugo

• Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Kent Hughes

• The essence of prayer is the heart drawing near to God (James 4:8). Prayer is the soul’s desire to come to him, to receive his love, to feel his power as we conform to his will. This is exactly what Paul’s soldier in spiritual armor does. Every piece is in place. The spiritual forces of wickedness approach, and there will be lethal battle. But first the soldier falls to his knees and prays in the Spirit with all kinds of prayers (cf. Ephesians 6:18). There is only one view more welcome than the backside of the Devil—and that is the face of God.—Preaching the Word: James
   
• Without troubles we would not learn prayer.
   
• (Paul) was not like the Boston clergyman who prayed such a self-consciously ornate prayer that Monday’s paper described it as “the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience.” God was Paul’s audience.
   
• If you have never done it before, pray through all you have, giving everything to God, especially your most treasured possessions. Put everything at his feet, so he can use it as he desires. (Lk 12:33)
   
• “Ask,” “seek,” “knock” is the hidden fire of the heart that believes God will answer and values what he gives. (Mt 7:7)
   
• We must ask for the blessings. Jesus says in Luke 11:13, “… how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” What does Jesus mean? Isn’t the Holy Spirit already given to believers? The answer is explicit in the Greek grammar, which means the operation of the Holy Spirit. Prayer brings increased fullness and power of the Holy Spirit. We must ask! As we ask for more holiness — a greater sense of adoption, more peace, more love, more patience, more power from the Spirit — we will receive it all.
   
• Ephesians — carefully, reverently, prayerfully considered — will change our lives. It is not so much a question of what we will do with the epistle, but what it will do with us.
   
• This great prayer has been called the Lord's Prayer for almost two thousand years. So it would be futile to attempt to change its name—though the best title really would be "The Disciples' Prayer," because that is what it is. At the disciples' request (Luke 11:1), Jesus provided it for them as a pattern for prayer. The initial focus of this model prayer is upward, as its first three requests have to do with God's glory. Then, having prayed for His glory, the remaining three requests are for our well-being. God first, humans second. That is the ideal order of prayer: His glory before our wants.
   
• The preacher who prayerlessly prepares his sermons on Saturday night as he watches TV and on Sunday delivers short, anecdote-loaded topical homilies which have nothing to do with the text, and indeed are often unsound, will have his work torched!
   
• “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16)—or as some scholars think it is better translated, “The prayer of a righteous man is of great power when energized,” the energizer being the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit energizes the prayer, the one praying is energized so that He passionately throws His energy into it—which is precisely what Elijah’s example illustrates (James 5:17,18). Therefore, if one is “righteous,” having confessed all known sin, being energized by the Holy Spirit to pray passionately, there will be great power.

Hannah Hurnard

• An intercessor means one who is in such vital contact with God and with his fellowmen that he is like a live wire closing the gap between the saving power of God and the sinful men who have been cut off from that power.

Bill Hybels

• Prayer has not always been my strong suit. For many years, even as senior pastor of a large church, I knew more about prayer than I ever practiced in my own life. I have a racehorse temperament, and the tugs of self-sufficiency and self-reliance are very real to me. I didn’t want to get off the fast track long enough to find out what prayer is all about.
   
• From birth we have been learning the rules of self-reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seated values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. To people in the fast lane, determined to make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption. Prayer is alien to our proud human nature. (Too Busy Not to Pray)
   
• We can have no deep, ongoing fellowship with God unless we obey him—totally.
   
• If the request is wrong, God says, “No.” If the timing is wrong, God says, “Slow.”  If you are wrong, God says, “Grow.”  But if the request is right, the timing is right and you are right, God says, “Go!” (Too Busy Not to Pray)
   
• The most intimate communion with God comes only through prayer....The greatest fulfillment (of 20 years of praying) has not been the list of miraculous answers to prayers I have received, although that has been wonderful. The greatest thrill has been the qualitative difference in my relationship with God.
   
• A "prayer warrior" is a person who is convinced that God is omnipotent—that God has the power to do anything, to change anyone and to intervene in any circumstance. A person who truly believes this refuses to doubt God.
   
• Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's prevailing power, and the frequent result is the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, defeated.... Prayer is the key to unlocking God's prevailing power in your life.
   
• It is important to have a regular time for prayer, because without regularity prayer will never become a habit. If we want to live in God's presence, we need to shut the world out and tune in to God once a day, every day, without fail. We need to lay aside our other concerns and focus on God, look at him, talk with him, listen to him, sit quietly before him.
• God's power flows primarily to people who pray.
   
• I used to make excuses for my fainthearted prayer life. I don't have any good models of persevering prayer, I told myself. I have too many responsibilities to fulfill, so I don't have the time to pray properly. But God convinced me that I was not being honest with myself. The real reason my prayers were weak was that my faith was weak.
   
• God wants us...to talk to him as to a friend or father-authentically, reverently, personally, earnestly.
   
• If your life is rushing in many directions at once, you are incapable of the kind of deep, unhurried prayer that is vital to the Christian walk.
   
• If I've learned anything about prayer, it's that desperation drives discipline.
   
• I can write about prayer, you can read about prayer...but sooner or later you have to fall to your knees and just plain pray. Then, and only then, will you begin to operate in the vein of God's miracle-working ways.
   
• How do you pray a prayer so filled with faith that it can move a mountain? By shifting your focus from the size of your mountain to the sufficiency of the Mountain Mover and then stepping forward in obedience.
   
• The Lord's Prayer is an excellent model, but it was never intended to be a magical incantation to get God's attention. Jesus gave this prayer as a pattern to suggest the variety of elements that should be included when we pray.
   
• Playing around is one thing; following an established regimen is quite another. It's true with exercise equipment and it is true with prayer.

John ("Praying") Hyde

• Father, give me these souls, or I die.

David Jeremiah (Many of the quotes below are from his excellent book Prayer: The Great Adventure - recommended)

• I learned how to pray out of desperation. For most of us, this is how the adventure usually begins. When we finally get serious about prayer, the trigger is usually desperation, not duty. 
   
• There is no avoiding the fact that Scripture insists God has hard-wired the universe in such a way that He works primarily through prayer....If prayer really is a great adventure, then why don’t we strike out on spiritual safaris more often? I would hazard a guess that the number one reason is the busyness of our lives. We are so busy.
   
• Prayer is not a natural activity. It has been well said that prayer is stupid when viewed in the purely human realm. I remember the day I realized why it was so hard for me to pray. I wrote this down in my Bible: “Prayer is my Declaration of Dependence.”
   
• We err when we judge our prayers solely by what we can see happening around us. Prayer is a matter of faith. Prayer is taking God at His word. Prayer is understanding God’s promise that if we pray, He will work. And we must keep on praying even when we cannot see what He is doing.
   
• Someone once said that “one sentence burdened with the heart’s desire is dearer to God than an hour’s rehearsing of words and phrases with no longing behind them.” God doesn’t want vain repetitions; He wants real communication. When we pray, He wants us to put our heart into it.
   
• We must never make prayer into some spiritual, make-believe game that does not focus on the real needs that confront us. I’ve been in prayer meetings in which the prayers offered made me wonder whether the people lived on the same planet I do. Oswald Chambers once wrote, “Some of the things that we pray about are as absurd as if we prayed, ‘O Lord, take me out of this room,’ and then refused to go.”
   
• If we’re not careful, discouragement (Ed: When it seems God does not hear or answer our prayers) can slip in like a fog and chill our prayer lives.
   
• At least initially, serious prayer is almost always driven by necessity. We don’t pray because we ought, we pray because we are without any other recourse. I think God likes to see His people coming to Him in desperation and casting themselves upon His mercy!
   
• Prayer is about real-world concerns, spoken in real-world language. God does not want us to shift into a stained-glass prayer voice to address Him.....The necessity of prayer springs out of needs in the real world.
   
• Where did we get the idea that prayer is breaking down God’s reluctance? Why do we so often think that prayer is nothing but bashing in the door of God’s unwillingness? The Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible says that God is anxious to answer our prayers, that He’s eager to do so, that He really wants to grant our requests. 
   
• Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an “insider” language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true, and personal in response to God. It is the means by which we get everything in our lives out in the open before God.
   
• Could it be that one reason we have great problems is that God wants to show us great solutions? He longs to show us the riches of His grace and the poverty of our own resources. Prayer is uniquely designed to demonstrate both truths.
   
• Prayer is the way you defeat the devil, reach the lost, restore a backslider, strengthen the saints, send missionaries out, cure the sick, accomplish the impossible, and know the will of God.
   
• It's not going to happen through technology or our intellectual abilities but only through prayer. When we pray, God works. We believe God blesses churches that bless missions.
   
• The kind of prayer that changes hearts and transforms neighborhoods and rebuilds communities and revives nations is intense, fervent, and all business. It’s that kind of dedicated ministry through which the real work of God gets done. As pastor Bill Hybels has written, “When we work, we work; but when we pray, God works.”
   
• Do we approach God from a beggar's perspective or as His cherished child? If we have any difficulty seeing Him as our loving Father, we need to ask Him to help us develop a healthy Father/child relationship.
   
• Prayer is the hard-work business of Christianity, and it nets amazing results.
   
• Be honest with God and ask Him to give you a willingness to do the work of prayer.
   
• A journal is a great way to keep track of what happens daily in your walk with God and to record your prayers and thoughts.
   
• Prayer is the key to unlocking God's prevailing power in your life.
   
• Many a person is praying for rain with his tub the wrong side up
   
• Sometimes it helps to begin our prayers by confessing we don't feel like praying-and ask God to help us with our preference to be doing something else.
   
• I learned to pray out of desperation. For most of us, this is how the adventure usually begins. When we finally get serious about prayer, the trigger is usually desperation, not duty.... We don't pray because we ought, we pray because we are without any other recourse.
   
• Answers to prayer have to be on God's schedule, not ours. He hears us pray, and He answers according to His will in His own time.
   
• Worship seals all prayers at the front and at the back. Always pray with praise beginning and praise ending.
   
• When the problem is worry, the prescription is prayer.
   
• All the great revivals and awakenings of church history were fueled by the power of prayer.
   
• Constancy is the main point of both stories in Luke 11 and 18. They are intended to teach us that no matter what we observe outwardly, no matter what seems to be coming back to us through our sensory perceptions, the fundamental truth of the Christian life is wrapped up in our prayer to God. By our praying we are giving evidence that we have committed ourselves to Him and that even though we can’t see what He is doing, we know He is doing something and we will not abort that  process by ceasing to pray. We will not lose hope; we will not get discouraged; we will continue to pray.
   
• Certainly discouragement sometimes comes with prayer, but remember this: There will always be discouragement without prayer! Discouragement follows prayerlessness like winter follows fall. But when we choose to continue praying, even through a long and barren winter, eventually spring arrives and with it new life. And at that point, discouragement has no choice but to find somewhere else to live.
   
• We rejoice at answered prayer, but we should rejoice more that God has brought us to the place spiritually where He can afford to answer our prayers. So much of the time we’re all wrapped up in the product. God isn’t; He’s wrapped up in the process. We’re all looking for the answer; God is looking for the person who will pray, even when he cannot see the answer. It is only that kind of person whom God can ultimately trust with the answer.
   
• We may pray for something or someone for years and never see anything happen. Does that mean that nothing is happening, that we should give up and use our energy on something more productive? No. God is at work in response to our prayers, whether we see something happening or not. If we are truly praying, “Thy will be done,” forces are at work beyond our comprehension—and often, beyond our vision. But they are working just the same.

• I believe that the church, in an effort to stress the intimacy God has given us with Himself through Christ, has moved too far away from reverence. I don’t care for terms such as “The Big Dodger in the sky” or “The Man Upstairs.” They don’t reflect the true majesty and greatness of God. That kind of flippancy and extra-familiarity has no place in our conversation, for we serve an Almighty Heavenly Father of limitless power and glory and unimaginable awesomeness. God is uncommon. He is extraordinary. He is unearthly. He is separated from sinners. He is undefiled. He is holy. God is uniquely different and above all. And yet He is our Father! (Mt 6:9)

E. Stanley Jones

• Prayer is surrender—surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. (A Song of Ascents)
   
• I am better or worse as I pray more or less. It works for me with mathematical precision.
   
• Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.
   
• Prayer is aligning ourselves with the purposes of God.
   
• When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
   
• Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you.
   
• In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won.
   
• Prayer is co-operation with God. It is the purest exercise of the faculties God has given us - an exercise that links these faculties with the Maker to work out the intentions He had in mind in their creation.
   
• Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.
   
• We find, sooner or later, that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer.

J. H. Jowett

• It is in the field of prayer that life's critical battles are lost or won. We must conquer all our circumstances there. We must first of all bring them there. We must survey them there. We must master them there. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the Presence of God and we fight them there. Have you tried that? Or have you been satisfied to meet and fight your foes in the open spaces of the world?
   
• If I am called upon to pray in public, I must not dare to use words that are intended to please the ears of my fellow-worshippers, but I just realize that I am speaking to God Himself and that I have business to transact with the great Lord. 
   
• All vital praying makes a drain on a man's vitality. True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice.
   
• Prayer is not always petition, sometimes it is just communion. It is the exquisite ministry of friendship.

Adoniram Judson

• Be resolute in prayer. Make any sacrifice to maintain it. Consider that time is short and that business and company must not be allowed to rob thee of thy God.
   
• Our prayers run along one road and God's answers by another, and by and by they meet.
   
• There is more you can do after you pray, but there is nothing you can do until you pray.
   
• God loves importunate prayer so much that He will not give us much blessing without it.
   
• I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time; no matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the least I would have devised, it came.
   
• God answers all true prayer, either in kind or in kindness.
   
• Nothing is impossible,' said one of the seven sages of Greece, 'to industry.' Let us change the word, 'industry,' to 'persevering prayer,' and the motto will be more Christian and more worthy of universal adoption.

Toyokiko Kagawa

• From three to four each morning—that is my hour. Then I am free from interruption and from the fear of interruption. Each morning I wake at three and live an hour with God. It gives me strength for everything. Without it I would be utterly helpless. I could not be true to my friends, or do my work, or preach the gospel which God has given me for his poor.

Alice Kahokuoluna 

Before the missionaries came, my people used to sit outside their (idol) temples for a long time meditating and preparing themselves before entering. Then they would virtually creep to the altar to offer their petition and afterwards would again sit a long time outside, this time to "breathe life" into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen and were done. For that reason my people call them haolis, "without breath," or those who fail to breathe life into their prayers. 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard 

• A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.

Woodrow Kroll

• There cannot be an answer until there is a prayer.
   
• The prayer is up to us; the answer is up to God.
   
• Pray according to faith, not circumstances.
   
• A moment of prayerful reflection can prevent a lifetime of bitter regret.
   
• Fervent prayers produce phenomenal results.
   
• Prayer is never complete until God has answered.
   
• Prayer only works when the channels are open.

John Laidlaw

• The main lesson about prayer is just this: Do it! Do it! Do it! You want to be taught to pray. My answer is pray and never faint, and then you shall never fail…"

William Law

• He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and a happy life.
   
• We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
   
• There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.
   
• Solemn prayers, rapturous devotions, are but repeated hypocrisies unless the heart and mind be conformable to them.
   
• Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the stream runs clear.
   
• Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done in earth.”
   
• Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.
   
• They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.

Brother Lawrence

• You need not cry very loud; He is nearer to us than we think.
   
• Our biggest mistake is to think that a time of prayer is different from any other time. It is all one.
   
• The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were on my knees.

Abraham Lincoln

• I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
• We, on our side, are praying to God to give us victory because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray him, too, for victory, believing they are right. What must he think of us?
   
• I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
   
• I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.
   
• Rules of living Don't worry, eat three square meals a day,say your prayers, be courteous to your creditors, keep your digestion good,steer clear of biliousness,exercise, go slow and go easy. May be there are other things that your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these, i reckon, will give you a good life.
   
• And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
   
• Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
   
• Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation...
   
• I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself.
   
• Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
   
• 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.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

• Of all the blessings of Christian salvation none is greater than this, that we have access to God in prayer.
   
• Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in God.
   
• Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.” 
   
• We could not pray at all if it were not for the Holy Spirit.
   
• We should go into His presence as a child goes to his father. We do it with reverence and godly fear, of course, but we should go with a childlike confidence and simplicity.
   

• How's Your Prayer Life?  What is the place of prayer in your life? What prominence does it have in our lives? It is a question that I address to all. It is as necessary that it should reach the man who is well versed in the Scripture, and who has a knowledge of its doctrine and its theology, as that it should reach anyone else. What part does prayer play in our lives and how essential is it to us? Do we realize that without it we faint? Our ultimate position as Christians is tested by the character of our prayer life. It is more important than knowledge and understanding. Do not imagine that I am detracting from the importance of knowledge. I spend most of my life trying to show the importance of having a knowledge of truth and an understanding of it. That is vitally important. There is only one thing that is more important, and that is prayer. The ultimate test of my understanding of the Scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know God. Not to know about Him, but to know Him. The whole object of salvation is to bring me to a knowledge of God. I may talk learnedly about regeneration, but what is eternal life? It is that they might know Thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom God has sent. (John 17:3) If all my knowledge does not lead me to prayer there is something wrong somewhere. It is meant to do that. The value of the knowledge is that it gives me such an understanding of the value of prayer, that I devote time to prayer and delight in prayer. If it does not produce these results in my life, there is something wrong and spurious about it, or else I am handling it in a wrong manner.

• Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse.
   
• There are ideas in our hearts, there are wishes, there are aspirations, there are groanings, there are sighings that the world knows nothing about; but God knows them. So words are not always necessary. When we cannot express our feelings except in wordless groanings, God knows exactly what is happening.
   
• There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christians so much as our prayer life.
   
• Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.
   
• You pray and make your requests made known unto God, and God will do something.' It is not your prayer that is going to do it, it is not you who is going to do it, but God. 'The peace of God that passeth all understanding'-He, through it all, 'will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus'.
   
• Is the terrible sin of praying in public in a manner which suggests a desire to have an effect upon people present rather than to approach God with reverence and godly fear.
   
• Ultimately there is no better index of one’s spiritual state and condition than one’s prayers.
   
• We need less travelling by jet planes from congress to congress … but more kneeling and praying and pleading to God to have mercy upon us, more crying to God to arise and scatter his enemies and make himself known.

Frank Laubach

• The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says ‘Amen’ and runs away before God has a chance to reply. Listening to God is far more important than giving Him our ideas.

Robert Law

• Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done in earth.
   
• The marvellous and supernatural power of prayer consists not in bringing God’s will down to us, but in lifting our will up to his.

C. S. Lewis

• An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. . . . But if he is a Christian, he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.
   
• It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
   
• That wisdom must sometimes refuse what ignorance may quite innocently ask seems to be self-evident.
   
• The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking, But I never knew before. I never dreamed . . . I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own theology, “It reminds me of straw."
   
• The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks.”
   
• The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.
   
• What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.
   
• A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.
   
• Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.
   
• I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s.
   
• If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where would I be now?
   
• It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort; it’s not the sort of comfort they supply there.
   
• Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course he will sometimes refuse them.

Max Lucado

• The greater your cares, the more genuine your prayers
   
• Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the One who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.
   
• Don't quit. For if you do, you may miss the answer to your prayers.
   
• God's solution is a prayer away!
   
• What causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first? I can think of two reasons: feelings of independence and feelings of insignificance.
   
• Prayer is the window that God has placed in the walls of our world. Leave it shut and the world is a cold, dark house. But throw back the curtains and see His light. Open the window and hear His voice. Open the window of prayer and invoke the presence of God in your world.
   
• Faithful servants have a way of knowing answered prayer when they see it, and a way of not giving up when they don't.
   
• I would love to have a more earnest prayer life! In my life, prayer is the single most difficult discipline. I love God and there's something in me that would rather do things for God than talk to God. I'm not by nature a mystical, devotional person. I like to do things. And so it's a challenge for me to have a faithful prayer life, but I know God loves me and He's not mad at me. He just wishes I would slow down and turn things over to Him. And that's what I think you achieve through prayer.
   
• Prayer pushes us through life's slumps, propels us over the humps and pulls us out of the dumps. Prayer is the oomph we need to get the answers we seek.
   
• 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.
   
• Prayer lets God do what he does best. Take a pebble & kill a Goliath. Take the common, make it spectacular! Pray & see what He can do.
   
• It seems to me that the prayers of the Bible can be distilled into one. The result is a simple, easy-to-remember, pocket-sized prayer: Father, you are good. I need help. They need help. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. Let this prayer punctuate your day.
   
• Waiting is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief.

Martin Luther

• As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.
   
• As is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.
   
• Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray. Prayer is a powerful thing, for God has bound and tied himself thereto.
   
• I am so busy now that if I did not spend two or three hours each day in prayer, I would not get through the day.
   
• When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without heart. 
   
• Martin Luther said prayers should be “brief, frequent, and intense.”
   
• Pray, and let God worry.
   
• No one can believe how powerful prayer is and what it can effect, except those who have learned it by experience. Whenever I have prayed earnestly, I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes.
   
• In human affairs, we accomplish everything through prayer. What has been properly arranged, we keep in order, what has gone amiss we improve or change, what we cannot change and improve we bear, overcoming all trouble and sustaining all by prayer. Against such forces there is no help but prayer.
   
• We cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of His great mercy, the true understanding of His Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word, as He Himself has said, "They shall be all taught of God" (John 6:45). Hope for nothing from your own labors, from your own understanding: trust solely in God, and in the influence of His Spirit. Believe this on the word of a man who has experience.
   
• God wants us to pray, and he wants to hear our prayers-not because we are worthy, but because he is merciful.
   
• What are the things we should pray for? First, our personal troubles...The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we can become hard-hearted and insensible to what is inside of us.
   
• It is a tremendously hard thing to pray aright, yea, it is verily the science of all sciences.
   
• Christians fight best on their knees. Whatever good may be done is done and brought about by prayer.
   
• God delights in our temptations and yet hates them. He delights in them when they drive us to prayer; he hates them when they drive us to despair.
   
• Look to it that you do not try to do all of it, do not try to do too much, lest your spirit grow weary. Besides, a good prayer mustn't be too long. Do not draw it out. Prayer ought to be frequent and fervent.
   
• None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience.
   
• Prayer is a very precious medicine, one that helps and never fails.
   
• Prayer, study, and suffering make a pastor.
   
• God is ready to give more quickly, and to give more than you ask; yea, he offers his treasures if we only take them. It is truly a great shame and a severe chastisement for us Christians that God should still upbraid us for our slothfulness in prayer, and that we fail to let such a rich and excellent promise incite us to pray.
   
• Prayer is a powerful thing; for God has bound and tied himself thereunto.
   
• Brief let me be. The fewer words the better prayer.
   

• Martin Luther prayed on the night preceding his appearance before the Diet of Worms: "Do Thou, my God, stand by me against all the world's wisdom and reason. Oh, do it! Thou must do it. Stand by me, Thou true, eternal God!"

• It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last in the evening. Guard yourself against such false and deceitful thoughts that keep whispering: Wait a while. In an hour or so I will pray. I must first finish this or that. Thinking such thoughts we get away from prayer into other things that will hold us and involve us till the prayer of the day comes to naught.
   
• Prayer is the most important thing in my life. If I should neglect prayer for a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith.
   
• Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart
   
• If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.
   
• The less I pray, the harder it gets; the more I pray, the better it goes.
   
• To pray well is the better half of study.
   
• To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
   
• When I cannot pray I always sing.
   
• The fewer the words, the better the prayer. To have prayed well is to have studied well. 
   
• Prayer is that mightiest of all weapons that created natures can wield.
   
• As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.
   
• I have to hurry all day to get time to pray.
   
• Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church; it is a goodly Christian’s weapon.
   
• To pray well is the better half of study.
   
• When Luther's puppy happened to be at the table, he looked for a morsel from his master, and watched with open mouth and motionless eyes; he (Martin Luther) said, 'Oh, if I could only pray the way this dog watches the meat! All his thoughts are concentrated on the piece of meat. Otherwise he has no thought, wish or hope.

Erwin W Lutzer

• The reason we must ask God for things he already intends to give us is that he wants to teach us dependence, especially our need for himself.
   
• Although posture is not important, I find that I am able to express my dependence better on my knees, a sign of our helplessness apart from the divine enablement.
   
• The activities we do for God are secondary. Above all else, God is looking for people who long for communication with him.
   
• Prayer, desperate prayer, seems so simple, but it’s a step rarely taken by those in family conflict.

Thomas Lye

• I had rather stand against the cannons of the wicked than against the prayers of the righteous.

John MacArthur

• For the faithful, Spirit-filled Christian, every place becomes a place of prayer.

Daniel McCasland

• Prayer is a process of recognizing God's power and plan for our lives. 

J C Macaulay

• It is good to pray for the repair of mistakes, but praying earlier would keep us from making so many. When puzzled, go to prayer and listen.

George MacDonald

• Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to him. To wait till you go to church or to your room is to make him wait. He will listen as you walk.
   
• There are two doorkeepers to the house of prayer, and Sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson Joy.
   
• There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything. . . . He who seeks the Father more than anything he can give is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.
   
• Why pray, if God loves us and knows all we need before we pray? “What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help drive us to God? Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other needs; prayer is the beginning of that communion.
   
• There is a vast difference between saying prayers and praying.
   
• What a fearful canopy the prayers that do not get beyond the atmosphere would make if they turned brown with age!
   
• Anything large enough for a wish to light upon is large enough to hang a prayer on.
   
• It is not good that a man should batter day and night at the gate of heaven. Sometimes he can do nothing else, and then nothing else is worth doing; but the very noise of the siege will sometimes drown the still small voice that calls from the open postern (back or side entrance).
   
• He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.
   
• My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am.

William Macdonald

• God is not mocked. He does not answer prayers if he has already given us the answer and we are not willing to use it.

Alexander Maclaren

• Is there any place in any of our rooms where there is a little bit of carpet worn white by our knees?
   
• The prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes on into waiting, will always end in thankfulness, triumph, and praise.
   
• Did any of you, parents, ever hear your child wake from sleep with some panic fear and shriek the mother's name through the darkness? Was not that a more powerful appeal than all words? And, depend upon it, that the soul which cries aloud on God, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," though it have "no language but a cry," will never call in vain.
   
• As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly conquered than a sorrow which we avoid
   
• Our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He overanswers the poor prayers of His laboring servants.
   
• Turn your confidence and your fears alike into prayer.

Catherine Marshall

• One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.
   
• The purpose of all prayer is to find God's will and to make that our prayer
   
• I believe the old cliché, 'God helps those who help themselves,' is not only misleading but often dead wrong. My most spectacular answers to prayers have come when I was so helpless, so out of control as to be able to do nothing at all for myself.
   
• Our prayers must not be efforts to bend God to our will but to yield ourselves to His.

Peter Marshall

• If you have no prayer life yourself, it is rather a useless gesture to make your child say his prayers every night.
   

• When we are wrong, make us willing to change. And when we are right, make us easy to live with.

Henry Martyn

• As he knelt on India's coral strands, "Here let me burn out for God. After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing. Oh, that I might be a man of prayer!

Mary Queen of Scotland

• I fear John Knox’s prayers more than an army of ten thousand men.

William T. McElroy

• Nothing can so quickly cancel the frictions of life as prayer. If you find yourself growing angry at someone, pray for him—anger cannot live in an atmosphere of prayer." 

J Vernon McGee

• If you lack wisdom in regard to a problem, you need to go to God in prayer.
   
• There are so many people who want to get together to have a great prayer meeting or other great gatherings. Friend, have you ever tried being alone? That is where God will meet with you. Take the Word of God and go off alone with Him. It will do you a lot of good.

William McGill

• The value of persistent prayer is not that He will hear us ... but that we will finally hear Him.

Henrietta Mears 

• Let us pray Wesley's (John Wesley, 1703-1791, British, founder of the Methodists) prayer, "Lord, make me an extraordinary Christian."
   
• Prayer is a golden key that, kept bright by constant use, will unlock the treasures of earth and heaven. (1Jn 5:14, 15, James 5:13-16).
   
• Prayer is the surest secret of success in any married life.
   
• To hear God speak to your heart, to understand His Word, to evaluate circumstances and to make certain that these three are in agreement, prayer is essential. Pray with the sincere desire that the Lord answer in accordance with His will. (1Jn 5:14,15)
   
• Paul lived to intercede for others (Phil. 1:3-4). So should every true Sunday School teacher, Christian friend, father, mother, brother or sister remember others in their prayers without ceasing. Have you a prayer list? Do you talk with the Lord about your friends?
   
• Prayer is the most important privilege of a Christian. (Ed: But remember that privilege always conveys responsibility which begs the question - "Are you faithfully fulfilling your responsibility so that one day you at the Bema Seat you will be rewarded for being a good steward of your high privilege?" - 2 Cor 5:10)
   
• It is through prayer that God wishes to have His will brought to pass.
   
• Prayer moves the hand that moves the world. A devoted woman moved a determined monarch. (Esther 4:14, 16)
   
• Luke speaks more of the prayers of our Lord than any other Gospel writer. Prayer is the expression of human dependence on God. Why is there so much working and activity in the Church and yet so little result in positive conversions to God? Why so much running hither and thither and so few brought to Christ? The answer is simple: There is not enough private prayer. The cause of Christ does not need less working, but more praying.
   
• Remember there is always access to God through prayer in Christ. We may speak not just three times a day, but whenever the need arises. The Lord Jesus invites us to pray. (Read again John 14:13-15.)
   
• If the Son of God needed to pray before He undertook His work, how much more should we pray. Perhaps if we lack success in life, it is because we fail at this point. We have not because we ask not (see James 4:2).
   
• Habakkuk, in all his difficulties, went to God in prayer and waited patiently for His answer (Habakkuk 2:1). He went onto the watchtower and listened to God. G. Campbell Morgan says that when Habakkuk looked at his circumstances he was perplexed (Habakkuk 1:3), but when he waited for God and listened to Him, he sang (Habakkuk 3:18-19).
   
• As we approach God’s Word, our prayer should be the words of Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.” Remember, the reason for our study of the Bible is that we may become approved unto God (see 2 Tim. 2:15). There is little use to read and study the Bible if we do not obey its teachings. Do you want to be “approved unto God”? If so, you must study His Word.
   
• Do not be surprised to find hypocrites in every congregation of God's children. Satan comes to do mischief to saints. He distracts our attention. He sets us to criticizing. He sows dissension in the congregation. He excites the pride of preachers and singers, of givers and those who publicly pray. He chills our spirit and freezes our prayers. 
   
• "Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness" (Psalm 29:2). This is the key verse to the book of Psalms. The door into the temple of praise and prayer is open. Go in with the psalmist to rest and pray. It is a real privilege to go apart during the rush of earthly things....The Psalms are for the closet of prayer.
   
•  Pray for wisdom to behave wisely in time of trial. When you are wronged and insulted, ask God how you shall act. "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5). What a sad lack! What a mess such a lack can lead us into. Does James say, "If you lack wisdom, sit down and think or study"? No, he says the wisdom we need is from above.
   
• James begins and ends with prayer (James 1:5-8; James 5:13-18). Prayer is one of the easiest subjects to talk upon, but one of the hardest to practice.
   
• Overindulgence in pleasure always affects the prayer life. We stagnate in our Christian life.(James 4:3)

Phillip Melanchton

• Trouble and perplexity drive us to prayer, and prayer driveth away trouble and perplexity.

George Meredith 

• Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

John Mott

• The men that will change the colleges and seminaries here represented are the men that will spend the most time alone with God. It takes time for the fires to burn. It takes time for God to draw near and for us to know that He is there. It takes time to assimilate His truth. You ask me, How much time? I do not know. I know it means time enough to forget time.
   
• The missionary church is a praying church. The history of missions is a history of prayer. Everything vital to the success of the world's evangelization hinges on prayer. Are thousands of missionaries and tens of thousands of native workers needed? Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest.
   
• The Church has not yet touched the fringe of the possibilities of intercessory prayer. Her largest victories will be witnessed when individual Christians everywhere come to recognize their priesthood unto God and day by day give themselves unto prayer.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne

• God will either give you what you ask, or something far better.
   
• What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more.
   
• Learn that urgency in prayer does not so much consist in vehement pleading, as in vehement believing. He that believes most the love and power of Jesus will obtain the most in prayer.
   
• Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.
   
• Study your prayers, a great part of my time is spent getting in tune for prayer.
   
• I ought to pray before seeing any one…Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: ‘Early will I seek thee’…I feel it is far better to begin with God-to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another.
   
• If the veil of the world’s machinery were lifted off, how much we could find is done in answer to the prayers of God’s children.
   
• O believing brethren! What an instrument is this which God hath put into your hands! Prayer moves Him that moves the universe
   
• If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me. (cf Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34)
   
• Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two, your life preaches all the week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourselves to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words from God. Martin Luther spent his best three hours in prayer.
   
• What a man is on his knees before God, that he is—and nothing more.
   
• Let us see God before man every day.
   
• The worth of a prayer is not gauged by its dimensions.
   
• There is nothing a natural man hates more than prayer.
   
• Turn the Bible into prayer. Thus, if you were reading the First Psalm, spread the Bible on the chair before you, and kneel, and pray, ’O Lord, give me the blessedness of the man’; ’let me not stand in the counsel of the ungodly.’ This is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray."

F B Meyer 

• Our God does not always answer our prayers as we request. But he does for us, as for our Lord in the Garden; he strengthens us.
   
• There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it.
   
• The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer.
   
• Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the stream runs clear.
   
• As we pour out our bitterness, God pours in his peace.
   
• The man who prays grows, and the muscles of the soul swell from this whipcord to iron bands.
   
• Habits of prayer need careful cultivation.
   
• Prayer is an exchange. We leave our burdens, worries and sin in the hands of God. We come away with oil of joy and the garment of praise.

D L Moody (full biography)

• Next to the wonder of seeing my Savior will be, I think, the wonder that I made so little use of the power of prayer.
   
• Some people’s prayers need to be cut off at both ends and set on fire in the middle.
   
• Unless the Spirit of God is with us, we cannot expect that our prayers will be answered.
   
• We have a great many prayer-meetings, but there is something just as important as prayer, and that is that we read our Bibles, that we have Bible study and Bible lectures and Bible classes, so that we may get hold of the Word of God. When I pray, I talk to God, but when I read the Bible, God is talking to me; and it is really more important that God should speak to me than that I should speak to Him. I believe we should know better how to pray if we knew our Bibles better.
   
• Use me, then, my Saviour, for whatever purpose and in whatever way Thou mayest require. Here is my poor heart, an empty vessel; fill it with Thy Grace.
   
• Behind every work of God you will always find some kneeling form.
   
• He who kneels the most, stands the best.
   
• Sometimes when your child talks, your friends cannot understand what he says; but the mother understands very well. So if our prayer comes from the heart, God understands our language.
   
• If we do not love one another, we certainly shall not have much power with God in prayer.
   
• The world knows little of the works wrought by prayer.
   
• In our prayers, we talk to God, in our Bible study, God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.
   
• Spread out your petition before God, and then say, "Thy will, not mine, be done." The sweetest lesson I have learned in God's school is to let the Lord choose for me.
   
• Every one of our children will be brought into the ark, if we pray and work earnestly for them.
   

• D. L. Moody says of Philippians 4:6: "Be careful for nothing; Be prayerful for everything; Be thankful for anything!"

• D L Moody  had a practical mind that never let a meeting get out of hand. Long public prayers particularly irritated him. Once he told his song leader, Sankey, "Lead us in a hymn while our brother is finishing his prayer."

• Moody’s bedtime prayer as he rolled his great bulk into bed on one occasion was, “Lord, I am tired. Amen.”

• If you pray for bread and bring no basket to carry it, you prove the doubting spirit which may be the only hindrance to the gift you ask.
   
• We are not told that Jesus ever taught His disciples how to preach, but He taught them how to pray. He wanted them to have power with God; then He knew they would have power with man. 
   
• A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. His is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but it is He Himself we have.
• Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The only way to trouble God is not to come at all. (Luke 11:9)
   
• Prayer does not mean that I am to bring God down to my thoughts and my purposes, and bend his government according to my foolish, silly, and sometimes sinful notions. Prayer means that I am to be raised up into feeling, into union and design with him; that I am to enter into his counsel and carry out his purpose fully.
   
• Our Master’s prayers were short when offered in public; when He was alone with God, He could spend the whole night in communion with His Father. My experience is that those who pray most in their closets generally make short prayers in public. Long prayers are too often not prayers at all, and they weary the people. 
   
• I’d rather be able to pray than be a great preacher; Jesus Christ never taught his disciples how to preach, but only how to pray.
   
• We ought to see the face of God every morning before we see the face of man.
   
• Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray that He would empty us.
   
• Lord, save the elect, and then elect some more!
   
• Christ never preached any funeral sermons.
   
• Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.
   
• Fervency in prayer by the power of the Holy Spirit is a good preservative against thoughts rushing in. Flies never settle on the boiling pot.
   
• How far away is Heaven? It is not so far as some imagine. It wasn't very far from Daniel. It was not so far off that Elijah's prayer and those of others could not be heard there. Men full of the Spirit can look right into heaven.
   
• My friends, if we are going to do a great work for God, we must spend much time in prayer; we have got to be closeted with God.
   
• There is no true prayer without confession. As long as we have unconfessed sin in our soul, we are not going to have power with God in prayer. He says if we regard iniquity in our hearts, He will not hear us, much less answer. As long as we are living in any known sin, we have no power in prayer. God is not going to hear it.
   
• The impression that a praying mother leaves upon her children is life-long. Perhaps when you are dead and gone your prayer will be answered.
   
• I firmly believe a great many prayers are not answered because we are not willing to forgive someone.
   
• Be careful for nothing, prayerful for everything, thankful for anything. (Php 4:6,7)
   
• Some men’s prayers need to be cut short at both ends and set on fire in the middle.
   
• It is said that on one occasion when Caesar gave a very valuable present, the receiver replied that it was too costly a gift. The Emperor answered that it was not too great for Caesar to give. Our God is a great King, and He delights to give gifts to us: so let us delight to ask Him for great things.
   
• Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The way to trouble God is not to come at all.
   
• Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live. The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.
   
• Some people’s prayers need to be cut off at both ends and set on fire in the middle.
   
• The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe.

Thomas Moore

• Deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion unheard by the world, rises silent to thee.

G Campbell Morgan

• The prayer life does not consist of perpetual repetition of petitions. The prayer life consists of life that is always upward and onward and Godward
   
• Prayer is life passionately wanting, wishing, desiring God's triumph. Prayer is life striving and toiling everywhere and always for that ultimate victory.
   
• Prayer is life passionately wanting, wishing, desiring God's triumph.
   
• Oh, how strenuous is life! I know a little of it. Men "ought always to pray, and not to faint." How fierce the battle! I know something of the conflict, but I ought not to faint, because I can pray.

Rob Morgan

• When we feel desperate in prayer, we remember Him in Gethsemane. (Luke 22:44)
   
• There is an indisputable, invisible correlation between the purity of your life and the power and effectiveness of your prayers. 
   
• Sometime ago I discovered that if you want to pray effectively for someone else--for a child or a spouse or a friend--the most powerful prayers are the ones found in the Bible itself. There’s great power in praying the very words of Scripture. And I believe that’s one of the reasons why so many of the prayers of Paul the Apostle are recorded. He knew just what to pray.
   
• God’s delays are not denials. The Lord never forgets our earnest prayers, and many times there is but a waiting for the right time to come for their answers to be given. (Psalm 27:14, 37:7, 9, 34, 69:6, 130:5, 147:11, Pr 20:22, Isaiah 40:31)

Handley C. G. Moule

• Intercessory Prayer is a powerful means of grace to the praying man. Martyn observes that at times of inward dryness and depression, he had often found a delightful revival in the act of praying for others for their conversion, or sanctification, or prosperity in the work of the Lord. His dealings with God for them about these gifts and blessings were for himself the divinely natural channel of a renewed insight into his own part and lot in Christ, into Christ as his own rest and power, into the “perfect freedom” of an entire yielding of himself to his Master for His work
   
• The decisive preparation for prayer lies not in the prayer itself, but in the life prior to the prayer.

George Mueller

• It is not enough for the believer to begin to pray, nor to pray correctly; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray. We must patiently, believingly continue in prayer until we obtain an answer. Further, we have not only to continue in prayer until the end, but we have also to believe that God does hear us and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained, and in not expecting the blessing. Those who are disciples of the Lord Jesus should labor with all their might in the work of God as if everything depended upon their own endeavors. Yet, having done so, they should not in the least trust in their labor and efforts, nor in the means that they use for the spread of the truth, but in God alone; and they should with all earnestness seek the blessing of God in persevering, patient, and believing prayer. Here is the great secret of success, my Christian reader. Work with all your might, but never trust in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing in God, but work at the same time with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray, then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on, all the days of your life. The result will surely be abundant blessing. Whether you see much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed.
   
• On the ground of our own goodness we cannot expect to have our prayers answered. But Jesus is worthy, and for His sake we may have our prayers answered. There is nothing too choice, too costly, or too great for God to give Him. He is worthy. He is the spotless, holy Child, who under all circumstances acted according to the mind of God. And if we trust in Him, if we hide in Him, if we put Him forward and ourselves in the background, depend on Him and plead His name, we may expect to have our prayers answered.
   
• It often astonishes me that I did not see the importance of meditation upon Scripture earlier in my Christian life. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time unless he eats, so it is with the inner man. What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God -not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe. No, we must consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts.
   
• The joy which answers to prayer give, cannot be described; and the impetus which they afford to the spiritual life is exceedingly great.
   
• It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer.
   
• I believe God has heard my prayers. He will make it manifest in His own good time that He has heard me. I have recorded my petitions that when God has answered them, His name will be glorified.
   
• It is not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believingly, continue in prayer until we obtain an answer.
   
• Here is the great secret of success. Work with all your might; but trust not in the least in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing of God; but work, at the same time, with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on all the days of your life. The result will surely be, abundant blessing. Whether you see much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed...
   
• In order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer, is, to continue praying; for the less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
   
• The greater the difficulty to be overcome, the more will it be seen to the glory of God how much can be done by prayer and faith.
   
• Only a life of prayer and meditation will render a vessel ready for the Master's use.
   
• I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming.
   
• I hope in God, I pray on, and look yet for the answer. They are not converted yet, but they will be.
   
• For more than half a century, I have never known one day when I had not more business than I could get through. For 40 years, I have had annually about 30,000 letters, and most of these have passed through my own hands. I have nine assistants always at work corresponding in German, French, English, Danish, Italian, Russian, and other languages. Then, as pastor of a church with 1200 believers, great has been my care. I have had charge of five orphanages; also at my publishing depot, the printing and circulation of millions of tracts, books, and Bibles. But I have always made it a rule never to begin work till I have had a good season with God.
   
• The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.

Walter A Mueller

• Prayer is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble: prayer is a life attitude.

Malcolm Muggeridge

• I have always found praying, in any definite sense, very difficult. Somehow the notion of putting specific requests to God strikes me as unseemly, if not absurd (Ed: I strongly disagree!). . . . I can never find anything to say to God except: Thy will be done. If it is true, as St. Paul tells us—and it surely is—that all things work together for good to them that love God, then all that is required of us is that we should love God, and, in loving him, fall in with his purposes. 
• I wake up in the morning, and I like to begin the day by thinking what life is about, rather than plunging into the sort of things one is going to have to do. So I like to read the Gospels, the Epistles, Augustine, the metaphysical poets like George Herbert , whom I consider to be the most exquisite religious poet in the English language. I read a bit, and then my mind dwells on what I’ve read, and this I consider to be prayer. (Comment: Interesting thought - pondering the readings of Augustine and Herbert as prayer. At best this sounds more like the discipline of meditation.)

Andrew Murray

• Time spent in prayer will yield more than that given to work. Prayer alone gives work its worth and its success. Prayer opens the way for God Himself to do His work in us and through us. Let our chief work as God's messengers be intercession; in it we secure the presence and power of God to go with us.
   
• If we do not learn how to pray when we are younger, we will stumble at it all of our lives.
   
• It is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His strength. It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfillment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation.  (With Christ in the School of Prayer)
   
• As long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know fully what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and practice as the art of praying aright.....There are two kinds of prayer: personal and intercessory…. Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith, and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around. (With Christ in the School of Prayer)
   
• Ask and you shall receive; everyone that asks, receives. This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the Word and Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the confidence He seeks to waken: Everyone who asks receives…. Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore take the Master’s word in all simplicity…. Let us beware of weakening the Word with our human wisdom. (With Christ in the School of Prayer)
   
• “If there is one thing I think the Church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer, and that it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. (With Christ in the School of Prayer)
   
• O do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret. Is it not wonderful? To be able to go alone with God, the infinite God. And then to look up and say: My Father!  (With Christ in the School of Prayer)
   
• Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God.
   
• Moses gave neither command nor regulation with regard to prayer: even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer. It is Christ who teaches to pray.
   
• We must begin to believe that God, in the mystery of prayer, has entrusted us with a force that can move the Heavenly world, and can bring its power down to earth.
   
• Reading a book about prayer, listening to lectures and talking about it is very good, but it won’t teach you to pray. You get nothing without exercise, without practice. I might listen for a year to a professor of music playing the most beautiful music, but that won’t teach me to play an instrument.
   
• Shut the world out, withdraw from all worldly thoughts and occupations, and shut yourself in alone with God, to pray to Him in secret. Let this be your chief object in prayer, to realize the presence of your heavenly Father.
   
• Each time, before you intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things!
   
• God cannot hear the prayers on our lips often because the desires of our heart after the world cry out to Him much more strongly and loudly than the our desires for Him.
   
• Answered prayer is the interchange of love between the Father and His child.
   
• The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.
   
• The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He may be glorified, the richer will be the blessing that prayer will bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices to the Father.
   
• Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.
   
• Beware in your prayer, above everything, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what he can do.
   
• The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history. 
   
• When we pray for the Spirit's help ... we will simply fall down at the Lord's feet in our weakness. There we will find the victory and power that comes from His love."
   
• The effective prayer of faith comes from a life given up to the will and the love of God. Not as a result of what I try to be when praying, but because of what I am when I’m not praying, is my prayer answered by God.
   
• May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love, and joy of God’s presence and not a moment without the entire surrender of my self as a vessel for Him to fill full of His Spirit and His love.
   
• If the spiritual life be healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural.
   
• Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things, above all that we ask or think (Eph 3:20).
   
• Each time, before you Intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things!
   
• Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian.
   
• Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue. God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part.
   
• God’s child can conquer anything by prayer. Is it any wonder that Satan does his utmost to snatch that weapon from the Christian or to hinder him in the use of it?
   
• Prayer is one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible.
   
• As long as we just pour out our hearts in a multitude of petitions without taking time to see whether every petition is sent with the purpose and expectation of getting an answer, not many will reach the mark.
   
• Beware in your prayer above everything of limiting God, not only by unbelief but by fancying that you know what he can do.
   
• How our prayer avails depends upon what we are and what our life is.
   
• Our lives must be as holy as our prayers.
   
• Prayer is the pulse of life.
   
• To know how to speak to God is more important than knowing how to speak to men.
   
• Most churches don’t know that God rules the world by the prayers of his saints.
   
• When the Lord is to lead a soul to great faith he leaves its prayers unheard.
   
• Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that he will listen to mine.
   
• Prayer is the pulse of life.
   
• The great thing in prayer is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent love.
   
• Many Christians backslide...They are unable to stand against the temptations of the world, or of their old nature. They strive to do their best to fight against sin, and to serve God, but they have no strength. They have never really grasped the secret: The Lord Jesus will every day from heaven continue His work in me. But on one condition—the soul must give Him time each day to impart His love and his grace. Time alone with the Lord Jesus each day is the indispensable condition of growth and power.
   
• So much of our prayer is vague and pointless. Some cry for mercy, but do not take the trouble to know exactly why they want it. Others ask to be delivered from sin, but do not name any sin from which a deliverance can be claimed. Still others pray for God's blessing…on their land or on the world, and yet have no special field where they can wait and expect to see the answer. To everyone the Lord says, 'What do you really want, and what do you expect Me to do?' 

  Moody's Today in the Word comments on Andrew Murray's quote - Vagueness in prayer happens when we fail to put real effort and thought into our prayers. Here's an interesting way to find out if your prayers are too vague. Jot down three or four people or situations you're praying for, then describe exactly what you want God to do in each case. See if you can do it without using the word bless at all!

John Newton

• The brilliant scientist Sir Isaac Newton said that he could take his telescope and look millions of miles into space. Then he added, “But when I lay it aside, go into my room, shut the door, and get down on my knees in earnest prayer, I see more of Heaven and feel closer to the Lord then if I were assisted by all the telescopes on earth.”
   
• The spirit of prayer is the fruit and token of the Spirit of adoption.
   
• "What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe.
   
• By affliction prayer is quickened, for our prayers are very apt to grow languid and formal in a time of ease.
   
• I look upon prayer-meetings as the most profitable exercises (excepting the public preaching) in which Christians can engage. They have a direct tendency to kill a worldly, trifling spirit, and to draw down a Divine blessing upon all our concerns, compose differences, and enkindle (at least maintain) the flames of Divine love amongst brethren.
   
• If the Lord be with us, we have no cause of fear. His eye is upon us, His arm over us, His ear open to our prayer - His grace sufficient, His promise unchangeable.
   
• It is better … that the hearers should wish the prayer had been longer, than spend half or a considerable part of the time in wishing it was over.
   
• Prayer is the great engine to overthrow and rout my spiritual enemies, the great means to procure the graces of which I stand in hourly need.
   
• Thou art coming to a King;
  Large petitions with thee bring;
  For his grace and power are such,
  None can ever ask too much.
   
• By one hour's intimate access to the throne of grace, where the Lord causes His glory to pass before the soul that seeks Him you may acquire more true spiritual knowledge and comfort than by a day's or a week's converse with the best of men, or the most studious perusal of many folios.

Harold J. Ockenga 

• It is true....that only those who are thankful for spiritual achievements of believers can truly intercede for them. Note your own prayers, whether you thank God for His grace in others and intercede for them that they may know greater blessing, or whether your prayers are entirely confined to yourself. Then you will know something of your spiritual achievement in prayer.

Lloyd John Ogilvie

• All prayers are answered. We need to distinguish between a prayer unanswered, and one not answered how or when we would like it to be.

Stephen Olford

• I am only as tall as I am on my knees.
   

• The only prayer a repentant soul can offer is:     Nothing in my hands I bring,  Simply to Thy cross I cling. ( Augustus M. Toplady)

• Prayer is a sheer necessity to save us from fainting in our spiritual walk. (Luke 18:1)
   
• Praise is both the reality and activity of a life in tune with God....The true test of a thankful heart is a praising life. Only as God’s people praise the Lord will revival start and the forces of darkness be defeated....Praise transforms duty into delight. Praise turns service into song.....God teach us more of such praiseful praying until our very lives are a paean of praise. 
   
• A survey indicates that the average layman spends four minutes a day in prayer; the average pastor seven minutes, and only one percent of husbands and wives have any meaningful prayer together” (The Church Around the World, Tyndale House Publishers, Feb. 1981)
   
• Yes, there is only one thing that will save us in this hour of desperation, and that is prayer.
   
• Definitions of prayer are like definitions of a sunset; they don't capture the reality, dynamic, and beauty of the subject itself. We know also that there are many different aspects and types of prayer, as the Psalms and other biblical examples reveal. So we would be merely scratching the surface to try to present the various dimensions of prayer.
   
• True prayer is indeed relational, being based on the covenant relationship that we have with our Heavenly Father, through His Son, by the Holy Spirit.
   
• If only we believed that God omnipotent reigneth, and that He causes wars to cease in response to the prevailing prayers of His people, we would see the same miracles happen in our day that were witnessed by Moses and the children of Israel.
   
• Whatever way you slice it, there is a mystery to prayer that is simply beyond us..... divine intercession does not replace our own prayer life. We are told to pray. We must pray. We know that prayer changes us. It is part of our cooperation with the work of God in our lives. At the same time, the witness of Scripture declares that our personal prayer is a vital part of how God works in our world. To ask, "What would be accomplished without prayer?" is parallel to asking, "What would be accomplished without God?" since God uses His prescribed means to bring about His purposes. The Scriptures testify to specific things happening in relation to prayer. Prayer is not just a religious exercise for practical deists who really don't need God or recognize His active involvement in the daily affairs of this world. If we would be biblical leaders, we must believe that the personal activity of prayer actually does make a difference. This is one of the primary reasons we must pray.
   
• On the practical level, we learn to pray as we are alone with God and as we pray with others who know how to pray. We learn more about prayer as we read the scriptural truths concerning prayer and put them into practice. We learn how to pray as we allow others who know God to share with us their experience in prayer.
   
• Prayer admits and voices dependence upon the only One who is the ultimate source of help and strength.
   
•  A ministry without prayer is futile. A soul-winning ministry without prayer is fruitless. Only victorious prayer will overcome temptation, seduction, the allurements of the world, and one's own inertia.
   
• There is never a moment in our lives when we are not in urgent danger. The devil is ever ready to attack when we stop praying. Without prayer we are utterly defenseless.....“Put on the whole armor of God.… Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Eph. 6:11, 18). Oh, that God would write on our hearts those two little words constancy and urgency in prayer! 
   
• Prayer opens heaven to us. Prayer brings us into the dimension of reality, as against the artificiality of the world outside. Prayer gives us a sense of “at-homeness,” for remember, we are first of all citizens of heaven (see Phil. 3:20-21). Prayer revitalizes us with the atmosphere of God’s presence.....If we want to know what God is like let us spend more time in prayer. It is in prayer and in the light of His Word that God unveils Himself to those who take time to be holy. 
   
• God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer may be “No, My child”; on other occasions the answer may be “Yes, My child.” Not infrequently the answer may be “Wait, My child.” But whether it is “No,” “Yes,” or “Wait, it is an answer; there is no such thing as a denied answer. 
   
• When Jesus said “… men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1), He was speaking of the sheer necessity of prayer, the serious activity of prayer, and the simple reality of prayer. There is nothing more important in all the world than to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). 

William Orr 

• No great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer.

John Owen

• He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.
   
• If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: "God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled." When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage.
   
• A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
   
• If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.
   
• He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.
   
• We ought as much to pray for a blessing upon our daily rod as upon our daily bread.
   
• If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: "God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled." When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage.
   
• Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt Him withal, He did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire.... but instantly, without stay, He cries, "Get thee hence, Satan." Meet thy temptation in its entrance with thoughts of faith concerning Christ on the cross; this will make it sink before thee. Entertain no parley, no dispute with it, if thou wouldst not enter into it.

J I Packer

• Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray.
   
• The efficacy of prayer depends on uprightness of life and motive, wholehearted and sustained earnestness in the person praying, and how far it conforms to God’s revealed purposes and ways.
   
• If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
   
• We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.
   
• How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
   
• Jesus' pattern prayer, which is both crutch, road, and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves, tells us to start with God: for God matters infinitely more than we do.
   
• I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me to drain the life out of sin and in prayer.
   
• The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise.
   
• God answers the prayer we ought to have made rather than the prayer we did make.
   
• Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching.
   
• Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers. If there is little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.

Joseph Parker

• You can tell whether a man has been keeping up his life of prayer. His witness is in his face. There is an invisible sculptor that chisels the face into the upper attitude of the soul.
   
• Prayers are battles!

St. Patrick  (see how God used prayer and Patrick to transform a nation).

• Below are words of an ancient prayer by the famous British missionary to Ireland:
  Christ be with me, Christ within me,
  Christ behind me, Christ before me,
  Christ beside me, Christ to win me;
  Christ to comfort and restore me;
  Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
  Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
  Christ in hearts of all that love me,
  Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Edward Payson

• Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray, then, my dear brother; pray, pray, pray.

Austin Phelps

• The Scriptures make prayer a reality and not a reverie.
   
• We are never more like Christ than in prayers of intercession.
   
• An intrepid faith in prayer will always give it unction.
   
• Are you living for the things you are praying for?
   
• Good prayers never come weeping home. I am sure I shall receive either what I ask or what I should ask.
   
• Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the text of the new life sermon; the girding on of the armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.

A.T. Pierson

• There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer.
   
• The Word of God represents all the possibilities of God as at the disposal of true prayer.
   
• To go as I am led, to go when I am led, to go where I am led… it is that which has been for twenty years the one prayer of my life
   
• Closet communion needs time for the revelation of God’s presence. It is vain to say, ‘I have too much work to do to find time.’ You must find time or forfeit blessing. God knows how to save for you the time you sacredly keep for communion with Him. 
   
• Every step in the progress of missions is directly traceable to prayer. It has been the preparation for every new triumph and the secret for all success.
   
• The peace of God is that eternal calm which lies too deep in the praying, trusting soul to be reached by any external disturbances.
   
• A marble cutter, with chisel and hammer, was changing a stone into a statue. A preacher looking on said: "I wish I could deal such changing blows on stony hearts." The workman answered: "Maybe you could, if you worked like me, upon your knees.

A W Pink

• Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude - an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God.
   
• Prayer is not appointed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but it is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of the need. In this, as in everything, God's thoughts are not as ours. God requires that His gifts should be sought for. He designs to be honoured by our asking, just as He is to be thanked by us after He has bestowed His blessing.
   
• Most Christians expect little from God, ask little, and therefore receive little, and are content with little.
   
• The measure of our love for others can largely be determined by the frequency and earnestness of our prayers for them.
   
• Real prayer is communion with God, so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts, and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him.
   
• In praying for His enemies not only did Christ set before us a perfect example of how we should treat those who wrong us an hate us, but He also taught us never to regard any as beyond the reach of prayer.
   
• To ask in the name of Christ is … to set aside our own will and bow to the perfect will of God.
   
• It's true that (many) are praying for a worldwide revival. But it would be more timely, and more scriptural, for prayer to be made to the Lord of the harvest, that He would raise up and thrust forth laborers who would fearlessly and faithfully preach those truths which are calculated to bring about a revival.
   
• The prevailing idea seems to be, that I come to God and ask Him for something that I want, and that I expect Him to give me that which I have asked. But this is a most dishonouring and degrading conception. The popular belief reduces God to a servant, our servant: doing our bidding, performing our pleasure, granting our desires. No, prayer is a coming to God, telling Him my need, committing my way unto the Lord, and leaving Him to deal with it as seemeth Him best.

John Piper 

• What is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God. (Ed: But "food" energizes prayer.)....George Mueller adds "Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.…"
   
• One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.
   
• It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.
   
• Life is war. That's not all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.
   
• God has given us prayer as a wartime walkie-talkie so that we can call headquarters for everything we need as the kingdom of Christ advances in the world. Prayer gives us the significance of front-line forces, and gives God the glory of a limitless Provider. The one who gives the power gets the glory. Thus prayer safeguards the supremacy of God in missions while linking us with endless grace for every need.
   
• Could it be that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer come from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to use the transmitter? We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom to call the servants for another cushion in the den.”
   
• The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends.
   
• We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology.
   
• Without extended, concentrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers. And when the ministry of the Word declines, faith (Rom. 10:17; Gal. 3:2, 5) and holiness (John 17:17) decline. Activity may continue, but life and power and fruitfulness fade away. Therefore, whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.
   
• Prayer as a relationship is probably your best indicator about the health of your love relationship with God. If your prayer life has been slack, your love relationship has grown cold.
   
• Nothing is more vital than prayer in Christian existence, and few things are more vulnerable to neglect.
   
• Prayer causes things to happen that wouldn't happen if you didn't pray.
   
• I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person's theology was the effect it has on one's prayers.
   
• Whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.
   
• The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the things we should give up in order to pray
   
• Prayer pursues joy in fellowship with Jesus and in the power to share His life with others. And prayer pursues God’s glory by treating Him as the inexhaustible reservoir of hope and help. In prayer we admit our poverty and God’s prosperity, our bankruptcy and His bounty, our misery and His mercy. Therefore, prayer highly exalts and glorifies God precisely by pursuing everything we long for in Him, and not in ourselves. “Ask, and you will receive…that the Father may be glorified in the Son and…that your joy may be full.” (John 14:13, 16:24)—Desiring God - John Piper - page 182
   
• Prayer prevents service from being an expression of pride.....there is no good service without prayer.
   
• Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy. —Desiring God - John Piper - page 161
   
• Jesus says to the woman, “If you just knew the gift of God and who I am, you would ask Me—you would pray to Me!” There is a direct correlation between not knowing Jesus well and not asking much from Him. A failure in our prayer life is generally a failure to know Jesus. “If you knew who was talking to you, you would ask Me!” A prayerless Christian is like a bus driver trying alone to push his bus out of a rut because he doesn’t know Clark Kent is on board. “If you knew, you would ask.” A prayerless Christian is like having your room wallpapered with Saks Fifth Avenue gift certificates but always shopping at Goodwill because you can’t read. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaks to you, you would ask—you would ask!” (John 4:10)
   
• Prayer is the essential activity of waiting for God—acknowledging our helplessness and His power, calling upon Him for help, seeking His counsel.....Prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence, which opposes God’s goal of getting glory by working for those who wait for Him.....The Gospel commands us to give up and hang out a help-wanted sign (this is the basic meaning of prayer). Then the Gospel promises that God will work for us if we do. He will not surrender the glory of being the Giver. (cp 2 Chr 16:9) (Italics added)—Desiring God - John Piper - page 171
   
• Christianity is fundamentally convalescence (‘Pray without ceasing’ = Keep buzzing the nurse).
   

• Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the main reasons so many of God’s children don’t have a significant prayer life is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t plan to. If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just get up one summer morning and say, “Hey, let’s go today!” You won’t have anything ready. You won’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. But that is how many of us treat prayer. We get up day after day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part of our life, but nothing’s ever ready. We don’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure. And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer. The opposite of planning is the rut. If you don’t plan a vacation you will probably stay home and watch TV. The natural, unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality. There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want renewal in your life of prayer you must plan to see it. Therefore, my simple exhortation is this: Let us take time this very day to rethink our priorities and how prayer fits in. Make some new resolve. Try some new venture with God. Set a time. Set a place. Choose a portion of Scripture to guide you. Don’t be tyrannized by the press of busy days. We all need mid-course corrections. Make this a day of turning to prayer—for the glory of God and for the fullness of your joy.

David Platt

• The primary purpose of prayer is not to get something, but to know Someone.
   
• Should it concern us that the bible never calls us to ask Jesus into our hearts. Should it concern us that the bible never mentions such a superstitious sinners prayer and yet that is exactly what we have sold to so many as salvation.
   
• My prayer is that people will see that following Jesus costs you everything you are and everything you have. And my prayer is that people will see that Jesus is worth it.

Ray Pritchard

• Pray that God will give you "Missionary Eyes." Those are eyes that see the real needs of the people you meet. Pray that God will bring at least one person across your path who needs the help only you can give. That’s a prayer God will answer, for there are folks all around you who are just barely making it.

Leornard Ravenhill

• The law of prayer is the law of harvest: sow sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly; sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully. The trouble is we are trying to get from our efforts what we never put into them.
   
• This much is sure in all churches, forgetting party labels; the smallest meeting numerically is the prayer- meeting. If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere.
   
• You can't live wrong and pray right.
   

• The church has many organizers, but few agonizers; many who pay, but few who pray; many resters, but few wrestlers; many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding.  A worldly Christian will stop praying and a praying Christian will stop worldliness. Tithes may build a church, but tears will give it life.  That is the difference between the modern church and the early church.  In the matter of effective praying, never have so many left so much to so few.  Brethren, let us pray''
   

• Can any deny that in the modern church setup the main cause of anxiety is money? Yet that which tries the modern churches the most, troubled the New Testament Church the least. Our emphasis is on paying; theirs was on praying. When we have paid, the place is taken; when they had prayed, the place was shaken!
   
• Books on prayer are good, but not good enough. As books on cooking are good but hopeless unless there is food to work on, so with prayer. One can read a library of prayer books and not be one whit more powerful in prayer. We must learn to pray, and we must pray to learn to pray.
   
• Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life.
   
• The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting.
   
• The most fervent prayer meetings are in hell.
   
• It may be that Satan has little cause to fear most preaching. Yet past experiences sting him to rally all his infernal army to fight against God's people praying.
   
• Our spiritual immutarity never shows up more than in our lack of praying, be it alone or in a church prayer meeting. Let 20% of the chior members fail to turn up for rehearsal and the chior master is offended. Let 20% of the church members turn up for a prayer meeting, and the pastor is elated.
   
• Prayer is no substitute for work; equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer.
   
• Preaching affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity
   
• The sinner's prayer has sent more people to Hell than all the bars in America.
   
• Prayer in its highest form is agonizing soul sweat.
   
• By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh.
   
• The Sunday morning service shows how popular your church is. The evening services show how popular your pastor is. Your private prayer time shows you how popular God is!
   
• The self-sufficient does not pray, the self-satisfied will not pray, the self-righteous cannot pray. No man is greater than his prayer life.
   
• Prayer is not a preparation for the battle; it is the battle!
   
• Quit playing, start praying. Quit feasting, start fasting. Talk less with men, talk more with God. Listen less to men, listen to the words of God. Skip travel, start travail.
   
• Surely revival delays because prayer decays.
   
• How do you learn to pray? Well how do you learn to swim? Do you sit in a chair with your feet up drinking coke learning to swim? You get down and you struggle. That's how you learn to pray.
   
• Most Christians pray to be blessed. Few pray to be broken.
   
• The secret of praying is praying in secret.
   
• The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Power helpeth our infirmity in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Life ends our deadness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom delivers us from ignorance in this holy art ofprayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Fire delivers us from coldness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Might comes to our aid in our weakness as we pray.
   
• Prayer is not an argument with God to persuade him to move things our way, but an exercise by which we are enabled by his Spirit to move ourselves his way.
   
• If we had more sleepless nights in prayer, there would be far fewer souls to have a sleepless eternal night in hell.
   
• Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with GOD Himself.
   
• I believe the place of prayer is not only a place where I lose my burdens, but also a place where I get a burden. He shares my burden and I share His burden. ... To know that burden, we must hear the voice of the Spirit. To hear that voice, we must be still and know that He is God.
   
• A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.
   
• To be much for God, we must be much with God. Jesus, that lone figure in the wilderness, knew strong crying, along with tears. Can one be moved with compassion and not know tears? Jeremiah was a sobbing saint. Jesus wept! So did Paul. So did John. Though there are some tearful intercessors behind the scenes, I grant you that to our modern Christianity, praying is foreign.
   
• The more men pray, the less worldly they become. The less they pray, the more worldly they become. I am, of course, speaking of professing Christians at this point.
   
• No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
   
• The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church, grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil.
   
• Someone asked me, 'Do you pray for the dead?' I said, 'No, I preach to them! I think every pew in every church is death row. Think about that! They're dead! They sing about God; they talk about God, but they're dead! They have no living relationship (with God).
   
• Prayer is conditioned by one thing alone and that is spirituality.
   
• Prayer is as mighty as God, because He has committed Himself to answer it.
   
• Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great deterrent.
   
• A man who is intimate with God will never be intimidated by men.
   
• The true church lives and moves and has its being in prayer.
   
• Men of prayer must be men of steel, for they will be assaulted by Satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom.
   
• To stand before men on behalf of God is one thing. To stand before God on behalf of men is something entirely different.
   
• Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees. (Woe!)
   
• A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.
   
• Prayer is not an argument with God to persuade him to move things our way, but an exercise by which we are enabled by his Spirit to move ourselves his way.
   
• The self-sufficient do not pray, the self-satisfied will not pray, the self-righteous cannot pray.

Alan Redpath

• Much of our praying is just asking God to bless some folks that are ill and to keep us plugging along. But prayer is not merely prattle: it is warfare.
   
• We are fit for the work of God only when we have wept over it, prayed about it, and then we are enabled by Him to tackle the job that needs to be done
   
• Let’s keep our chins up and our knees down—we’re on the victory side!
   
• Before we can pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” we must be willing to pray, “My kingdom go.
   
• We will only advance in our evangelistic work as fast and as far as we advance on our knees. Prayer opens the channel between a soul and God; prayerlessness closes it. Prayer releases the grip of Satan's power; prayerlessness increases it. That is why prayer is so exhausting and so vital. If we believed it, the prayer meeting would be as full as the church.

C. W. Renwick

• The only footprints on the sands of time, that will really last, are the ones made after knee-prints!

John R Rice

• What a compelling motive we have for prayer, for preaching, for soul winning when we learn that every responsible human being who leaves this world without a definite change in heart immediately lifts his eyes in Hell, tormented in flame!
   
• If you surrender yourself, and do not rush, but meditate on the Word of God, you will find prayer forming in your heart. It is a prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, a prayer that God will be pleased to hear.
   
• The normal Christian life is a life of regular, daily answer to prayer. In the model prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray daily for bread, and expect to get it, and to ask daily for forgiveness, for deliverance from the evil one, and for other needs, and daily to get the answers they sought.

Herman Ridderbos

• Since the presence of other people can so easily compromise the purity of this motive, prayer should always be as inconspicuous as possible

Evan Roberts

• Prayer is the secret of power.
   
• For years, Evan Roberts prayed, “Bend me! Bend me!” and when God answered, the great Welsh Revival resulted.
   
• Prayer is buried, and lost and Heaven weeps. If all prayed the wicked would flee from our midst or to the Refuge

F W Robertson

• The divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
   
• Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.
   
• A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love.
   
• That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our wishes--in changing the passionate desire into still submission, the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender--is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of true prayer.

Adrian Rogers

• Adrian Rogers knew how to talk with God, and that is exactly why he was able to talk so powerfully for God! He was a prayerful preacher!"
   
• What a great God we pray to! And what (great) fools we are if we don't.
   
• Now, you ought to have in your heart—or in your Bible—a list of prayer requests with dates (a prayer record of when you entered it). And, when God answers it, you can give Him the glory and give Him the praise. So, get specific and focused in your prayer, because prayer that is channeled is prayer that is powerful. Prayer was made for people.
• Our prayer needs to be listening as well as talking. Have you had a conversation with someone who does all the talking? Sometimes our prayer is, "Listen, Lord, Your servant is speaking," not "Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening."
   
• Many Christians would confess that the major failure in their life is not learning to pray well. That's because there is no sin in life that proper prayer could not help you avoid. There is no need in life that proper prayer could not supply. Nothing lies outside the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God. What fools we are if we do not learn to pray! So there is not a more important subject in all the world for a Christian—not only to learn how to pray, but how to pray with power. Prayer can do anything God can do, and God can do anything!
   
• One of the sweetest lessons I ever learned about prayer is this: the prayer that gets to heaven is the prayer that starts in heaven. Our job is just to close the circuit. God lays something on our hearts to pray for, we pray for it, and it goes right back to heaven. Prayer is the Holy Spirit finding a desire in the heart of the Father, putting that desire into our hearts, then sending it back to heaven in the power of the cross.
   
• How often in my sermon preparations have I put down my pencil and bowed my head to say, "O, my God, help me to understand this. Lord, give me Your understanding." When we pray like this, our hearts are moved and our minds are enlightened to grasp, apply, and understand the Word of God.
   
• Prayer has one purpose and one purpose only. Its goal is that God's will be done. Prayer is not an exercise where we bend God's will and try to make it fit ours. Too many people have the notion that prayer is how we make impassioned appeals in the hopes of talking God into doing something for us, even if it is something He would not ordinarily want to do. But this is not true. Prayer is seeking the will of God and following it. Prayer is the way of getting God's will done on earth.
   
• Successful prayer is finding the will of God and getting in on it. You are not hemmed in by the will of God; rather, you are freed up by it.
   
• The most powerful prayers are always filled with worship, knowing that He is "enthroned on the praises of His people" (Ps. 22:3)
   
• It is not the eloquence and form of our prayers that gets them delivered but the stamp of faith. Like they say, "Pray, believe, and you'll receive. Pray and doubt; you'll do without."
   
• We tend to think we are capable of handling it ourselves. We think we can go through the day and overcome the devil in our own strength. Prayerlessness and pride always go together. But it's time to pray for protection—to get off the defensive and go on the offensive.
   
• I can't repeat this point enough, because it is where so many people struggle: if you are praying with unrepented sin in your life, you are wasting your breath! Your prayers are getting no higher than the ceiling lights.
   
• Now, one of the greatest privileges that we have is the privilege of prayer. One of the greatest failures that we have, however, is in the area of prayer. God can do anything, because prayer brings God into action. I don't have a failure in my life but what somehow it's a prayer failure. There's not a sin in my life but what somehow proper prayer would have helped me to avoid it. There's not a need in my life but what if I learned how to pray and knew how to pray that need would be met.
   
• The prayer offered to God in the morning during your quiet time is the key that unlocks the door of the day. Any athlete knows that it is the start that ensures a good finish.
   
• If you find a reluctancy to go into the presence of God, there may be unconfessed, unrepented sin in your life. Part of your quiet time is to get your heart clean and pure. Each of us needs to take ourselves by the nap of our necks and confess and repent before we come into God's holy presence to fellowship.
   
• There is no promise God cannot keep, no prayer God will not answer, and no problem too hard for Him to solve.
   
• Satan can't keep God from answering our prayers, but he will keep us from asking.
   
• Prayer is not just getting ready for Christian service. Prayer is Christian service.

Samuel Rutherford

• Words are but the body, the garment, the outside of prayer; sighs are nearer the heart work. A dumb beggar getteth an alms at Christ’s gates, even by making signs, when his tongue cannot plead for him…Tears have a tongue, and grammar, and language that our Father knoweth. Babes have no prayer for the breast, but weeping: the mother can read hunger in weeping.
   
• I have been benefited by praying for others; for by making an errand to God for them I have gotten something for myself.

J. C. Ryle

• A man’s state before God may always be measured by his prayers.
   
• Never, never may we forget that if we would do good to the world, our first duty is to pray!
   
• No time is so well spent in every day as that which we spend upon our knees.
   
• Prayer is the very life-breath of true Christianity.
   
• No prayers can be heard which do not come from a forgiving heart.
   
• Backsliding, generally first begins with neglect of private prayer
   
• Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.
   
• If you want to find out how much someone loves you, find out how much they pray for you.
   
• Walk more closely with God. Get nearer to Christ. Seek to exchange hope for assurance. Seek to feel the witness of the Spirit more closely and distinctly every year. Lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily threatens you. Press towards the mark more earnestly. Fight a better fight, and war a better warfare every year you live. Pray more. Read more. Subdue self more. Love the brethren more. Oh that you may endeavor to grow in grace every year, that the end of your Christian course may be better than the beginning!
   
• There are few professing Christians, it may be feared, who strive to imitate Christ in the matter of private devotion. There is abundance of hearing, reading, talking, professing, visiting, contributing to the poor and teaching at schools. But is there, together with all this, a due proportion of private prayer? Are believing men and women sufficiently careful to be frequently alone with God?
   
• Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.
   
• Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you.
   
• To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.
   
• Prayer needs neither learning, wisdom or book knowledge to begin it. It needs nothing but heart and will.
   
• What is the cause of most backsliding? (discussion) I believe, as a general rule, one of the chief causes is neglect of private prayer.
   
• Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.
   
• Prayer is the surest remedy against the devil and besetting sins.
   
• It is not always those who have the most eminent gifts who are the most successful laborers for God. It is generally those who keep up closest communion with Christ and are most constant in prayer.
   
• If we would have good ministers, we must remember our Lord’s example, and pray for them. Their work is heavy. Their responsibility is enormous. Their strength is small. Let us see that we support them, and hold up their hands by our prayers.
   
• Do you wish to grow in grace and be a holy Christian? Then never forget the value of prayer.
   
• What is the reason that some believers are so much brighter and holier than others? I believe the difference, in nineteen cases out of twenty, arises from different habits about private prayer. I believe that those who are not eminently holy pray little, and those who are eminently holy pray much.
   
• Without the blessing of the Lord, your best endeavors will do no good. He has the hearts of all men in His hands, and except He touch the hearts of your children by His Spirit, you will weary yourself to no purpose. Water, therefore, the seed you sow on their minds with unceasing prayer.
   
• Let us seek friends that will stir up our prayers, our Bible reading, our use of time, and our salvation.
   
• Jesus hears us, and in His own good time will give an answer... He may sometimes keep us long waiting...but He will never send us empty away.
   
• If you train your children to anything, train them, at least, to a habit of prayer.
   
• I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness who was not diligent about his Bible reading, his prayers, and the use of his Sundays.

Richard Sibbes

• God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.
   
• When we shoot an arrow, we look to the fall of it; when we send a ship to sea, we look for its return; and when we sow seed, we look for a harvest; so likewise when we sow our prayers, through Christ, in God's bosom, shall we not look for an answer and observe how we speed? It is a seed of atheism to pray and not to look how we speed. But a sincere Christian will pray and wait, and strengthen his heart with promises out of the Word, and never leave praying and looking up till God gives him a gracious answer.
   
• When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposes us all he can.

Mary Slessor

• If you are ever inclined to pray for a missionary, do it at once, wherever you are.
• My life is one long daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service. I can testify, with a full and often wonder-stricken awe, that I believe God answers prayer.
   
• Prayer is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service - praying is harder than doing, at least I find it so, but the dynamic lies that way to advance the Kingdom.
  Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/23682-Mary_Slessor

Oswald J Smith

• Oh, how few find time for prayer! There is time for everything else, time to sleep and time to eat, time to read the newspaper and the novel, time to visit friends, time for everything else under the sun, but-no time for prayer, the most important of all things, the one great essential!
   
• I am perfectly confident that the man who does not spend hours alone with God will never know the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The world must be left outside until God alone fills the vision...God has promised to answer prayer. It is not that He is unwilling, for the fact is, He is more willing to give than we are to receive. But the trouble is, we are not ready...
   
• There can be no prevailing in prayer without travailing in prayer.

J Oswald Sanders

• It is not without its comfort that the two men who conversed with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration both broke under the strain of their ministry and prayed that they might die.
   
• It is possible to move men through God by prayer alone.
   
• An analysis of our prayers might afford the disconcerting discovery that many of them are not the prayer of faith at all, only the prayer of hope, or even of despair. We earnestly hope they will be answered, but have no unshakable assurance to that effect. God has, however, undertaken to answer only the prayer of faith. "Whatever you pray for and ask, believe that you have got it, and you shall have it" (Mark 11:24, Moffatt).
   
• It is easy to become a fatalist in reference to prayer. It is easier to regard unanswered prayer as the will of God than to… reason out the causes of the defeat.”

W. E. Sangster

• Many people pray for things that can only come by work and work for things that can only come by prayer.
   
• Prayer without love has no suction. It does not draw the blessing down.
   
• If you are too busy to pray then you are too busy.
   
• One cannot get deep into religion until one gets deep into prayer.

Graham Scroggie

• Without time for prayer, nothing can be accomplished.
   
• Pray when you feel like it, pray when you don't feel like it, and pray until you do feel like it!

Sadhu Sundar Singh

• The essence of prayer does not consist in asking God for something but in opening our hearts to God, in speaking with Him, and living with Him in perpetual communion. Prayer is continual abandonment to God. Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want; it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life, Prayer is not asking, but union with God. Prayer is not a painful effort to gain from God help in the varying needs of our lives. Prayer is the desire to possess God Himself, the Source of all life. The true spirit of prayer does not consist in asking for blessings, but in receiving Him who is the giver of all blessings, and in living a life of fellowship with Him.

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

• We, ignorant of ourselves,
  Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers 
  Deny us for our good; so find we profit
  By losing of our prayers.

A B Simpson

• All earth-born hopes with time must pass away; prayer grasps eternal things; pray, always pray. 
   
• Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work.
   
• Prayer is the link that connects us with God.
   
• There is no wonder more supernatural and divine in the life of a believer than the mystery and ministry of prayer...the hand of the child touching the arm of the Father and moving the wheel of the universe.
   
• Pray, always pray; beneath sins heaviest load, Prayer claims the blood from Jesus' side that flowed. Pray, always pray; though weary, faint, and lone, Prayer nestles by the Father's sheltering throne.

Mary Slessor, missionary pioneer

• My life is one long daily, hourly record of answered prayer.  For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service.  I can testify, with a full and often wonder-stricken awe, that I believe God answers prayer.  I know God answers prayer.

Chuck Smith

• The most important thing a born again Christian can do is to pray.
   
• Prayer is the most important activity a born-again Christian can perform. It should head your list of priorities, for certainly the world around us desperately needs prayer. Prayer will open the door for God to do a glorious work in these last days. Prayer will stem the tide of evil.
   
• So live for the kingdom of God. Seek to bring glory to Jesus Christ and the Lord will use you. It is my prayer, my constant and daily prayer, that God would keep me useable.
   
• Though prayer doesn't change God's mind or God's purposes, prayer does change something- It changes us.
   
• Prayer is not an agency by which my will is to be accomplished upon the earth. The purpose of prayer is to get God's will to be accomplished upon the earth, and so many times we ask and receive not because the motive behind our asking is really that of accomplishing my will rather than God's will.
   
• There are more battles won through prayer than by any other means.
   
• Prayer doesn't change the purpose of God, but prayer can change the action of God.

C H Spurgeon

• See also Spurgeon Gems on Prayer
   
• Some brethren pray by the yard; but true prayer is measured by weight, and not by length.
   

• The more spiritual the duty, the sooner the soul wearies of it. An illustration of this is seen in the case of Moses, whose hands grew weary in prayer, while we never read that Joshua's hands hung down in fight..

• No doubt by praying we learn to pray, and the more we pray the oftener we can pray, and the better we can pray.

• Saints of the early church reaped great harvests in the field of prayer and found the mercy seat to be a mine of untold treasures.

• Mighty prayer has often been produced by mighty trial.

• For a successful season of prayer, the best beginning is confession.

• Perseverance in prayer is necessary to prevalence in prayer.

• It is well said that neglected prayer is the birth-place of all evil.

• The motive is this, 'Oh! that God could be glorified, that Jesus might see the reward of his sufferings! Oh! that sinners might be saved, so that God might have new tongues to praise him, new hearts to love him! Oh! that sin were put an end to, that the holiness, righteousness, mercy, and power of God might be magnifi ed!' This is the way to pray; when thy prayers seek God's glory, it is God's glory to answer thy prayers.

• A church should be a camp of soldiers, not an hospital of invalids. But there is exceedingly much difference between what ought be and what is, and consequently many of God's people are in so sad a state that the very fittest prayer for them is for revival.

• Prayer is an ever open door.

• There should be a parallel between our supplications and our thanksgivings. We ought not to leap in prayer, and limp in praise.

• A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.

• Beloved, there are heights in experimental knowledge of the things of God that the eagles discerning eye and philosophical thought have never seen...God alone can take us there, but the chariot in which He takes us up and the fiery steeds that pull the chariot, are prevailing prayers.

• If you are very busy, think and pray all the more, or your work will wear and weary you, and drag you away from God. For your work's sake, break away from it, and give the soul a breathing time.

• Accept His rule, and He will except thy prayer.

• Prayer is an art which only the Spirit can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer.

• Unless our profession is a lie we love each other, and we must therefore show that love by our prayers for one another.

• Let us seek grace to become importunate pleaders of a sort that cannot be denied, since their faith overcomes heaven by prayer.

• The best worship that we ever render to God is far from perfect. Our praises, how faint and feeble they are! Our prayers, how wandering, how wavering they are! When we get nearest to God, how far off we are! When we are most like Him, how greatly unlike Him we are!

• It is the habit of faith, when she is praying, to use pleas. Mere prayer sayers, who do not pray at all, forget to argue with God; but those who prevail bring forth their reasons and their strong arguments

• Prayer is good, the habit of prayer is better, but the spirit of prayer is the best of all.

• Neglect of prayer makes prayer become hard work.

• Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ.

• God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart. When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.

• In all states of dilemma or of difficulty, prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans, and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings!

• If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal?

• We declare that among the most potent means in all the world is prayer.

• Oh! yes, (the prayer meeting) is the place to meet with the Holy Ghost, and this is the way to get His mighty power. If we would have Him, we must meet in greater numbers; we must pray with greater fervency, we must watch with greater earnestness, and believe with firmer steadfastness. The prayer meeting...is the appointed place for the reception of power.

• Men do not pray and supplicate unless they have greater need than this world can satisfy

• Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit.

• God prefers the prayer of a broken heart to the finest service that ever was performed by priests and choirs.

• No man hears his pastor preach without deriving some benefit from him, if he has earnestly prayed for him.

• Prayer is the rustling of the wings of the angels that are on their way bringing us the boons of heaven. Have you heard prayer in your heart? You shall see the angel in your house. When the chariots that bring us blessings rumble, their wheels sound with prayer. We hear the prayer in our own spirits; and that prayer becomes the token of the coming blessings. Even as the cloud foreshadoweth rain, so prayer foreshadoweth the blessing; even as the green blade is the beginning of the harvest, so is prayer the prophecy of the blessing that is about to come. 

• When thou art wrestling, like Jacob with the angel, and art nearly thrown down, ask the Holy Spirit to nerve thine arm. Consider how the Holy Spirit is the chariot-wheel of prayer. Prayer may be the chariot, the desire may draw it forth; but the Spirit is the very wheel whereby it moveth.

• I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to Him.

• Not to pray because you do not feel fit to pray is like saying, ‘I will not take medicine because I am too ill.’ Pray for prayer! Pray yourself, by the Spirit’s assistance, into a praying frame! It is good to strike when the iron is hot, but some make cold iron hot by striking. We have sometimes eaten till we have gained an appetite, so let us pray till we pray. God will help you in the pursuit of duty, not in the neglect of it.
   
• Intercessory prayer is exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! The Word of God teems with its marvelous deeds. Believer, thou hast a mighty engine in thy hand, use it well, use it constantly, use it with faith, and thou shalt surely be a benefactor to thy brethren.
   
• My own soul's conviction is that prayer is the grandest power in the entire universe, that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, attraction, gravitation, or any other of those other secret forces which men have called by name, but which they do not understand.
   
• Our growth in prayer may be to us the test of our growth in all other respects. "Lord, teach us to pray," is a prayer for the young beginner and for the more advanced disciple; it is a suitable petition for us all, for we have none of us yet learned to the full the sacred art of supplication.
   

• Keep the altar of private prayer burning. This is the very life of all piety.

• So deep are our necessities that until we are in heaven we must not cease to pray.

• I am sometimes startled at the power of a feeble prayer to win a speedy answer.

• He that has prayed for his breakfast values the providence which sent it.

• Delayed answers to prayer are not only trials of faith; they also give us opportunities to honor God through our steadfast confidence in Him, even when facing the apparent denial of our request.

• It is enough for a praying heart that it has a hearing God.

• If thou be a child of God thou wilt as surely pray as a man breathes or as a child cries; thou canst not help it.

• What a breath of peace cools the forehead of the man who remembers that he may pray, and that prayer is heard in heaven.

• If, in God's sense of the term, a man really prays we may know of a surety that he has passed from death unto life.

• Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus. It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, and honor of a Christian.

• Sinner, tell God your misery even now, and he will hear your story. He is willing to listen, even to that sad and wretched tale of yours about your multiplied transgressions, your hardness of heart, your rejections of Christ. Tell him all, for he will hear it. Tell him what it is you want,—what large mercy,—what great forgiveness; just lay your whole case before him. Do not hesitate for a single moment; he will hear it, he will be attentive to the voice of your cry. (Israel's Cry and God's Answer)
   
• If any man thinks that his prayers have any merit in them, every prayer that he presents is an insult to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you think that your prayers help to put away sin, you make an antichrist of your prayers, and the more you pile them up, the more you multiply your sin
   

• If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul.

• Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.
   

• A true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty.

• The habit of private prayer and the constant practice of heart-fellowship with the Most High are the surest indicators of the work of the Holy Spirit upon the heart.

• Our prayer is the shadow of a coming blessing. As "Coming events cast their shadows before them," so, when God is about to bless us, He moves us to pray for that very blessing.

• When a man does not pray in the Lord's appointed way, nor through Jesus Christ, nor in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, he does not pray at all. However fine his prayer, it is only a splendid sin.

• If you want power in prayer you must have purity in life. To day the world's one and only remedy is the cross.

• You can never pray an inch beyond the tether of the promise with any assurance of being heard. For my own part, I always feel on sure ground with God when I can quote His own words.

• He who prays trusts, and thus reveals the faith which saves.

• I reckon that those prayers which cannot be expressed in language are often the most deep and fervent.

• Persistence in known sin, and especially indulgence in enmity and hatred, are so destructive to prayer that till we are free from them we do not pray.

• If you feel quite content with your own prayers, permit me to suggest that you do not pray, for few who pray aright are ever content with their own petitions.

• It is necessary to draw near unto God, but it is not required of you to prolong your speech till everyone is longing to hear the word ‘Amen’.

• All our perils are nothing, so long as we have prayer.  (Phil 4:6).

• The confession of sin, the longing for mercy, the groaning for grace—these are the soul and spirit of prayer.

• Praying will make you leave off sinning, or sinning will make you leave off praying.

• One of the surest evidences of a living faith is prayer.

• Much of what is called prayer is the husk, and not the kernel, of prayer.

• All our perils are as nothing, so long as we have prayer.

• Prayer is not a hard requirement - it is the natural duty of a creature to its creator, the simplest homage that human need can pay to divine liberality.

• Children of prayer will grow up to be children of praise; mothers who have wept before God for their sons will one day sing a new song over them.

• Two little words are good for every Christian to learn and to practice—pray and stay. Waiting on the Lord implies both praying and staying.

• Prayer is the outcome of that sense of need which arises from the new life; a man would not pray to God if he did not feel that he had urgent need of blessings which only the Lord can bestow.

• I could no more doubt the efficacy of prayer than I could disbelieve in the law of gravity.

• Real prayer cannot come from men whose characters are contrary to the mind of God.

• Every prayer is an inverted promise … If God teaches us to pray for any good thing, we may gather by implication the assurance that he means to give it.

• Unbelieving prayers! Shall I call them prayers? Prayers without faith! They are birds without wings, ships without sails, beasts without legs. Prayers that have no faith in Christ are prayers without the blood on them. They are deeds without the signature, without the seal, without the stamp. They are impotent, illegal documents.

• The Need for Enlarged Expectations: if it be a throne, it ought to be approached with enlarged expectations. Well does our hymn put it: Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring.
   
• The commentators are good instructors, but the Author Himself is far better, and prayer makes a direct appeal to Him and enlists Him in our cause.
   
• However, brethren, whether we like it or not, remember, asking is the rule of the kingdom.…It is a rule that never will be altered in anybody’s case. (James 4:2)
   
• Even as the moon influences the tides of the sea, even so does prayer—which is the reflection of the sunlight of heaven, and is God's moon in the sky—influence the tides of godliness.
   
• I always give all the glory to God, but I do not forget that He gave me the privilege of ministering from the first to a praying people. We had prayer meetings that moved our very souls, each one appeared determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession.
   
• We should pray when we are in a praying mood, for it would be sinful to neglect so fair an opportunity. We should pray when we are not in a proper mood, for it would be dangerous to remain in so unhealthy a condition." 
   
• True prayers are like carrier pigeons: from heaven they came, they are only going home.
   
• If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say it is in that one word—prayer.
   
• He who prays without fervency does not pray at all. We cannot commune with God, who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29), if there is no fire in our prayers.
   
• It is the burning lava of the soul that has a furnace within—a very volcano of grief and sorrow—it is that burning lava of prayer that finds its way to God. No prayer ever reaches God's heart which does not come from our hearts.
   
• If we begin by doubting, our prayer will limp. Faith is the tendon of Achilles and if that is cut, it is not possible for us to wrestle with God.
   
• Some mercies are not given to us except in answer to importunate prayer. There are blessings which, like ripe fruit, drop into your hand the moment you touch the bough. But there are others which require you to shake the tree again and again, until you make it rock with the vehemence of your exercise, for only then will the fruit fall down.
   
• The Lord give me a dozen importunate pleaders and lovers of souls, and by his grace we will shake all London from end-to-end yet.
   
• I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this, the measure of the intensity of your prayer.
   
• If you are sure it is a right thing for which you are asking, plead now, plead at noon, plead at night, plead on. With cries and tears spread out your case. Order your arguments. Back up your pleas with reasons. Urge the precious blood of Jesus. Set the wounds of Christ before the Father’s eyes. Bring out the atoning sacrifice. Point to Calvary. Enlist the crowned Prince, the Priest who stands at the right hand of God. And resolve in your very soul that if souls be not saved, if your family be not blessed, if your own zeal be not revived, yet you will die with the plea on your lips, and with the importunate wish on your spirits.
   
• The Lord does not play at promising. Jesus did not sport at confirming the word by his blood, and we must not make a jest of prayer by going about it in a listless, unexpecting spirit.
   
• We must get rid of the icicles that hang about our lips. We must ask the Lord to thaw the ice caves of our soul and to make our hearts like a furnace of fire heated seven times hotter. If our hearts do not burn within us, we may well question whether Jesus is with us. Those who are neither cold nor hot he has threatened to spew out of his mouth (Rev. 3:16). How can we expect his favor if we fall into a condition so obnoxious to him?
   
• Even as the moon influences the tides of the sea, even so does prayer—which is the reflection of the sunlight of heaven, and is God's moon in the sky—influence the tides of godliness.
   
• There is many a mother’s son whose heart will be turned to God long after his mother’s bones have been laid in the churchyard. The vision is for an appointed time—though it tarry, wait for it. Your son will yet be brought to Glory through your prayers. Pray on, Brothers and Sisters, pray on for those whose sins and sorrows lay heavily on your heart! Pray on, and God will hear you!
   
• As artists give themselves to their models, and poets to their classical pursuits, so must we addict ourselves to prayer.
   
• There are many prayers that it would not be right to pray in public, but they are very dear to God’s ear in private.
   
• The power of prayer can never be overrated. They who cannot serve God by preaching need not regret. If a man can but pray he can do anything. He who knows how to overcome with God in prayer has Heaven and earth at his disposal.
   
• Shall I give you yet another reason why you should pray? I have preached my very heart out. I could not say any more than I have said. Will not your prayers accomplish that which my preaching fails to do? Is it not likely that the Church has been putting forth its preaching hand but not its praying hand? Oh dear friends! Let us agonize in prayer.
   
• If you want that splendid power in prayer, you must remain in loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, abiding union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
   
• True prayer is measured by weight, not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length.
   
• I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.
   
• Prayer can never be in excess.
   
• We shall never sing, “Gloria in excelsis” except we pray to God de profundis: out of the depths must we cry, or we shall never behold glory in the highest.
   
• Believing supplications are forecasts of the future.
   
• Only the prayer which comes from God can go to God. 
   
• Could you read the story of Abraham’s interceding for Sodom and say that you have interceded for London like that? Can you read of Jacob at the brook Jabbok and say that you ever spent an hour, much less a night, in wrestling with the angel? The prayerlessness of this age is one of its worst signs.
    
• It has been truly said that if you have a very hard thing, you can cut it with something harder. And if any heart is especially hard, God can use the hard, strong, persistent vehemence of other mighty, passionate souls to pray the blessing of eternal life into that stubborn, rebellious heart.
   
• True prayers are like those carrier pigeons which find their way so well; they cannot fail to go to heaven, for it is from heaven they came; they are only going home.
   
• Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.
   
• Preaching is sowing, prayer is watering, but praise is the harvest.
   
• He that is never on his knees on earth shall never stand upon his feet in heaven.
   
• Prayer is the stalk of the wheat, but praise is the ear of the wheat. It is the harvest itself. When God is praised, we have come to the ultimatum. This is the thing for which all other things are designed.
   
• You can be omnipotent if you know how to pray, omnipotent in all things which glorify God.
   
• I commend intercessory prayer, because it opens man's soul, gives a healthy play to his sympathies, constrains him to feel that he is not everybody, and that this wide world was not, after all, made that he might be its petty lord. It does him good to make him know that the cross was not uplifted alone for him, for its far-reaching arms were meant to drop with benedictions on millions of the human race.
   
• All other passions build upon or flow from your passion for Jesus. A passion for souls grows out of a passion for Christ. A passion for missions builds upon a passion for Christ. The most crucial danger to a Christian, whatever his role, is to lack a passion of Christ. The most direct route to personal renewal and new effectiveness is a new all-consuming passion for Jesus. Lord, give us this passion, whatever the cost!
   
• When you pray in public, as a rule, the shorter the better.
   
• The best prayers have usually been the shortest. An arrow may easily be too long, and prayers should be like arrows shot from the bow of faith. If they are short, it does not matter so long as they are sharp and sent on their way with a good pull of the bowstring.
   
• You have no time for the prayer meeting, but you have time enough to be brushing your hair to all eternity; you have no time to bend your knee, but plenty of time to make yourselves look smart and grand.
   
• There is a general kind of praying which fails for lack of precision. It is as if a regiment of soldiers should all fire off their guns anywhere. Possibly some-body would be killed, but the majority of the enemy would be missed.
   
• God will bless Elijah and send rain on Israel, but Elijah must pray for it. If the chosen nation is to prosper, Samuel must plead for it. If the Jews are to be delivered, Daniel must intercede. God will bless Paul, and the nations shall be converted through him, but Paul must pray. Pray he did without ceasing; his epistles show that he expected nothing except by asking for it.
   
• There is no force in nature that is equal to the power of prayer. The law of gravitation holds the planets in their orbits, and links the sun to all the spheres that circle round him. But prayer has now made gravitation itself cease to exert its energy: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gib-eon," said Joshua, who had first spoken to the Lord about the matter (Josh 10:12).
   
• The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be slothfulness in prayer.
   
• Prayer is the thermometer of grace.
   
• Only that prayer which comes from our heart can get to God's heart.
   
• My heart has no deeper conviction than this, that prayer is the most efficient spiritual agency in the universe, next to the Holy Ghost.
   
• The best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything else but a cry.
   
• In prayer the heart of man empties itself before God, and then Christ empties his heart out to supply the needs of his poor believing child. In prayer we confess to Christ our deficiencies, and he reveals to us his fulness. We tell him our sorrows, he tells us his joys. We tell him our sins, he shows to us his righteousness. We tell him the dangers that lie before us, he tells us of the shield of omnipotence with which he can and will guard us. Prayer talks with God; it walks with him. And he who is much in prayer will hold very much fellowship with Jesus Christ.
   
• I would rather be Master of the Art of Prayer than M.A. of both universities (Oxford and Cambridge). He who knows how to pray has his hand on the leverage which moves the universe.
   
• Prayer may be salted with confession or perfumed with thanksgiving; it may be sung to music or wept out with groanings. As many as are the flowers of summer, so many are the varieties of prayer.
   
• To me it is a boundless solace that I live in the prayers of thousands. We can do better without the voice that preaches than without the heart that prays. The petitions of our bedridden sisters are the wealth of the church.
   
• When a poor man was breaking granite by the roadside, he was down on his knees while he gave his blows. A minister passing by said, “Your work is just like mine. You have to break stones, and so do I. “Yes,” said the man, “and if you manage to break stony hearts, you will have to do it as I do, down on your knees.”
  The man was right. The gospel hammer soon splits flinty hearts when a man knows how to pray.
   
• I believe that when we cannot pray, it is time that we prayed more than ever. And if you answer, "But how can that be?" I would say, pray to pray. Pray for prayer. Pray for the spirit of supplication. Do not be content to say, "I would pray if I could." No, but if you cannot pray, pray till you can.
   
• The sinew of the minister’s strength under God is the supplication of his church. We can do anything and everything if we have a praying people around us. But when our dear friends and fellow helpers cease to pray, the Holy Ghost hastens to depart, and “Ichabod” is written on the place of assembly.
   
• I could as soon think of living without eating or living without breathing, as living without prayer
   
• No prayer will ever prevail with God more surely than a liquid petition, which, being distilled from the heart, trickles from the eye and waters the cheek. Then is God won when he hears the voice of your weeping.
   
• You can draw near to God even though you cannot say a word. A prayer may be crystallized in a tear. A tear is enough water to float a desire to God.
   
• How can a man be a believer in Jesus Christ, and yet have a cold and hard heart in the things of the kingdom toward his children? I have heard of ministers who have despised family prayer, who have laughed at family godliness and thought nothing of it. I cannot understand how the men can know as much as they do about the gospel, and yet have so little of the spirit of it.
   
• Never account prayer second to preaching. No doubt prayer in the Christian church is as precious as the utterance of the gospel. To speak to God for men is a part of the Christian priesthood that should never be despised.
   
• If ten thousand saints were burned tomorrow, their dying prayers would make the church rise like a phoenix from her ashes.
   
• I remember in the hour of overwhelming anguish, when I feared that my beloved wife was about to be taken from me, how I was comforted by the loving prayers of my two dear sons. We had communion not only in our grief, but also in our confidence in the living God.
   
• Remember that prayer is your best means of study.
   
• When my father was absent preaching the gospel, my mother always filled his place at the family altar. And in my own family, if I have been absent, and my dear wife has been ill, my sons, while yet boys, would not hesitate to read the Scriptures and pray. We could not have a house without prayer. That would be heathenish or atheistical.
   
• Oh, without prayer what are the church's agencies, but the stretching out of a dead man's arm, or the lifting up of the lid of a blind man's eye? Only when the Holy Spirit comes is there any life and force and power.
   
• If there be anything I know, anything that I am quite assured of beyond all question, it is that praying breath is never spent in vain.
   
• I know that the words of my father with me alone, when he prayed for me and bade me to pray for myself—not to use any form of prayer, but to pray just as I felt, and to ask from God what I felt that I really wanted—left an impression on my mind that will never be erased.
   
• Do not reckon you have prayed unless you have pleaded, for pleading is the very marrow of prayer.
   
• The more we pray, the more we shall want to pray. The more we pray, the more we can pray. The more we pray, the more we shall pray. He who prays little will pray less, but he who prays much will pray more. And he who prays more, will desire to pray more abundantly.
   
• I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.
   
• The Christian should work as if all depended on him, and pray as if it all depended on God.
   
• We heard of a certain clergy-man, who was said to have given forth "the finest prayer ever offered to a Boston audience." Just so! The Boston audience received the prayer, and there it ended. The tail feathers of pride should be pulled out of our prayers, for they need only the wing feathers of faith. The peacock feathers of poetical expression are out of place before the throne of God.
   
• Every prayer is an inverted promise. That is to say, God promises us such a blessing, and therefore we pray for it. If God teaches us to pray for any good thing, we may gather by implication the assurance that he means to give it.
   
• Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church. (Ed: And also the strength of one's soul!)
   
• A prayerless church member is a hindrance. He is in the body like a rotting bone or a decayed tooth. Before long, since he does not contribute to the benefit of his brethren, he will become a danger and a sorrow to them. Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church.
   
• It is the usual rule with God to make us pray before he gives the blessing.
   
• Prayer is the autograph of the Holy Ghost upon the renewed heart.
   
• Prayer is the breath of faith. Prayer meetings are the lungs of the church.
   
• I have not preached this morning half as much as I have prayed. For every word that I have spoken, I have prayed two words silently to God.
   
• I always feel that there is something wrong if I go without prayer for even half an hour in the day.
   
• I cannot help praying. If I were not allowed to utter a word all day long, that would not affect my praying. If I could not have five minutes that I might spend in prayer by myself, I should pray all the same. Minute by minute, moment by moment, somehow or other, my heart must commune with my God. Prayer has become as essential to me as the heaving of my lungs and the beating of my pulse.
   
• God the Holy Ghost writes our prayers, God the Son presents our prayers, and God the Father accepts our prayers. And with the whole Trinity to help us in it, what cannot prayer perform?
   
• Watch for answers to your prayers. When you mail a letter to a friend, requesting a favor, you watch for an answer. When you pray to God for a favor, you do not expect him to hear you, some of you. If the Lord were to hear some of your prayers, you would be surprised. Sometimes when I have met with a special answer to prayer and have told it, some have said, "Is it not wonderful?" No, not at all! It would be wonderful if it were not so!
   
• Prayer talks with God; it walks with him. And he who is much in prayer will hold very much fellowship with Jesus Christ.
   
• I am persuaded we only want more prayer, and there is no limit to the blessing. You may Christianize the world, if you but know how to pray. Prayer can get anything of God, prayer can get everything. God denies nothing to the man who knows how to ask. The Lord never shuts his storehouse till you shut your mouth. God will never stop his arm till you stop your tongue.
   
• When God does not answer his children according to the letter, he does so according to the spirit. If you ask for silver, will you be angry if he gives you gold? If you seek bodily health, should you complain if instead he makes your sickness turn to the healing of spiritual maladies? Is it not better to have the cross sanctified than to have the cross removed? Was not the apostle more enriched when God allowed him still to endure the thorn in the flesh, and yet said to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor. 12:9)?
   
• I am sure we cannot expect our children to grow up a godly seed if there is no family prayer.
   
• A certain preacher whose sermons converted many souls received a revelation from God that it was not his sermons or works by all means but the prayers of an illiterate lay brother who sat on the pulpit steps pleading for the success of the sermon. It may be in the all-revealing day so with us. We may believe after laboring long and wearily that all honor belongs to another builder whose prayers were gold, silver, and precious stones, while our sermonizings being apart from prayer are but hay and stubble.
   
• I should find it difficult to discover a season in which I have cried unto God and not received deliverance during the whole run and tenor of my life. In hundreds of instances I have had as distinct answers to prayer as if God had thrust his right hand through the blue sky and given right into my lap the bounty which I had sought from him.
   
• I cannot make out how you Christians live who have not family prayer in your houses. You will find that where sons and daughters have turned out a curse to their parents, and those parents have been Christians, it might have been set down to this, that while the parents have been Christians, they were not Christians at home. They had not family prayer. They never reared a family altar. I believe nine out of ten such cases can be explained that way.
   
• If you cannot find that God has promised a blessing, you have no right to ask for it, and no reason to expect it. There is no use in asking money from a banker without a check. Christians take their arrows from God’s quiver and shoot them with this on their lips: “Do as thou hast said. Remember thy word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope.” True prayers are like those carrier pigeons which find their way so well. They cannot fail to go to heaven, for it is from heaven that they came. They are only going home.
   
• Prayer without faith! What sort of prayer is it? It is the prayer of a man who does not believe in God.
   
• I have seen enough in my own lifetime to fill a volume concerning the goodness of the Lord in answer to his children’s prayers
   
• Public prayer is no evidence of piety. It is practised by an abundance of hypocrites. But private prayer is a thing for which the hypocrite has no heart.
   
• May our prayers spring out of our Scriptural studies—may our acquaintance with the Word be such that we shall be qualified to pray a Daniel prayer!
   
• I cannot imagine any one of you tantalizing your child by exciting in him a desire that you do not intend to gratify. It were a very ungenerous thing to offer alms to the poor, and then when they hold out their hand for it, to mock their poverty with a denial. It were a cruel addition to the miseries of the sick if they were taken to the hospital and there left to die untended and uncared for. Where God leads you to pray, he means you to receive.
   
• I am constantly witnessing the most unmistakable instances of answers to prayer. My whole life is made up of them. To me they are so familiar as to cease to excite my surprise, but to many they would seem marvelous, no doubt. Why, I could no more doubt the efficacy of prayer than I could disbelieve in the law of gravitation. The one is as much a fact as the other, constantly verified every day of my life.
   
• It is neither desirable nor possible that all things should be left to our choice. So much do I feel this, that if my Lord should say to me, “From this hour I will always answer your prayer just as you pray it,” the first petition I would offer would be, “Lord, do nothing of the sort.” That would be putting the responsibility of my life on myself, instead of allowing it to remain on God.
   
• What, give us the new birth, and then not hear us? Did he bless us when we did not seek him, and will he not hear us when we do seek him? What, look after us when we were like stray sheep, deaf to all his calls; seek after us till he restored us, and then not hear us when we become the sheep of his pasture? Impossible!
   
• The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,’ but they who do not hear God’s voice cannot effectually pray, for God will not hear their voice if they will not hear His. If we have been deaf to Him, He will be deaf to us. The communion necessary to prevailing prayer render it absolutely essential that we should first set ourselves to hear the voice of God and then, again, it shall be said that the Lord listened to the voice of a man, for the man first listened to the voice of the Lord.
   
• If you realized your true condition in God’s sight, you would find time for prayer somehow or other, for you would feel that you must pray! It never occurred to Peter, as he was beginning to sink, that he had no time for prayer. He felt that he must pray—his sense of danger forced him to cry to Christ, ‘Lord, save me.’ And if you feel as you should feel, your sense of need will drive you to prayer and you will never again say, ‘I have no time for prayer.’ It is not a matter of time so much as a matter of heart—if you have the heart to pray, you will find the time.
   
• It is delightful to see these exquisite prayers come from holy men in times of extreme distress. As the sick oyster makes the pearl, and not the healthy one, so does it seem as if the child of God brought forth gems of prayer in affliction more pure, brilliant and sparkling than any that he produces in times of joy and exultation.
   
• I do not think our prayers would ever be heard in Heaven if it were not for Jesus Christ. He is the great Mediator by whom our prayers must be presented.
   
• There is joy in Hell when a saint grows idle! There is gladness among devils when we cease to pray, when we become slack in faith and feeble in communion with God.
   
• Prayer is refreshing, but praise is even more so, for there may be and there often is, in prayer, the element of selfishness—but praise rises to a yet higher level. Prayer and praise together make up spiritual respiration—we breathe in the air of Heaven when we pray—and we breathe it out again when we praise. ‘It is good to sing praises unto our God.’”
   
• The best thermometer of your spiritual temperature is the intensity of your prayer.
   
• If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.
   
• Lord, help us who cannot preach to pray for the man who does! Have you, dear Friend, who cannot preach, made a point of praying for the pastor of the Church to which you belong? It is a great sin on the part of Church members if they do not daily sustain their pastor by their prayers!
   
• It often happens that there is very little power in those prayers that leap out of our lips without premeditation—born in a minute, like gnats, and dying just as soon. But the prayer that lies in the soul, like eggs in a nest, and that has to be sat upon, as it were, and hatched, and brought forth—there is life in such supplication as that and that is the kind of prayer which prevails with God! Such was the prayer of Daniel.
   
• What wonders it has wrought! Intercessory prayer has stayed plagues (Ex 7-11). Intercessory prayer has healed diseases. We know it did in the early church. It has restored withered limbs. Intercessory prayer has raised the dead (1 Kings 17). As to how many souls intercessory prayer has instrumentally saved, recording angel, you can tell! Eternity, you shall reveal! There is nothing which intercessory prayer cannot do.
   
• All the Christian virtues are locked up in the word prayer.
   
• Anything is a blessing which makes us pray.
   
• As artists give themselves to their models, and poets to their classical pursuits, so must we addict ourselves to prayer.
   
• God has no dumb children.
   
• Perhaps you hear a sinner swear. What does that say to you, but "Pray for that sinner"? All the sins we see other men commit ought to be so many jogs to our memory to pray for the coming of Christ and the salvation of souls.
   
• Until the gate of hell is shut upon a man we must not cease to pray for him. And if we see him hugging the very doorposts of damnation, we must go to the prayer. Surely God has an eye of love on those whom he has encompassed with his own dear servants who day and night are praying for them.
   
• Let me have your prayers, and I can do anything! Let me be without my people's prayers, and I can do nothing.
   
• Earnest intercession will be sure to bring love with it. I do not believe you can hate a man for whom you habitually pray. If you dislike any brother Christian, pray for him doubly, not only for his sake, but for your own, that you may be cured of prejudice and saved from all unkind feeling.
   
• Do you say you have nothing to pray for? What, no children unconverted, no friends unsaved, no neighbors who are still in darkness? What! Live in London and not pray for sinners?
   
• He that is never on his knees on earth shall never stand upon his feet in heaven.
   
• I always feel that there is something wrong if I go without prayer for even half an hour in the day.
   
• If you cannot go to the house of the Lord, go to the Lord of the house.
   
• It is a good rule never to look into the face of man in the morning till you have looked into the face of God.
   
• Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church.
   
• How often have I said, “All our strength lies in prayer!”
   
• You see the men in the belfry sometimes down below with the ropes. They pull them, and if you have no ears, that is all you know about it. But the bells are ringing up there. They are talking and discoursing sweet music up aloft in the tower. And our prayers do, as it were, ring the bells of heaven. They are sweet music in God’s ear.
   
• Prayer has become as essential to me as the heaving of my lungs and the beating of my pulse.
   
• Prayer is the breath of faith. Prayer meetings are the lungs of the church.
   
• Prayer meetings are the throbbing machinery of the church.
   
• There is no secret of my heart which I would not pour into his ear. There is no wish that might be deemed foolish or ambitious by others, which I would not communicate to him. For surely if “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him” (Ps. 25:14), the secrets of them that fear him ought to be, and must be, with their Lord.

• Remember that prayer is your best means of study.
   
• Sometimes we think we are too busy to pray. That is a great mistake, for praying is a saving of time. You remember Luther’s remark, “I have so much to do today that I shall never get through it with less than three hours’ prayer.”
   
• We shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general till the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians.
   
• Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. If you may have everything by asking in His Name, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is.
   
• No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me.
   
• Those who were in Christ before me prayed for me; should I not pray for others? The treasury of the church’s prayers has been expended on us in bringing us to Christ’s feet. Let us now contribute to the common stock, casting in our prayers for the conversion of others.
   
• What can we do without your prayers? They link us with the omnipotence of God. Like the lightning rod, they pierce the clouds and bring down the mighty and mysterious power from on high.
   
• Prayer may not make you eloquent after the human mode, but it will make you truly so, for you will speak out of the heart; and is not that the meaning of the word eloquence? It will bring fire from heaven upon your sacrifice, and thus prove it to be accepted of the Lord (The Preacher's Private Prayer)
   
• Those who are short of breath in soul winning will never be successful. If they are not saved after twenty years of prayer, follow them up to the gates of hell! If they once pass those gates, your prayers are unallowable and unavailing, but to the very verge of the infernal pit follow them with your prayers. If they will not hear you speak, they cannot prevent your praying. Do they jest at your exhortations? They cannot disturb you at your prayers. Are they far away so that you cannot reach them? Your prayers can reach them. Have they declared that they will never listen to you again, nor see your face? Never mind, God has a voice which they must hear. Speak to him, and he will make them feel. Though they now treat you despitefully, rendering evil for your good, follow them with your prayers. Never let them perish for lack of your supplications.
   
• There is no need for us to go beating about the bush, and not telling the Lord distinctly what it is that we crave at His hands. Nor will it be seemly for us to make any attempt to use fine language; but let us ask God in the simplest and most direct manner for just the things we want…I believe in business prayers. I mean prayers in which you take to God one of the many promises which He has given us in His Work, and expect it to be fulfilled as certainly as we look for the money to be given us when we go to the bank to cash a check. We should not think of going there, lolling over the counter chattering with the clerks on every conceivable subject except the one thing for which we had gone to the bank, and then coming away without the coin we needed; but we should lay before the clerk the promise to pay the bearer a certain sum, tell him in what form we wish to take the amount, count the cash after him, and then go on our way to attend to other business. That is just an illustration of the method in which we should draw supplies from the Bank of Heaven.
   
• We may expect answers to prayer, and should not be easy without them any more than we should be if we had written a letter to a friend upon important business, and had received no reply.
   
• Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer can do.
   
• Methinks every true Christian should be exceedingly earnest in prayer concerning the souls of the ungodly; and when they are so, how abundantly God blesses them and how the church prospers!
   
• Remember, Christ's scholars must study upon their knees.
   
• I trust there are none here present, who profess to be followers of Christ who do not also practice prayer in their families. We may have no positive commandment for it, but we believe that it is so much in accord with the genius and spirit of the gospel, and that it is so commended by the example of the saints, that the neglect thereof is a strange inconsistency.
   
• Oh! men and brethren, what would this heart feel if I could but believe that there were some among you who would go home and pray for a revival men whose faith is large enough, and their love fiery enough to lead them from this moment to exercise unceasing intercessions that God would appear among us and do wondrous things here, as in the times of former generations.
   
• Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying "I am saved" is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.
   
• Watch constantly against those things which are thought to be no temptations. The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow. Cleopatra was poisoned by an asp that was brought to her in a basket of fair flowers. Sharp-edged tools, long handled, wound at last.
   
• Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality...plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way...Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered...the strength [not length] of your prayer...wins...God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord.
   
• Oh, for five hundred Elijahs, each one upon his Carmel , crying unto God, and we should soon have the clouds bursting into showers. Oh, for more prayer, more constant, incessant prayer! Then the blessing would rain upon us.
   
• Sometimes a fog will settle over a vessel's deck and yet leave the topmast clear. Then a sailor goes up aloft and gets a lookout which the helmsman on deck cannot get. So prayer sends the soul aloft; lifts it above the clouds in which our selfishness and egotism befog us, and gives us a chance to see which way to steer.
   
• Prayer bends omnipotence of heaven to your desire. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.
   
• A prayer less soul is a Christ less soul..
   
• Prayer irrigates the fields of life with the waters which are stored up in the reservoirs of promise.
   
• We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul.
   
• Our prayers are the shadows of mercy.
   
• So the preacher of the gospel asks your prayers: and it is a part of the duties arising out of the relationship between Christian men that those who are taught should pray for those who teach God's Word.
   
• Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarecely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication.
   
• There is no other place where the heart should be so free as before the mercy seat. There, you can talk out your very soul, for that is the best prayer that you can present. Do not ask for what some tell you that you should ask for, but for that which you feel the need of, that which the Holy Spirit has made you to hunger and to thirst for, you ask for that.
   
• All good is born in prayer, and all good springs from it.
   
• Nine times out of ten, declension from God begins in the neglect of private prayer.
   
• Prayer must not be our chance work but our daily business, our habit and vocation.
   
• Unless you have forgiven others you read your own death warrant when you repeat the Lord's Prayer
   
• Prayerless souls are Christless souls, Christless souls are Graceless souls and Graceless souls shall soon be damned souls. See your peril, you that neglect altogether the blessed privilege of prayer! You are in the bonds of iniquity, you are in the gall of bitterness. God deliver you, for Hisname's sake!
   
• Prayer is doubts destroyer, ruin's remedy, the antidote to all anxieties.
   
• Make the most of prayer. ... Prayer is the master-weapon. We should be wise if we used it more, and did so with a more specific purpose.
   
• Prayer gives a channel to the pent-up sorrows of the soul, they flow away, and in their stead streams of sacred delight pour into the heart.
   
• Prayer sweeps the battlefield, slays the enemy, and buries the bones.
   
• One night alone in prayer might make us new men, changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth, from trembling to triumphing.
   
• The delightful study of the Psalms has yielded me boundless profit and ever-growing pleasure; common gratitude constrains me to communicate to others a portion of the benefit, with the prayer that it may induce them to search further for themselves.
   
• Prayer plumes the wings of God's young eaglets so that they may learn to mount above the clouds. Prayer brings inner strength to God's warriors and sends them forth to spiritual battle with their muscles firm and their armor in place.
   
• Prayer is the best response to hatred.
   
• Lord Jesus, cause me to know in my daily experience the glory and sweetness of Thy name, and then teach me how to use it in my prayer, so that I may be a prince prevailing with God.
   
• It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God's glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head and humble prayer, yet it silently adores.
   
• The cry of a young raven is nothing but the natural cry of a creature, but your cry, if it be sincere, is the result of a work of grace in your heart.
   
• Every growth of spiritual life, from the first tender shoot until now, has been the work of the Holy Spirit.... The only way to more life is the Holy Spirit. You will not even know that you want more unless He works in you to desire it.... The Spirit of God must come and make the letter alive, transfer it to your heart, set it on fire, and make it burn within you, or else its divine force and majesty will be hid from your eyes.... Prayer is the creation of the Holy Spirit. We cannot do without prayer, and we cannot pray without the Holy Spirit.
   
• True prayer is an approach of the soul by the Spirit of God to the throne of God.
   
• Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.
   
• What manner of men should ministers be? They should thunder in preaching, and lighten in conversation; they should be flaming in prayer, shining in life, and burning in spirit.
   
• We ought not to tolerate for a minute the ghastly and grievous thought that God will not answer prayer.
   
• True prayer is the trading of the heart with God, and the heart never comes into spiritual commerce with the ports of heaven until God the Holy Ghost puts wind into the sails and speeds the ship into its haven.
   
• True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is a spiritual commerce with the Creator of heaven and earth.
   
• We cannot all ARGUE, but we can all PRAY; We cannot all be LEADERS, but we can all be PLEADERS; We cannot all be mighty in RHETORIC, but we can all be prevalent in PRAYER.
   
• We must remember that the GOAL of prayer is the ear of God. Unless that is gained, the prayer has utterly failed. The uttering of it may have kindled devotional feeling in our minds, the hearing of it may have comforted and strengthened the hearts of those with whom we have prayed, but if the prayer has not gained the heart of God, it has failed in its essential purpose.
   
• Christian, take good care of thy faith; for recollect faith is the only way whereby thou canst obtain blessings. If we want blessings from God, nothing can fetch them down but faith. Prayer cannot draw down answers from God's throne except it be the earnest prayer of a man who believes. Faith is the angelic messenger between the soul and the Lord Jesus in glory.
   
• Let your thoughts be psalms, your prayers incense, and your breath praise.
   
• Prayers are heard in heaven in proportion to our faith. Little faith gets very great mercies, but great faith still greater.
   
• Prayer is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honor of a Christian.
   
• The granting of prayer, when offered in the name of Jesus, reveals the Father's love to him, and the honor which he has put upon him.
   
• God will hear His people at the beginning of their prayers if the condition of their heart is ready for it.
   
• If He has said much about prayer, it is because He knows we have much need of it.

Ray Stedman

• Although God certainly knows all our needs, praying for them changes our attitude from complaint to praise and enables us to participate in God’s personal plan for our lives.
   
• True prayer is an awareness of our helpless need and an acknowledgment of divine adequacy.
   
• It is significant that this word on prayer from the lips of Jesus immediately follows Luke's account of his second coming, the parallel passage to the Olivet Discourse in the Gospel of Matthew. Our Lord moves immediately from his word concerning his coming to this word concerning prayer, indicating the direct correlation between watchfulness and prayer. (Lk 18:1ff)
   
• Now, says Jesus, prayer is the countering principle which is the key to the Father-heart of God. Persistent pressure was the key to this unrighteous judge, perpetual prayer is the key to the activity of God.... Prayer, He says, always stirs the heart of God, always moves God to act.
• It is sometimes taught that Jesus is here encouraging what is called "prevailing prayer," which is often another way of describing an attempt to belabor God, to give him no peace, to picket the throne of heaven until we get the request we want. This is an absolutely un-Biblical and totally un-Christian attitude in prayer.

Rodney Stortz

• (Romans 8:26, 27) assures us that the Holy Spirit takes whatever we ask for and molds it into the will of God. So we know that his answer is what is best for us, though it is not always what we ask for.

John Stott

• It is only when Christ’s words abide in us that our prayers will be answered. Then we can ask what we will and it shall be done, because we shall will only what he wills.
   
• The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.
   
• Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.
   
• It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.
   
• Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.
   

• Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘Thy will be done.’

C. T. Studd

• We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism...To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don't hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!
   
• Funds are low again, hallelujah! That means God trusts us and is willing to leave His reputation in our hands.
   
• Prayer is good, but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is naught but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism.

Billy Sunday

• Yank some of the groans out of your prayers, and shove in some shouts.
   
• If you are a stranger to prayer, you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.

Charles Swindoll

• Christians who want a productive prayer life must keep a pure heart.
   
• Prayer is an investment. The time you dedicate to prayer isn't lost; it will return dividends far greater than what a few moments spent on a task ever could. If we fail to cultivate this discipline, prayer winds up being our last resort rather than our first response.
   
• Trouble in our prayer life is usually a symptom of a deeper problem in our spiritual life—disobedience. A light on the dashboard of our car may indicate we have engine trouble, but we cannot cure our engine problem by cutting the wire to the dashboard light. That only cures the symptom. We need to find and treat the real cause of the engine problem. The root cause of ineffective prayer is some form of disobedience. The cure for disobedience is to confess and forsake our disobedience so that God will forgive it. And the prayer of confession is the only prayer God will hear when believers have knowingly disobeyed. (1Jn 3:22)
   
• In place of our exhaustion and spiritual fatigue, God will give us rest. All He asks is that we come to Him...that we spend a while thinking about Him, meditating on Him, talking to Him, listening in silence, occupying ourselves with Him - totally and thoroughly lost in the hiding place of His presence.
   
• If you are having difficulty loving or relating to an individual, take him to God. Bother the Lord with this person. Don't you be bothered with him - leave him at the throne.
   
• To be used of God. Is there anything more encouraging, more fulfilling? Perhaps not, but there is something more basic: to meet with God. To linger in His presence, to shut out the noise of the city and, in quietness, give Him the praise He deserves. Before we engage ourselves in His work, let's meet Him in His Word... in prayer... in worship.
   
• Our minds can be kept free of anxiety as we dump the load of our cares on the Lord in prayer.
   
• Noise and crowds have a way of siphoning our energy and distracting our attention, making prayer an added chore rather than a comforting relief

Joni Eareckson Tada

• Like art, like music, like so many other disciplines, prayer can only be appreciated when you actually spend time in it. Spending time with the Master will elevate your thinking. The more you pray, the more will be revealed. You will understand. You will smile and nod your head as you identify with others who fight long battles and find great joy on their knees.
   
• My longings are best met when, in prayer, I simply let my heart beat in time with the Lord's.
   
• Amazing, isn't it, that our prayers...can move the very heart of God who created the universe?
   
• Yes, I pray that my pain might be removed, that it might cease; but more so, I pray for the strength to bear it, the grace to benefit from it, and the devotion to offer it up to God as a sacrifice of praise.

Jack Taylor

• Our infirmities are the trumpets which call us to prayer. No miracle was performed in the Bible that did not begin in a problem.… The greater the problem, the greater the solution. (Prayer: Life's Limitless Reach)

J. Hudson Taylor

• Do not work so hard for Christ that you have no strength to pray, for prayer requires strength.
   
• Whatever is your best time in the day, give that to communion with God.
   
• In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are-dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.
   
• Prayer is a time of refreshment. Howard Taylor says of his father, Hudson Taylor, “For forty years the sun never rose on China that God didn’t find him on his knees.” (Swindoll's Ultimate Book of Ilustrations) quoting Howard Taylor in "Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission")
   
• Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit’s power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.
   
• I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working.
   
• Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.
   
• The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God’s standing challenge, ‘Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!
   
• When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.
   
• When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.
   
• All God's giants have been weak men and women who have gotten hold of God's faithfulness.
   
• As a rule, prayer is answered and funds come in, but if we are kept waiting, the spiritual blessing that is the outcome is far mar precious than exemption from the trial.
   
• Learn to move man, through God, by prayer alone
   
• Believing prayer will lead to whole-hearted action.

Corrie Ten Boom

• Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees.
   
• Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?
   
• To pray only when in peril is to use safety belts only in heavy traffic.
   
• Prayerlessness is a sin.
   
• As a camel kneels before his master to have him remove his burden, so kneel and let the Master take your burden.
   
• I prayed to dispel my fear, until suddenly, and I do not know how the idea came to me, I began to pray for others. I prayed for everyone who came into my thoughts - - people with whom I had traveled, those who had been in prison with me, my school friends of years ago. I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know - - my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me!
   
• What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.
   
• Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.
   
• We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.
   
• When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles, When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devils shouts for joy.
   
• When you want to work for God start a committee. When you want to work with God start a prayer group
   
• and here I felt a strange leaping of my heart-God did! My job was to simply follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to him in prayer.

Gerhard Tersteegen

• Prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and which prayer can alone convey to us...Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what he has promised us he will do if we ask him... 
   
• Prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and which prayer can alone convey to us..This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a ceremony through which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God for something needed and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what he has promised us he will do if we ask him...Asking is man's part. Giving is God's part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.

Cameron Thompson

• No one can in this life pass beyond the kindergarten of prayer. 

Augustus M. Toplady

• I enjoy heaven already in my soul. My prayers are all converted into praises.
   
• The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe.

R. A. Torrey 

• We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results.
   
• A prayer for self is not by any means necessarily a selfish prayer.
   
• How little time the average Christian spends in prayer! We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little... the power of God is lacking in our lives and in our work. We have not because we ask not.
   
• We should never utter one syllable of prayer either in public or in private until we are definitely conscious that we have come into the presence of God and are actually praying to Him.
   
• Those persons who know the deep peace of God, the unfathomable peace that passeth all understanding, are always men and women of much prayer.
   
• I prayed fifteen years for the conversion of my oldest brother. When he seemed to be getting further and further away from any hope of conversion, I prayed on.
   
• Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things, but above all, pray.
   
• If we would pray aright, the first thing we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him.
   
• All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and as God can do everything, prayer is omnipotent.
   
• Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears.
   
• Oh, men and women, pray through; pray through! Do not just begin to pray and pray a little while and throw up your hands and quit; but pray and pray and pray until God bends the heavens and comes down.
   
• I prayed fifteen years for the conversion of my oldest brother. When he seemed to be getting further and further away from any hope of conversion, I prayed on.
   
• When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end.
   
• The chief purpose of prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer.
   
• Prayer can do anything that God can do.
   
• Every true revival . . . has had its earthly origin in prayer.
   
• The Spirit, when He prays through us, or helps us to meet the mighty "ougthness" of right praying, trims our praying down to the will of God...
   
• When the perceptive child of God stops to weigh the meaning of these words, then notes the connection in which they are found, he or she is driven to say, I must pray, pray, pray. I must put all my energy and heart into prayer. Whatever else I do, I must pray.
   
• Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouses of God's. . .grace and power.
   
• We must know the power of the Blood if we are to know the power of God. Our knowing experimentally the power of the Word, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the power of prayer is dependent upon our knowing the power of the Blood of Christ.
   
• God has not changed; and His ear is just as quick to hear the voice of real prayer, and His hand is just as long and strong to save; as it ever was
   
• The devil is perfectly willing that the Church should multiply its organization and its deftly contrived machinery for the conquest of the world for Christ, if it will only give up praying...The Devil is not afraid of machinery; he is only afraid of God. And machinery without prayer is machinery without God.....Satan laughs softly, as he looks at the Church today, and says under his breath: "You can have your Sunday schools, your YMCAs...your grand choirs, and your fine organs, and your brilliant preachers...as long as you do not bring into them the power of Almighty God, sought and obtained by earnest, persistent, believing, mighty prayers."
   
• Prayer will promote our personal holiness as nothing else, except the study of the Word of God.
   
• The reason why many fail in battle is because they wait until the hour of battle. The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on their knees long before the battle came...Anticipate your battles; fight them on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory.
   
• Out of a very intimate acquaintance with D. L. Moody, I wish to testify that he was a far greater pray-er than he was preacher. Time and time again, he was confronted by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way to overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. He knew and believed in the deepest depths of his soul that nothing was too hard for the Lord, and that prayer could do anything that God could do.
   
• Triumphant prayer is almost impossible where there is neglect of the study of the Word of God.
   
• If we then let the words of Christ abide in us, they will stir us up in prayer. (John 15:7)
   
• Prayer is the hand that takes to ourselves the blessings that God has already provided in His Son.
   
• Up in a little town in Maine,things were pretty dead some years ago. The churches were not accomplishing anything. There were a few Godly men in the churches, and they said: 'Here we are, only uneducated laymen; but something must be done in this town. Let us form a praying band. We will all center our prayers on one man. Who shall it be?' They picked out one of the hardest men in town, a hopeless drunkard, and centered all their prayers upon him. In a week, he was converted. They centered their prayers upon the next hardest man in town, and soon he was converted. Then they took up another and another, until within a year, two or three hundred were brought to God, and the fire spread out into all the surrounding country. Definite prayer for those in the prison house of sin is the need of the hour.”

William Temple

• When I pray coincidences happen, and when I do not, they don’t.
   
• God is perfect love and perfect wisdom. We do not pray in order to change his will, but to bring our wills into harmony with his.

William Tiptaft

• How hard it is to pray against besetting sins!

Paul Tournier 

• Our own personal experience can never be taken as the norm for other people. What matters is that our prayers should be living and sincere. Each of us has his own temperament; one is more intuitive, another more logical; one is more intellectual, another more emotional. The relationship of each with God will be marked with the stamp of his own particular temperament.
   
• People often say to me: “I don’t seem to be able to say my prayers; what ought I to do?” I reply: “Talk to God as you are talking to me; even more simply, in fact.” St. Paul writes that the truest prayer is sometimes a sigh. A sigh can say more than could be contained in many words.
   
• Prayer constantly enlarges our horizon and our person. It draws us out of the narrow limits within which our habits, our past, and our whole personage confine us.

A. W. Tozer

• When we become too glib in prayer we are most surely talking to ourselves.
   
• Yes, worship of the loving God is man’s whole reason for existence.
   
• All things else being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives. In the long pull we pray only as well as we live.
   
• God does not keep office hours.
   
• Pray; and as you pray, surrender; and as you surrender, believe.
   
• To pray without expectation is to misunderstand the whole concept of prayer and relationship with God.
   
• To pray effectively we must want what God wants—that and that only is to pray in the will of God.
   
• The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
   
• Communion with God is one thing; familiarity with God is quite another thing. I don’t even like (and this may hurt some of your feelings—but they’ll heal) I don’t even like to hear God called “you.” You is a coloquial expression. I can call a man you, but I would to call God thou and thee. Now I know these are old Elizabethan words, but I also know that there are some things too precious to cast lightly away, and I think that when we talk to God, we ought to use the pure, respectful pronouns.
   
• It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should.
   
• Even the most devout seem to think they must storm heaven with loud outcries and mighty bellowings or their prayers are of no avail.
   
• In our private prayers and in our public services we are forever asking God to do things that he either has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for him to speak when he has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask him to come when he is already present and waiting for us to recognize him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing him by our doubts.
   
• In the average church we hear the same prayers repeated each Sunday year in and year out with, one would suspect, not the remotest expectation that they will be answered. It is enough, it seems, that they have been uttered. The familiar phrase, the religious tone, the emotionally loaded words have their superficial and temporary effect, but the worshiper is no nearer to God, no better morally, and no surer of heaven than he was before.
   
• The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts; the neglected life will soon become a moral chaos; the church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray.
   
• Prayer at its best is the expression of the total life, for all things else being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives. In the long pull we pray only as well as we live.
   
• We pour out millions of words and never notice that the prayers are not answered.
   
• When our requests are such as honor God, we may ask as largely as we will. The more daring the request, the more glory accrues to God when the answer comes.
   
• Prayer is often conceived to be little more than a technique for self-advancement, a heavenly method for achieving earthly success.
   
• Selfishness is never so exquisitely selfish as when it is on its knees … Self turns what would otherwise be a pure and powerful prayer into a weak and ineffective one.
   
• Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late - and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.
   
• Prayer is not so much the cause of a revival as the human preparation for one.
   
• Prayer is never an acceptable substitute for obedience. The sovereign Lord accepts no offering from His creatures that is not accompanied by obedience. To pray for revival while ignoring or actually flouting the plain precept laid down in the Scriptures is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble.
   
• When we become too glib in prayer we are most surely talking to ourselves.
   
• The church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray.
   
• Selfishness is never so exquisitely selfish as when it is on its knees. ... Self turns what would otherwise be a pure and powerful prayer into a weak and ineffective one.
   
• To desire revival...and at the same time to neglect(personal) prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.
   
• All things else being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives. In the long pull we only pray as well as we live.
   
• A satisfying prayer life elevates and purifies every act of body and mind and integrates the entire personality into a single spiritual unit. 
   
• Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Haven fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer it's because God is good. From His goodness, His lovingkindness, His good-natured benevolence, God does it! That's the source of everything.
   
• Prayer is the most sacred occupation a person could engage in.
   
• The Christian's heart must be soaked in prayer before the true spiritual fruits begin to grow.
   
• You can delegate many things, but prayer is not one of them.
   
• Leadership requires vision, and whence will vision come except from hours spent in the presence of God in humble and fervent prayer?
   
• The key to prayer is simply praying.
   
• Whatever God can do faith can do, and whatever faith can do prayer can do when it is offered in faith. An invitation to prayer is, therefore, an invitation to omnipotence, for prayer engages the Omnipotent God and brings Him into our human affairs. Nothing is impossible to the man who prays in faith, just as nothing is impossible with God. This generation has yet to prove all that prayer can do for believing men and women.
   
• Any sermon that is not birthed in prayer is not a message from God no matter how learned the preacher.
   
• Prayer for revival will prevail when it is accompanied by radical amendment of life; not before.
   
• It's not my business to try and make God think like me... but to try, in prayer and penitence, to think like God.

John Trapp

• He that cannot pray, let him go to sea, and there he will learn.
• It is foolish to pray against sin and then sin against prayer.
   
• God never denied that soul anything that went as far as heaven to ask for it.

Bishop Richard Trench 

• Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance; it is laying hold of his highest willingness. (also attributed to Martin Luther)
   
• If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed!
   
• We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others — that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?

D. Elton Trueblood

• At the profoundest depths in life, men talk not about God but with him.

Rick Warren

• Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test... You will be tested by major changes, delayed promises, impossible problems, unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies.
   
• People may refuse our love or reject our message, but they are defenseless against our prayers.
   
• God is looking for people to use, and if you can get usable, he will wear you out. The most dangerous prayer you can pray is this: 'Use me.'
   
• Never use prayer as an excuse to procrastinate doing what you already know is the right thing to do.
   
• When pressure builds up, don't panic. Pray! Prayer is a tremendous stress reliever. It can be your safety valve.
   
• Start today by practicing constant conversation with God and continual mediation on his Word. Prayer lets you speak to God; mediation lets God speak to you.
   
• The greatest use of your words is prayer. Talk to God about EVERYTHING, all the time. Maintain a running conversation.
   
• Delays are as much a part of God plan as answered prayers. God wants you to trust him.

Paul Washer

• In modern day evangelism, this precious doctrine [of regeneration] has been reduced to nothing more than a human decision to raise one's hand, walk an aisle, or pray a 'sinner's prayer.' As a result, the majority of Americans believe that they've been 'born again' even though their thoughts, words, and deeds are a continual contradiction to the nature and will of God.
   
• All my weak days have a common cause - I have neglected communion with God through my neglect of the Scriptures & prayer. When will I learn?
   
• What can not be overcome in prayer? Answer me! What cannot be done by the hand of the Almighty? Answer me! What can be done by your feeble arms!? ANSWER ME! He can take down the iron curtain in a day, He CAN convert a nation in an hour. Call upon Him, believe Him.
   
• I have never met an old saint who regretted having spent too much time in prayer, but I have met many who regretted having spent too little!
   
• There are endless treasures of grace waiting for those who will make even the most feeble attempts to pray. The weakest prayers yield grace.
   
• [The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer] is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and evangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time.

Thomas Watson

• Do with your hearts as you do with your watches, wind them up every morning by prayer, and at night examine whether your hearts have gone true all that day.
   
• Prayer is the soul's breathing itself into the bosom of its heavenly Father.
   
• Make up your spiritual accounts daily; see how matters stand between God and your souls (Psalm 77:6). Often reckonings keep God and conscience friends. Do with your hearts as you do with your watches, wind them up every morning by prayer, and at night examine whether your hearts have gone true all that day, whether the wheels of your affections have moved swiftly toward heaven.
   
• The Ediles among the Romans had their doors always standing open, that all who had petitions might have free access to them. The door of heaven is always open for the prayers of God's people.
   
• A spiritual prayer is a humble prayer. Prayer is the asking of an alms, which requires humility... The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends.
   
• Prayer is the offering up of our desires to God in the name of Christ, for such things as are agreeable to his will. It is an offering of our desires. Desires are the soul and life of prayer; words are but the body; now as the body without the soul is dead, so are prayers unless they are animated with our desires.
   
• Those prayers God likes best which come seething hot from the heart.
   
• Prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid; but when the arrow of a saint's prayer is put into the bow of Christ's intercession it pierces the throne of grace.
   
• Praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion. In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels.
   
• Thus it is in hell; they would die, but they cannot. The wicked shall be always dying but never dead; the smoke of the furnacedascends for ever and ever. Oh! who can endure thus to be ever upon the rack? This word "ever" breaks the heart. Wicked men do now think the Sabbaths long, and think a prayer long; but oh! how long will it be to lie in hell for ever and ever?
   
• Faith is to prayer what the feather is to the arrow; it feathers the arrow of prayer, and makes it fly swifter, and pierce the throne of grace.
   
• God will fill the hungry because He Himself has stirred up the hunger. As in the case of prayer, when God prepares the heart to pray, He prepares His ear to hear (Ps. 10:17). So in the case of spiritual hunger, when God prepares the heart to hunger, He will prepare His hand to fill.
   
• Wind up thy heart towards heaven in the beginning of the day, and it will go the better all the day after. He that loseth his heart in the morning in the world, will hardly find it again all the day. O! Christians, let God have your morning meditations.
   
• God’s promises are the cork to keep faith from sinking in prayer.
   
• Patience in prayer is nothing but faith spun out.
   
• When faith sets prayer on work, prayer sets God on work.
   
• A wicked man in prayer may lift up his hands, but he cannot lift up his face.
   
• Lifeless prayer is no more prayer than the picture of a man is a man.
   
• The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer fetched the angel. (Acts 12:5)
   
• Christ went more readily ad crucem (to the cross), than we do to the throne of grace.
   
• The prayer that is faithless is fruitless.
   
• Prayer delights God's ear; it melts His heart; and opens His hand. God cannot deny a praying soul

Isaac Watts

• Abandon the secret chamber and the spiritual life will decay.

John Wesley

• Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.
   
• Prayer is where the action is.
   
• I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
   
• The neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness.
   
• God does nothing but in answer to prayer.
   
• Wesley’s thoughts on continual prayer speaking in the third person -   [H]is heart is ever lifted up to God, at all times and in all places. In this he is never hindered, much less interrupted, by any person or thing. In retirement or company, in leisure, business, or conversation, his heart is ever with the Lord. Whether he lie down or rise up, God is in all his thoughts; he walks with God continually, having the loving eye of his mind still fixed upon Him, and everywhere “seeing Him that is invisible.”
   
• The man of prayer: "...his heart is ever lifted up to God, at all times and in all places. In this he is never hindered, much less interrupted, by any person or thing. In retirement or company, in leisure, business, or conversation, his heart is ever with the Lord. Whether he lie down or rise up, God is in all his thoughts; he walks with God continually, having the loving eye of his mind still fixed upon him, and everywhere 'seeing Him that is invisible.
   
• Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer; it is almost essentially connected with it. One who always prays is ever giving praise, whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and for the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from Him, and receives them for His sake- not choosing nor refusing, liking or disliking,anything, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to His perfect will.
   
• with all prayer (Eph. 6:18)" All sorts of prayer- public, private, mental, vocal. Do not be diligent in one kind of prayer and negligent in others... let us use all.
   
• Proceed with much prayer, and your way will be made plain.
   
• On every occasion of uneasiness, we should retire to prayer, that we may give place to the grace and light of God and then form our resolutions, without being in any pain about what success they may have. In the greatest temptations, a single look to Christ, and the barely pronouncing his name, suffices to overcome the wicked one, so it be done with confidence and calmness of spirit.
   
• I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.

Warren Wiersbe 

• The greatest argument for the priority of prayer is the fact that our Lord was a Man of prayer.
   
• It has well been said that Christ’s life in heaven is His prayer for us. It is what He is that determines what He does. (Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34)
   
• True prayer lays hold of God’s Word (John 15:7) and seeks to accomplish God’s purposes.
   
• The fact that Jesus (Ed: When on earth as the God-Man) prayed is evidence that He lived by faith.
   
• (In 1Ti 2:8) “holy hands” obviously this means a holy life. “Clean hands” was symbolic of a blameless life (2Sa 22:21; Ps. 24:4). If we have sin in our lives, we cannot pray and expect God to answer (Ps. 66:18).
   
• A good prayer for all of us is Psalm 139:23–24.
   
• The greatest enemy to answered prayer is unbelief.
   
• Is prayer to you a matter of life and death? It was to Daniel! (Daniel 6:10)
   
• If we are doing the will of God, prayer has tremendous power.
   
• When we sin, it affects our prayer life. 
   
• Until we pray and get right with God, He will not reveal His power (2 Chron. 7:14).
   
• If we spent more time preparing to pray and getting our hearts right before God, our prayers would be more effective.
   
• A person who is constantly having trouble with other believers, who is a troublemaker rather than a peacemaker, cannot pray and get answers from God. (1Ti 2:8 "without wrath and dissension")
   
• Prayer is based on sonship (“Our Father”), not on friendship.
   
• Martin Luther once said that prayer, study, and suffering make a pastor; and this is true. We cannot be approved unless we are tested.
   
• Boldness in prayer is the result of faithfulness in life and service.
   
• “Pray without ceasing” (1Th 5:17) does not mean we must always be mumbling prayers. The word means “constantly recurring,” not continuously occurring. We are to “keep the receiver off the hook” and be in touch with God so that our praying is part of a long conversation that is not broken.
   
• Prayer is an act of worship, not just an expression of our wants and needs. There should be reverence in our hearts as we pray to God.
   
• We should not simply add our thanksgiving to the end of a selfish prayer! Thanksgiving should be an important ingredient in all of our prayers. In fact, sometimes we need to imitate David and present to God only thanksgiving with no petitions at all! (see Ps. 103:1-22)
   
• The late Peter Deyneka, Sr., my good friend and founder of the Slavic Gospel Association, often reminded me: “Much prayer, much power! No prayer, no power!”....Paul repeatedly asked the churches to pray for him, because gifts and training without prayer have no power to accomplish God’s will.
   
• Never underestimate the power of a praying church! (Ed: Here is the antithetical corollary - Never overestimate the facade of power by a non-praying church!)
   
• Believing prayer releases God’s power and enables God’s hand to move (Isa. 50:2; 64:1–8).
   
• Division in the church always hinders prayer and robs the church of spiritual power.
   
• I ministered for several weeks in Kenya and Zaire, and when I arrived home, I was more convinced than ever that the greatest need of missionaries and national churches is prayer.
   
• God works when churches pray, and Satan still trembles “when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.”
   
• The glory of God, not the needs of men, is the highest purpose of answered prayer.
   
• When I was a lad in Sunday school, we occasionally sang a little chorus that I haven't heard in decades: Whisper a prayer in the morning, Whisper a prayer at noon, Whisper a prayer in the evening, To keep your heart in tune. (cp Da 6:10, Ps 55:17)
• If persistence finally paid off as a man beat on the door of a reluctant friend, how much more would persistence bring blessing as we pray to a loving Heavenly Father! After all, we are the children in the house with Him! (Luke 18:1-8)
   
• Persistence in prayer is not an attempt to change God’s mind (“Thy will be done”) but to get ourselves to the place where He can trust us with the answer.
   
• The Word of God and prayer must always go together (John 15:7). In His Word, God speaks to us and tells us what He wants to do. In prayer, we speak to Him and make ourselves available to accomplish His will. True prayer is not telling God what to do, but asking God to do His will in us and through us (1 John 5:14–15). It means getting God’s will done on earth, not man’s will done in heaven.
   
• Prayer is not an escape from responsibility; it is our response to God’s ability.
   
• True prayer energizes us for service and battle.
   
• Prayer and worship are perhaps the highest uses of the gift of speech.
   
• It is possible to pray in our hearts and never use the gift of speech (1 Sam. 1:13); but we are using words even if we don’t say them audibly. True prayer must first come from the heart, whether the words are spoken or not.
   
• Perhaps the deepest Christian fellowship and joy we can experience in this life is at the throne of grace, praying with and for one another.
   
• Perseverance in prayer does not mean we are trying to twist God’s arm, but rather that we are deeply concerned and burdened and cannot rest until we get God’s answer. (Eph 6:18b). Keep on praying until the Spirit stops you or the Father answers you. Just about the time you feel like quitting, God will give the answer.
   
• The Bible formula is that we pray to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit.
   
• When we are praying in the Spirit, he will remind us of verses we know and give us promises to claim.
   
• One of the secrets of an effective prayer life is to lay hold of God’s purposes by faith (Acts 4:23–31).
   
• “Keep on asking … keep on seeking … keep on knocking.” In other words, don’t come to God only in the midnight emergencies, but keep in constant communion with your Father. Jesus called this “abiding” (John 15:1ff), and Paul exhorted, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thes. 5:17). As we pray, God will either answer or show us why He cannot answer. Then it is up to us to do whatever is necessary in our lives so that the Father can trust us with the answer.
   
• (There are) four obstacles to answered prayer: unbelief, willful disobedience (Ps 66:18), neglect of God's Word, and hypocrisy masked by religion.
   
• When we pray in the will of God, we participate in a miracle, because prayer transcends both time and space.....If we stop thinking of prayer as a miracle, our prayer life will start to falter and then cease. We will end up praying so timidly that we’re just talking to ourselves instead of to the Lord.
   
• Prayer is not limited by time, because we are linked to the eternal God who knows the end from the beginning. King
   
• If Christians would go to the Lord in prayer instead of going to their brother with criticism, there would be stronger fellowship in our churches.
   
• We surrender our wills to God through disciplined prayer. As we spend time in prayer, we surrender our will to God and pray, with the Lord, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” We must pray about everything, and let God have His way in everything.
   
• I once heard the late Jacob Stam pray, “Lord, the only thing we know about sacrifice is how to spell the word.” I wonder if today some of us can even spell the word!
   
• We must pray in secret before we pray in public (Mt 6:6)...it is wrong to pray in public if we are not in the habit of praying in private.
   
• Our public praying is only as good as our private praying, and our private praying should be secret.
   
• Believing prayer is one of the secrets of a fruitful Christian life.
   
• True prayer should humble us and make us love others more. We should be like children coming to a Father and not like attorneys bringing an indictment. If prayer doesn’t bless the one praying, it isn’t likely to help anybody else.
   
• If you start to pray for laborers (Mt 9:38), beware: you may become an answer to your own prayer! You pray, and then you are sent out!
   
• I think it was George Müeller who said that true prayer was not overcoming God’s reluctance, but overcoming God’s willingness.
   
• We can ask in His name as we pray (John 14:13–14; 15:16; 16:23–26). When we ask the Father for something “in the name of Jesus Christ,” it is as though Jesus Himself were asking it. If we remember this, it will help to keep us from asking for things unworthy of His name.
   
• Too many times we fail to get what God promises because we stop praying. It is true that we are not heard “for our much praying” (Matt. 6:7); but there is a difference between vain repetitions and true believing persistence in prayer.
   
• You cannot separate the Word of God and prayer, for in His Word He gives us the promises that we claim when we pray.
• God’s promises should become our prayers.
   
• Prayer means reminding God of His promises and claiming them for ourselves.
   
• God has ordained that His work is accomplished through believing prayer. But we will not be able to pray effectively if we do not claim our position as conquerors in Jesus Christ.
   
• Many people do not pray in their prayers. They just lazily say religious words, and their hearts are not in their prayers.
   
• The purpose of prayer is to glorify God.....Any request that does not glorify God’s name should not be asked in His name. (Ps 99:9)
   
• The better we know the Word, the more effectively we will pray (John 15:7), and the more effectively we pray, the better we will learn the Word.
   
• God’s hand is unable to work when our hands are defiled with sin. Our prayers accomplish nothing (Ps. 66:18), and His power is absent from our lives and ministries.
   
• God sometimes waits in answering prayer so that He might strengthen our patience (James 1:2–8).
   
• Do you find delight in prayer, or is prayer only an “emergency exercise” to get you out of trouble?
   
• The “prayer of faith” is a prayer offered when you know the will of God. (1Jn 5:14, 15)
   
• Prayer can remove affliction, if that is God’s will. But prayer can also give us the grace we need to endure troubles and use them to accomplish God’s perfect will. God can transform troubles into triumphs.  (cp 2Cor 12:8, 9, 10).
   
• Many Christians pray that God will make them more fruitful, but they do not enjoy the pruning process that follows!
   
•  If we don’t pray, we will faint; it’s as simple as that! (Luke 18:1)....But when we pray, we draw on the “pure air” of heaven, and this keeps us from fainting.
   
• When you pray, it’s an evidence of faith. The world says that seeing is believing....but Jesus says, “Believing is seeing.”
   
•  Your prayers for your loved ones will do more good than you realize, so keep praying.
   
• Obedience is important to answered prayer. If we’re abiding in Christ, we will obey His Word, and then we will be able to call upon Him. (John 15:7)
   
• The Word and prayer must always go together. Prayer without the Word is heat without light, and the Word without prayer is light without heat! Jesus said that we need both. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7).
   
• When you pray, be honest with God and tell Him how you really feel. Remember that Jesus knows exactly how you feel, and He understands every experience of life.
   
• He answers our prayers so that we might become an answer to someone else’s prayer....How wonderful it is to receive an answer to prayer. But there is something even more wonderful—to be an answer to prayer. Have you been an answer to prayer lately?
   
• The Christian life is the joy of answered prayer—to be able to say to someone, “God answered my prayer today,” or to hear someone say, “Thank you for praying—let me tell you what God did.”
   
• When an Old Testament Jew prayed, he didn’t fold his hands. He lifted them up to God in praise and in expectancy that He was going to do something. (Psalm 28:2)
   
• Perhaps you’ve seen the plaque that says, “Prayer changes things,” and that’s true. I’ve also seen a plaque that says, “Praise changes things,” and that also is true. It’s amazing how our whole attitude and whole outlook can be transformed by praising God.
   
• Lock up each day with prayer and unlock each day with praise. Praise is great medicine and will take all bitterness, envy, jealousy, and unrest out of your life.Try closing each day in prayer and opening each day with praise. Give God an opportunity to accomplish His purposes in your life.
   
• Too often we are content to enjoy the gift but we forget the Giver. We are quick to pray but slow to praise. When He answers your prayers, sing His praises!
   
• People who pray are people who praise. People who pray for God’s will in their lives are those who rejoice in His work.
   
• Have you learned that there can be blessing in unanswered prayer? (Ed: That is not giving us that for which we asked!)
   
• Pray Without Ceasing (1Th 5:17)....means to make prayer as natural to us as our regular breathing.....Prayer....should be the natural habit of our lives, the “atmosphere” in which we constantly live.
   
• Prayer is not always a quiet, joyful conversation with God. Sometimes it is a battle against the principalities arrayed against us.
   
• To get God’s ear, we must pray honestly, fervently, and submissively. We must prepare our hearts for prayer.
   
• If our praying doesn’t make us more like our Lord, our praying is in vain.
   
• (The) mark of the mature Christian: he is prayerful in troubles. Instead of giving up when troubles come, the mature believer turns to God in prayer and seeks divine help. “Taking it to the Lord in prayer” is certainly a mark of spiritual maturity.
   
• When we pray, we are like priests who bring acceptable sacrifices to God (Ps. 141:2); and there had better be some “fire” in our hearts to help “consume” our offering....The Old Testament priest who burned the incense on the golden altar—a picture of prayer (Ps. 141:2)—carried the fragrance with him all day, and so should we.
   
• James S. Stewart used Acts 27:29 to preach about the “four anchors” that sustain the believer in the storms of life: hope, duty, prayer, and the cross of Christ.
   
• Each morning, pray your way through that day’s schedule and tell him what you need. The day will go better. (Lam 3:25)
   
• Like Nehemiah, we must “keep the receiver off the hook” and send frequent messages to the Lord as we labor with the people in building the wall. There are twelve instances of prayer in the Book of Nehemiah: 1:5–10; 2:4; 4:4, 9; 5:19; 6:9, 14; 9:5–37; 13:14, 22, 29, 31.
   
• If all you have in the church is prayer and no Bible, you end up with lots of heat but no light, zeal without knowledge. But plenty of Bible without prayer gives you light without heat. You don’t have a church; you have a Bible school. Bible knowledge without prayer has a way of puffing people up. It takes both the Word of God and prayer to make balanced Christians and to build a balanced church.
   
• Prayerlessness doesn’t simply make us weak or handicapped so that our ministry is difficult. Lack of prayer paralyzes us so that we’re not able to do anything that will produce lasting fruit to the glory of God.
   
• The better we understand God’s Word, the better we’re able to pray; the more we pray, the more the Holy Spirit can teach us from the Word and help us obey it.
   
• Studying the Word for truth and praying to God for blessing on service are not competitive activities; they’re the best of friends.
   
• God wants prayer among His people (1 Ti 2:1ff), for true prayer is an evidence of our dependence on God and our faith in His Word.
   
• As the perfect Son of man, Jesus depended on His Father to meet His needs, and that was why He prayed. (Ed: Could the corollary be "Paucity of prayer reflects paltry dependence on God!")
   
• Jesus prayed early in the morning and he labored all the day and into the night hours—and he is our example.
   
• Every servant of God should follow His (Jesus') example and take time away from people in order to meet the Father and be refreshed and revitalized through prayer. (Matthew 14:23, Mark 1:35, 6:46, Luke 6:12)...It was in prayer that He found His strength and power for service, and so must we.....If Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, had to depend on prayer during “the days of His flesh” (Heb. 5:7), then how much more do you and I need to pray! Effective prayer is the provision for every need and the solution for every problem.
   
• My friend Dr. Robert A. Cook has often said, “All of us have one routine prayer in our system; and once we get rid of it, then we can really start to pray!” I have noticed this, not only in my own praying, but often when I have conducted prayer meetings. With some people, praying is like putting the needle on a phonograph record and then forgetting about it. But God does not answer insincere prayers.
   
• Jesus' High Priestly Prayer in John 17:1-26 - The Scottish Reformer John Knox had this prayer read to him daily during his last illness. But you would benefit by starting now to read it and meditate on it. What a treasury of truth it is!
   
• When we forgive each other, we are not earning the right to prayer; for the privilege of prayer is a part of our sonship (Rom. 8:15–16). Forgiveness belongs to the matter of fellowship: If I am not in fellowship with God, I cannot pray effectively. But fellowship with my brother helps to determine my fellowship with God; hence, forgiveness is important to prayer.
   
•  John 17 is certainly the “holy of holies” of the Gospel record, and we must approach this chapter in a spirit of humility and worship. To think that we are privileged to listen in as God the Son converses with His Father just as He is about to give His life as a ransom for sinners!
   
• Harvesting is hard work, even when there are many people helping you, but these men were sent into a vast field with very few workers to help them reap a great harvest. Instead of praying for an easier job, they were to pray for more laborers to join them, and we today need to pray that same prayer. (Please note that it is laborers, not spectators, who pray for more laborers! Too many Christians are praying for somebody else to do a job they are unwilling to do themselves.) (Luke 10:2)
   
• Demons even believe in prayer, for they begged Jesus not to send them into the abyss, the place of torment (Mark 5:7; Luke 8:31). It is encouraging to note that the demons did not know what Jesus planned to do. This suggests that Satan can know God’s plans only if God reveals them.
   
• The important thing about prayer is not simply getting an answer, but being the kind of person whom God can trust with an answer.
   
• What “tools” does God use, by His Spirit, to work in our lives? There are three “tools”: the Word of God, prayer, and suffering.
   
• It is not necessary for you to pray for “an anointing of the Spirit”; if you are a Christian, you have already received this special anointing (1Jn 2:27). This anointing “abides in us” and therefore does not need to be imparted to us.
   
• If our prayer life is confused, it is because the mind is confused.
   
• Prayer is not only the utterance of the lips; it is also the desire of the heart.
   
• God leads us into His will through prayer and the working of His Spirit in our hearts. As we pray about a decision, the Spirit speaks to us. An “inner voice” may agree with the leading of circumstances. We are never to follow this “inner voice” alone: we must always test it by the Bible, for it is possible for the flesh (or for Satan) to use circumstances—or “feelings”—to lead us completely astray.
   
• There is no place in the Christian life for lazy, listless routine praying. We must have an alert attitude and be on guard, just like the workers in Nehemiah’s day (Neh. 4:9).
   
• When the believer is yielded to the Spirit, then the Spirit will assist him in his prayer life, and God will answer prayer.
   
• A Christian who has his heart fixed on Christ and is trying to glorify Him is praying constantly even when he is not conscious of it.
   
• In view of television (Ed: And Internet), perhaps every Christian’s prayer ought to be, “Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity” (Ps. 119:37).
   
• Sometimes we try to make our gossip sound “spiritual” by telling people things “so they might pray more intelligently.” (Ed: Or even worse sometimes we simply pray our gossip!)
   
• The Jews looked on the temple primarily as a place of sacrifice, but Jesus saw it as a place of prayer. True prayer is in itself a sacrifice to God (Ps. 141:1–2). Jesus had a spiritual view of the Jewish religion, while the leaders promoted a traditional view that was cluttered with rules and regulations.
   
• In our public praying, we sometimes get so familiar that other people wonder whether we are trying to express our requests or impress the listeners with our nearness to God!
   
• In the Bible and in church history, the people God used were people who prayed.
   
• Our prayers should always include thanksgiving (Col. 4:2). The Christian who is filled with the Spirit, filled with the Word, and watching in prayer will prove it by his attitude of appreciation and thanksgiving to God.
   
• Prayer is not our trying to change God’s mind. It is learning what is the mind of God and asking accordingly (1 John 5:14–15). 
   
• Supplication (is) an earnest sharing of our needs and problems. There is no place for halfhearted, insincere prayer! Supplication is not a matter of carnal energy but of spiritual intensity (Rom. 15:30; Col. 4:12).
   
•  I believe that earnest prayer is the greatest need in our churches today.
   
• Prayer is not telling God what we want and then selfishly enjoying it. Prayer is asking God to use us to accomplish what He wants so that His name is glorified, His kingdom is extended and strengthened, and His will is done. I must test all of my personal requests by these overruling concerns if I expect God to hear and answer my prayers.
   
• Selfish praying erodes our character, but praying in the will of God builds our character.
   
• Sometimes we hear a believer pray, “O Lord, humble me!” That is a dangerous thing to pray. Far better that we humble ourselves before God, confess our sins, weep over them, and turn from them. (Isa 66:2, Ps 34:18)
   
• Sometimes we use prayer as a cloak to hide our true desires. “But I prayed about it!” can be one of the biggest excuses a Christian can use. Instead of seeking God’s will, we tell God what He is supposed to do; and we get angry at Him if He does not obey.
   
• Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary, Bill Moyers, was saying grace at a staff lunch, and the President shouted, “Speak up, Bill! I can’t hear a thing!” Moyers quietly replied, “I wasn’t addressing you, Mr. President.” It is good to remind ourselves that when we pray, we talk to God.
   
• I heard about a church member who prayed long at each prayer meeting and always closed by saying, “And, Lord, take the cobwebs out of my life.” One of the men in the group had gotten weary of hearing this and one night called out, “And, Lord, while you’re at it, kill the spider!”

Alexander Whyte

• The greatest and best talent that God gives to any man or woman in the world is the talent of prayer.
   
• Every kind of prayer, not intercessory prayer only, which is the highest kind of prayer, but all prayer, from the lowest kind to the highest, is impossible in a life of known and allowed sin
   
• “I have known men,” says Goodwin—it must have been himself—“who came to God for nothing else but just to come to Him, they so loved Him. They scorned to soil Him and themselves with any other errand than just purely to be alone with Him in His presence. Friendship is best kept up, even among men, by frequent visits; and the more free and defecate those frequent visits are, and the less occasioned by business, or necessity, or custom they are, the more friendly and welcome they are.”
   
• No prayer!--No faith!--No Christ in the heart. Little prayer!--Little faith!--Little Christ in the heart. Increasing prayer!--Increasing faith!--Increasing Christ in the heart! Much prayer!--Much faith!--Much Christ in the heart! Praying always!--Faith always!--Christ always!
   
• We are tempted to pray before preaching, because we are afraid at the people and at our work; but prayer for ourselves and the people after preaching is much neglected.
   
• You preached today as though you came from the throne of heaven,” a church officer said to Alexander Whyte one Lord’s Day. Whyte quietly replied, “Maybe I did.”
   
• Prayer is the only way to amend your life: and without prayer, it will never be mended.
   
• The greatest and best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer.
   
• If you find your life of prayer to be always so short, and so easy, and so spiritual, as to be without cost and strain and sweat to you, you may depend upon it, you have not yet begun to pray.
   
• Admit sin, and you banish prayer. But, on the other hand, entertain, and encourage, and practice prayer, and sin will sooner or later flee before it.
   
• Prayer is a rising up and a drawing near to God in mind and in heart, and in spirit.
   
• If you would move me with your preaching, or with your praying, or with your singing, first be moved yourself.
   
• No man's prayer is acceptable with God whose life is not well pleasing before God.
   
• I am as certain as I am standing here, that the secret of much mischief to our own souls, and to the souls of others, lies in the way that we stint, and starve, and scamp our prayers, by hurrying over them.
   
• Prayer worth calling prayer, prayer that God will call true prayer and will treat as true prayer, takes for more time by the clock than one man in a thousand thinks.

William Wilberforce

• Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.
   
• Of all things, guard against neglecting God in the secret place of prayer.
   
• I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.

Kenneth L Wilson

• To pray “in Jesus’ name” means to pray in his spirit, in his compassion, in his love, in his outrage, in his concern. In other words, it means to pray a prayer that Jesus himself might pray.

George Whitefield

• Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer.
   
• Be humble, talk little, think and pray much.
   
• My prayer today is that God would make me an extraordinary Christian.
   
• The true believer can no more live without prayer, than without food day by day.
   
• You might as reasonably expect to find a living man without breath, as a true Christian without the spirit of prayer and supplication.
   
• Believers keep up and maintain their walk with God by secret prayer. The spirit of grace is always accompanied with the spirit of supplication. It is the very breath of the new creature, the fan of the divine life, whereby the spark of holy fire, kindled in the soul by God, is not only kept in, but raised into a flame.

John Greenleaf Whittier

• Every chain that spirits wear
  Crumbles in the breath of prayer.

David Wilkerson

• Blessed are those who believe when there is no evidence of an answer to prayer.

Octavius Winslow

• Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life.
   
• God is near at hand when you do approach Him in prayer. Oh, comforting truth! A God at hand to hear the softest breath of prayer-to listen to every confession of sin-to every cry of need-to every utterance of sorrow-to every wail of woe-to every appeal for counsel, strength, and support. Arise, O my soul! and give yourself to prayer; for God is near at hand to hear and answer you.

Samuel Marinus Zwemer

• The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.
   
• Prayer is the gymnasium of the soul.
   
• Prayer is self-discipline. The effort to realize the presence and power of God stretches the sinews of the soul and hardens its muscles. To pray is to grow in grace. To tarry in the presence of the King leads to new loyalty and devotion on the part of the faithful subjects. Christian character grows in the secret-place of prayer.

Huldrych Zwingli

• If we grow wiser and more learned in our intercourse with wise and learned persons, how much more will we gain in our inner life by communing with God in prayer.

 

 God bestows many things on us out of his liberality, even without our asking for them. But that he wishes to bestow certain things on us at our asking is for the sake of our good, that we may acquire confidence in having recourse to God, and that we may recognize in him the Author of our goods.
           SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

          

    

God puts his ear so closely down to your lips that he can hear your faintest whisper. It is not God away off up yonder; it is God away down here, close up—so close up that when you pray to him, it is more a whisper than a kiss.
           THOMAS DE WITT TALMAGE

God’s way of answering the Christian’s prayer for more patience, experience, hope, and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.
RICHARD CECIL

He who does not pray when the sun shines will not know how to pray when the clouds roll in.
 He who fails to pray does not cheat God. He cheats himself.
           GEORGE FAILING

He who labors as he prays, lifts his heart to God with his hands.
           BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
 

 I don’t want to keep a prayer list but to pray, nor agonize to find your will but to obey.
           JOSEPH BAYLY

Good prayers never come creeping home. I am sure I shall receive either what I ask or what I should ask.
           JOSEPH HALL

I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.
           ANGELINA GRIMKÉ

God fills our heart with peace when we pour out our heart to Him.

 

         

If you can beat the devil in the matter of regular daily prayer, you can beat him anywhere. If he can beat you there, he can possibly beat you anywhere.
           PAUL DANIEL RADER

In the morning prayer is the key that opens to us the treasures of God’s mercies and blessings; in the evening, it is the key that shuts us up under his protection and safeguard.
Anonymous

t is not that prayer changes God, or awakens in him purposes of love and compassion that he has not already felt. No, it changes us, and therein lies its glory and its purpose.
HANNAH HURNARD

Jesus often retired to deserted places to pray. We see him spending nights in prayer. When you visit the Holy Land and see the places he prayed, you realize that it took a significant effort for him to get there. He had to leave the crowds that were beginning to inundate him. And it was work to climb a mountain to pray. The Mount of Transfiguration is a difficult mountain to climb.
JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT

More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Most of us have much trouble praying when we are in little trouble, but we have little trouble praying when we are in much trouble.
RICHARD P. COOK

Neglect of prayer is a guarantee that we will not be victors.
RICHARD OWEN ROBERTS

No one can say his prayers are poor prayers when he is using the language of love.
JOHN MAILLARD

No prayer of adoration will ever soar higher than a simple cry: “I love you, God.”
LOUIS CASSELS

In the life of Jesus, prayer was the work and ministry was the prize. For me, prayer serves as preparation for the battle, but for Jesus, it was the battle itself. Having prayed, He went about His ministry as an honor student might go to receive a reward, or as a marathon runner, having run the race, might accept the gold medal.
            HADDON ROBINSON

Our prayer and God’s mercy are like two buckets in a well; while the one ascends the other descends.
           MARK HOPKINS 

           
 

Ponder for a moment what great crises would face you if tomorrow all your prayers were answered.
           FRANCES J. ROBERTS
     
Pray devoutly, but hammer stoutly. Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.
           THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Prayer is battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer.
           ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Prayer is not a lazy substitute for work. It is not a shortcut to skill or knowledge. And sometimes God delays the answer to our prayer in final form until we have time to build up the strength, accumulate the knowledge, or fashion the character that would make it possible for him to say yes to what we ask.
           SAMUEL PEPYS

Prayer is not something we do at a specific time, but something we do all the time.
RICHARD OWEN ROBERTS

Prayer is putting oneself under God’s influence.
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK

Prayer is the breath of the newborn soul, and there can be no Christian life without it.
Rowland Hill 

Prayer is the link between finite man and the infinite purposes of God.....To pray in the truest sense means to put our lives into total conformity with what God desires.
Pat Robertson

In my thinking, the "prayer of faith" cannot be prayed simply at will. It is given of God in certain cases to serve His purpose and to accomplish His sovereign will.
George Sweeting.

Prayer is weakness leaning on omnipotence.
W. S. Bowden

Prayer moves the arm which moves the world,
And brings salvation down.
James Montgomery

Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue.
Adam Clarke 

Prayer serves as an edge and border to preserve the web of life from unraveling.
Robert Hall

Quiet waiting before the Lord in prayer will give him a chance to change your mood. The situation may not change, but you will have changed for the better in spite of the situation.
           ROBERT A. COOK 
     
Some of our shortest prayers are our most effectual ones.
V R Edman

Some people are greedy even when they pray: they expect a thousand-dollar answer to a one-minute prayer.

Take prayer out of the world, and it is as if you had torn asunder the bond that binds humanity to God and had struck dumb the tongue of the child in the presence of his Father.
Gustav T Fechner

The good unask’d, in mercy grant;
The ill, though ask’d, deny.
James Merrick

The holy time is quiet
Breathless with adoration
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea;
Listen!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The immediate person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate person uses many words and makes demands in his prayer; the true man of prayer only attends.
           SØREN AABYE KIERKEGAARD 

The man who says his prayers in the evening is a captain posting his sentries. After that, he can sleep.
           CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

More like Jesus when I pray,
More like Jesus day by day
May I rest me by His side,
Where the tranquil waters glide
Fanny Crosby

No greater help and care is given 
To others  in  their  need
Than when we bear them up in prayer 
And for them intercede.
 - Dennis J. De Haan

        

There is a divine principle in regard to prayer which runs all through the Scriptures. It is that God is pleased to unite His people with Himself in whatever He is about to do. He first of all leads them to pray, and then does what He intends in answer to their prayers.
            RUSSELL ELLIOTT

David Watson notes that “Prayer has always been a primary mark of the saints of God in every generation of the church. George Whitefield, who retired punctually at ten p.m. every night, rose equally promptly at four a.m. in order to pray.

The world is full of faces, black with anger, green with envy, and red with shame, which could be made radiantly white with holiness and spirituality, aglow by the transfiguring power of prayer.
SAMUEL HENRY PRICE

To God we use the simplest, shortest words we can find because eloquence is only air and noise to him.
           FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON

To pray is to expose the shores of the mind to the incoming tide of God.
           RALPH WASHINGTON SOCKMAN 

Nothing can so quickly cancel the frictions of life as prayer. If you find yourself growing angry at someone, pray for him—anger cannot live in an atmosphere of prayer.
            WILLIAM T MCELROY

To spend an hour worrying on our knees is not prayer. Indeed, there are times when it is our duty, having committed a problem to God in prayer, to stop praying and to trust and to do the necessary work to arrive at a solution.
           OLIVER BARCLAY

To suppose that God could not care for each of us because there are so many people in the world is to place upon him human limitations; but, let us remember, he is God, not man! If he knows our need and seeks to help us, we do not have to give him information, but we do need through prayer to place ourselves in an attitude to be helped.
           GEORGIA HARKNESS 

God may turn his ears from prattling prayers, or preaching prayers, but never from penitent, believing prayers.
William S. Plumer

True prayer is born out of brokenness.
Frances J Roberts

"Give to the winds thy fears, and be thou undismayed;
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears—God shall lift up thy head."
Paul Gerhardt
 

When I can neither see, nor hear, nor speak, still I can pray so that God can hear. When I finally pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I expect to pass through it in conversation with him.
SIR WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL

When you cannot pray as you would, pray as you can.
           EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN

You will find in your “closet of prayer” what you frequently lose when you are out in the world. The more you visit it, the more you will want to return. If you are faithful to your secret place, it will become your closest friend and bring you much comfort. The tears shed there bring cleansing.
Thomas A Kempis 

Praying without faith is like shooting without a bullet; it makes a noise but does no execution.
Francis Burkitt

The man who prays without faith has a radical defect in his character.
H. W. Fulford

The prayer of faith is the only power in the universe to which the great Jehovah yields.
Robert Hall

Many a person is praying for rain with his tub the wrong side up.
Sam Jones

We lie to God in prayer if we do not rely on him afterwards.
Robert Leighton

Faith is the fountain of prayer, and prayer should be nothing else but faith exercised.
Thomas Manton

What an excellent ground of hope and confidence we have when we reflect upon these three things in prayer—the Father’s love, the Son’s merit and the Spirit’s power!
Thomas Manton

All the storehouses of God are open to the voice of faith in prayer.
D. M. McIntyre

Large asking and large expectation on our part honor God.
A. L. Stone

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
 

By fasting, the body learns to obey the soul; by praying the soul learns to obey the body.
William Secker

Fasting is calculated to bring a note of urgency and importance into our praying, and to give force to our pleading in the court of heaven. The man who prays with fasting is giving heaven notice that he is truly in earnest.
Arthur Wallis

Few disciplines go against the flesh and the mainstream of culture as this one.
Donald S. Whitney

Prayer comes from God and … all the time God is training us to pray.
lain H. Murray

Ten minutes spent in the presence of Christ every day, aye, two minutes, will make the whole day different."
Henry Drummond

One can form a habit of study until the will seems to be at rest and only the intellect is engaged, the will having retired altogether from exercise. This is not true of real praying. If the affections are laggard, cold, indifferent, if the intellect is furnishing no material to clothe the petition with imagery and fervor, the prayer is a mere vaporing of intellectual exercise, nothing being accomplished worth while.
Homer W. Hodge

Never tell me of a humble heart where I see a stubborn knee.
Thomas Adams

The life of prayer shapes the unity of Christian morality.
Carl F H Henry

Before the Great War there were many signs of a new interest in PRAYER and new hope from its exercise. How these signs have multiplied is known to every one. This one thing at least that is good the War has done for us already. Let us not miss our opportunity. Prayer is not an easy exercise. It requires encouragement, exposition, and training. There never was a time when men and women were more sincerely anxious to be told how to pray. Prayer is the mightiest instrument in our armory, and if we are to use it as God has given the encouragement, we must do everything in our power to bring it into exercise.
James Hastings.

The secret of all failure is our failure in secret prayer.
The Kneeling Christian

Most of modern man’s troubles stem from too much time on his hands and not enough on his knees.
Ivern Boyett

Whoever only speaks of God, but never or seldom to God, easily leases body and soul to idols. The Christian thus places his whole future in jeopardy by a stunted prayer life.
CARL F. H. HENRY

Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dealing in generalities is the death of prayer.
J. H. Evans

Leave not off praying to God; for either praying will make thee leave off sinning, or continuing in sin will make thee desist from praying.
Thomas Fuller

Prayer is never an excuse for laziness.
Gerald B. Griffiths

Satan rocks the cradle when we sleep at our devotions.
Joseph Hall

A heap of unmeaning words only smothers the words of devotion.
J. Hamilton

The sin of failing to come to God in prayer is one of the most common offences a Christian commits.
Simon J. Kistemaker

Knowing that intercessory prayer is our mightiest weapon and the supreme call for all Christians today, I pleadingly urge our people everywhere to pray. Believing that prayer is the greatest contribution that our people can make in this critical hour, I humbly urge that we take time to pray—to really pray. Let there be prayer at sunup, at noonday, at sundown, at midnight—all through the day. Let us all pray for our children, our youth, our aged, our pastors, our homes. Let us pray for our churches. Let us pray for ourselves, that we may not lose the word ‘concern’ out of our Christian vocabulary. Let us pray for our nation. Let us pray for those who have never known Jesus Christ and redeeming love, for moral forces everywhere, for our national leaders. Let prayer be our passion. Let prayer be our practice.
Robert E. Lee

If we be empty and poor, it is not because God’s hand is straitened, but ours is not opened.
Thomas Manton

When we make self the end of prayer, it is not worship but self-seeking.
Thomas Manton

Prayer is not a way to get what we want but the way to become what God wants.

Means without prayer is presumption. Prayer without means is tempting God.
Al Martin

Saying prayers without praying is blasphemy.
Brownlow North

The very breath of prayer sustains the Christian life.
Carl F H Henry

We may as well not pray at all as offer our prayers in a lifeless manner.
William S. Plumer

Satan is far more anxious to keep us off our knees than he is to keep us off our feet!
Ivor Powell

Sincerity is the prime requisite in every approach to the God who requires ‘truth in the inward parts’ and who hates all hypocrisy, falsehood and deceit.
Geoffrey B. Wilson

Pray, and then start answering your prayer.
Deane Edwards

None can pray well but he that lives well.
Thomas Fuller

If you find yourself loving any pleasure better than your prayers, any book better than the Bible, any persons better than Christ, or any indulgence better than the hope of heaven--take alarm.
Thomas Guthrie 

The Book of Common Prayer is a guide to intercession and worship which contains a marvelous prayer for internalizing the Bible: “Blessed Lord, Who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them (cp meditate on), that, by patience and comfort of Thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen." (Ref)

Honest dealing becomes us when we kneel in God’s pure presence.
David McIntyre

He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.
John Owen

If we are not right, our prayers cannot be.
James Philip

It is what we are when we pray our prayers that counts with God.
James Philip

The cardinal element in true prayer is no mere outward ritual but the inward, moral state of the one who prays.
James Philip

Where there is no vision of eternity, there is no prayer for the perishing.
David Smithers

Every prayer should begin with the confession that our lips are unclean.
Friedrich Tholuck

Philipp Melancthon

Trouble and perplexity drive us to prayer, and prayer driveth away trouble and perplexity.

Many of us cannot reach the mission fields on our feet, but we can reach them on our knees.
T. J. Bach

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the spirit of the world.
Karl Barth

The highest attitude in prayer is not desire nor aspiration nor praise. It is surrender. In surrender we open our whole being to God as a flower opens itself to the sun, and we are filled, up to our measure, with His divine energy. It is because man can be filled with the fullness of God that he has been chosen of God as His instrument in the world.

W M Clow

The principal cause of my leanness and unfruitfulness is owing to an unaccountable backwardness to pray. I can write or read or converse or hear with a ready heart; but prayer is more spiritual and inward than any of these, and the more spiritual any duty is the more my carnal heart is apt to start from it.
RICHARD NEWTON

Prayer is not something to be added after other approaches in our search for the will of God have been tried and have failed. No, we should pray as we use the personal resources God has given us.
T. B. MASTON

Did any of you, parents, ever hear your child wake from sleep with some panic fear and shriek the mother's name through the darkness? Was not that a more powerful appeal than all words? And, depend upon it, that the soul which cries aloud on God, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," though it have "no language but a cry," will never call in vain.
ALEXANDER MACLAREN

What is the life of a Christian but a life of prayer?
David Brown

The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.
Richard Cecil

Our prayer and God's mercy are like two buckets in a well; while one ascends, the other descends.
Arthur Hopkins

To speak for God to men is a sacred and responsible task. To speak for men to God is not less responsible and is more solemn.
Robert Dabney

Let us advance upon our knees.
JOHN HARDY NEESIMA

Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
Thomas Fuller

Prayer is the breath of the new-born soul, and there can be no Christian life without it.
Rowland Hill

ince the Holy Spirit makes intercession for the infirmed saints according to God's will, who are we to pray any other way? (Ro 8:22-27).
George Sweeting.

Men of God are always men of prayer.
Henry T. Mahan

Prayer is not manipulating God to get what we want but discovering what He wants us to do, and then asking the Holy Spirit to enable us to do His will.
V C Grounds

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy.
Novalis

I had rather learn what some men really judge about their own justification from their prayers than their writings.
John Owen

The function of prayer is to set God at the center of attention.
Albert Edward Day

If we can bring our woes before God in prayer we have done the best possible thing.
William S. Plumer

Satan is far more anxious to keep us off our knees than he is to keep us off our feet.
Ivor Powell

What is the reason that some believers are so much brighter and holier than others? I believe the difference, in nineteen cases out of twenty, arises from different habits about private prayer. I believe that those who are not eminently holy pray little, and those who are eminently holy pray much.

Sir Walter Raleigh one day asking a favor from Queen Elizabeth, the latter said to him, 'Raleigh, when will you leave off begging?' To which he answered, 'When your Majesty leaves off giving.' Ask great things of God. Expect great things from God. Let his past goodness make us 'instant in prayer.'" (Ro 12:12KJV)

Prayer is the world in tune.
Henry Vaughan

If we ever forget our basic charter—‘My house is a house of prayer’—we might as well shut the church doors.
James S. Stewart

A prayerless man is a careless man.
William W. Tiptaft

I want to be begging mercy every hour.
William Tiptaft

A prayerless Christian should be a nonexistent species.
Geoff Treasure

It is significant that there is no record of the Lord teaching his disciples how to preach; but he took time to teach them how to pray and how not to pray.
L A T Van Dooren

The language of prayer is forged in the crucible of trouble. When we can’t help ourselves and call for help, when we don’t like where we are and want out, when we don’t like who we are and want a change, we use primal language, and this language becomes the root language of prayer.
Eugene Peterson

Prayer should be fundamental, not supplemental.
William J. C. White

 

Lay no weight on the quantity of your prayers; that is to say, how long or how many they are. These things avail nothing with God, by whom prayers are not measured, but weighed.
Thomas Boston

God does not, it seems to us, frequently yield up his blessing to us till we have spent a reasonable length of time in his presence.
Maurice Roberts

Time spent with God in the secret place is never the cause of spiritual inefficiency.
Maurice Roberts

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness or else forgiving another.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER

Prayer is the rope up in the belfry; we pull it, and it rings the bell up in heaven.
Christmas Evans

The man who kneels to God can stand up to anything.
Louis H. Evans

Prayer moves the Hand which moves the world.
JOHN A. WALLACE

Prayer is the key to heaven’s treasures.
John Gerhard

Prayer is the sovereign remedy.
Robert Hall

Within God’s limitations prayer is unlimited.
E. F. Hallock

Prayer is the slender sinew that moves the muscle of omnipotence.
J. Edwin Hartill

Depend upon it, if you are bent on prayer, the devil will not leave you alone. He will molest you, tantalize you, block you, and will surely find some hindrances, big or little or both. And we sometimes fail because we are ignorant of his devices…I do not think he minds our praying about things if we leave it at that. What he minds, and opposes steadily, is the prayer that prays on until it is prayed through, assured of the answer.
Mary Warburton Booth

I had rather stand against the cannons of the wicked than against the prayers of the righteous.
Thomas Lye

I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space; but I can go away to my room and in prayer get nearer to God and heaven than I can when assisted by all the telescopes of earth.
Isaac Newton

When prayers are strongest, mercies are nearest.
Edward Reynolds

The prayers of the Christian are secret, but their effect cannot be hidden.
Howard Chandler Robbins

I know no blessing so small as to be reasonably expected without prayer, nor any so great but may be obtained by it.
Robert South

Time spent on the knees in prayer will do more to remedy heart strain and nerve worry than anything else.
George D. Stewart

God’s timing - God does not depend on our time. Our time is chronological and linear but God....is timeless. He will act at the fullness of His time. Our prayer....may not necessarily rush God into action, but....places us before Him in fellowship.
Samuel Enyia

The power of prayer consists in the knowledge that God is our God.
Friedrich Tholuck

The strongest knees are those which bend most easily.
Mary S. Wood

Theology and prayer are inextricably intertwined.
Richard Bewes

God loves to be consulted.
Charles Bridges

Prayer is the barometer of the church.
Thomas V. Moore

All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God, not a multitude of words heaped together.
Stephen Charnock

True prayer is rooted in the promises and covenants of God, in his past achievements, in his ability to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.
Bob Cotton

Prayer is receiving what God has promised.
E. F. Hallock

Intercession is truly universal work for the Christian. No place is closed to intercessory prayer. No continent - no nation - no organization - no city - no office. There is no power on earth that can keep intercession out.
Richard Halverson

We are to pray only for what God has promised, and for the communication of it unto us in that way whereby he will work it and effect it.
John Owen

Believing prayer never asks more than is promised.
William S. Plumer

The reason why we obtain no more in prayer is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.
Richard Alleine

Prayer’s perplexities are most often camouflaged discoveries, there for the making.
Donald Cranefield

I have learned that God’s silence to my questions is not a door slammed in my face. I may not have the answers—but I do have him.
Dave Dravecky

Prayer is warfare. Just getting there is half the battle. Staying there is the other half.

God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.
George Washington Carver

God has not always answered my prayers. If he had, I would have married the wrong man—several times!
Ruth Bell Graham

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
Jean Ingelow

How good is God to deny us mercies in mercy!
William Jenkyn

If you can’t pray a door open, don’t pry it open.
Lyell Rader

What God sovereignly decrees in eternity, men will always demand in time.
Anon.

Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living, the text of the new life sermon, the girding on of the armor for battle, the pilgrim's preparation for his journey; and it must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.
Anon

[About Praying (John) Hyde] He prayed as if God were at his elbow.
Anon

God’s sovereignty does not negate our responsibility to pray, but rather makes it possible to pray with confidence.
Jerry Bridges

We ask what we think to be best; God gives what he knows to be best.
William Burkitt

God answers only the requests which he inspires.
Ralph A. Herring

Did not God sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, we should be ruined at our own request.
Hannah More

In prayer, while we seek in appearance to bend God’s will to ours, we are in reality bringing our will to his.
J. M. Neale

Don’t pray to escape trouble. Don’t pray to be comfortable in your emotions. Pray to do the will of God in every situation. Nothing else is worth praying for.
Samuel Shoemaker