Why Pray ?

Categories: Brother to Brother.

May 26, 2016 // By:Dave // 2 comments

 Eph 6:18 Tells us to pray in the Spirit at all times an on every occasion. 1 Thess 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing.
prayerOf all the languages spoken on this Earth, only one allows for communication between the creation and the Creator: that is prayer. As unique and empowering as prayer is, so few people actually participate in the privilege and experience of talking to and hearing from our God. Why?
Doesn’t prayer fit into our drive-through, my-way, instant gratification, captain of our own destiny lifestyle ?
Prayer is not about saying a blessing over a meal, nor is it about rubbing the bottle to coax the Genie out for three wishes. It’s about plugging into the plan and heartbeat of the loving Creator and asking for empowerment to trust Him to transform us into something a little more like His Son so we can plug-in more and be used more.
Rather than tossing a bunch of verses regarding prayer, or developing a three point sermon with five “in summaries” at the end, I thought I would try something perhaps more on the inspirational angle:
Below is a compilation of quotes on the topic of prayer and worship from numerous individuals (some more famous than others). I hope one of these quotes inspires you to spend more time with God.
  • “Prayer is not a check request asking for things from God. It is a deposit slip – a way of depositing God’s character into our bankrupt souls.” – Dutch Sheets
  • “Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for.” – John Piper
  • “There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying.” – John G. Lake
  • “You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day. – Fredrik Wisloff
  • “Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” – Corrie Ten Boom
  • “Work as if you were to live a hundred years, pray as if you were to die tomorrow.” – Benjamin Franklin
  • “Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.” – Jaques Ellul
  • “In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” – John Bunyan
  • “Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude — an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God.” – Arthur Pink
  • “There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightul that that of a continual conversation with God.” qqq- Brother Lawrence
  • “God warms his hands at man’s heart when he prays.” – John Masefield
  • “Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together. Never do they love one another so well as when they witness the outpouring of each other’s hearts in prayer.” – Charles Finney
  • “In worship, God imparts himself to us.” – C. S. Lewis
  • “God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil.” – E. M. Bounds
  • “It is possible to move men, through God, by prayer alone.” – Hudson Taylor
  • “To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.” – Billy Graham
  • “Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.” – Oswald Chambers
  • “Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God’s voice is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.” – Andrew Murray
  • “Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation — and for me the most important part is listening to God’s replies.” – Frank C. Laubach
  • “Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.” – J. Sidlow Baxter
  • “God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.” – Oswald Chambers
  • “The supreme thing is worship. The attitude of worship is the attitude of a subject bent before the King… The fundamental thought is that of prostration, of bowing down.” – Campbell Morgan
  • “Learn to worship God as the God who does wonders, who wishes to prove in you that He can do something supernatural and divine.” – Andrew Murray
  • “All I know is that when I pray, coincidences happen; and when I don’t pray, they don’t happen.” – Dan Hayes
  • “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
  • “I have lived to thank God that not all my prayers have been answered.” – Jean Ingelow
  • “Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.” – Hannah More

Here are a few from Charles Stanley:

  • “We are either in the process of resisting God’s truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth.” – Charles Stanley
  • “Since God knows our future, our personalities, and our capacity to listen, He isn’t ever going to say more to us than we can deal with at the moment.” – Charles Stanley
  • “An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate.” – Charles Stanley
  • “To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God’s responses.” – Charles Stanley
  • “If we rationalize our problems when He points them out, we will spend less and less time meditating because we won’t want to face God in that area of our lives. – Charles Stanley

 

  • “Praying in faith is not an inner conviction that God will act according to our desires if only we believe hard enough.  It involves believing that God will always respond to our prayers in accord with his nature, his purposes, and his promises.” – Alvin Vander Griend
  • “Prayer is essentially the expression of our heart longing for love.  It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, to be united with God as fully as possible.” – Jeffrey D. Imbach (Recovery of Love)
  • “Like all good things, prayer requires some discipline. Yet I believe that life with God should seem more like friendship than duty. Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation. In other words, prayer has features in common with all relationships that matter.” – Philip Yancey
  • “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.” – Abraham Lincoln
  • “The third petition of the Lord’s Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone’s will be done but their own.” – Aldous Huxley
  • “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.” – Corrie Ten Boom
  • “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 task.” – Phillip Brooks
  • “One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.” – Catherine Marshall
  • “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” – Corrie Ten Boom
  • “Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan.” – John Bunyan
  • “Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God.” – Andrew Murray

 

Take time to plug-in to God.

Nothing of value can be done without Him, and nothing of value is exactly what is done without Him.

in His service, Dave Cadieux

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Comments (2) | Leave a comment

  1. Love these quotes about prayer! Many are thought provoking and give a good perspective. I am starting to realize prayer is so much more that what I thought it was and you brought that out very well in this blog! Thanks for sharing!!

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