Prayer Quotes

People’s love for us may change, depending on what we do or don’t do to please them. But God’s does not—it’s everlasting.

~ Stormie Omartian

The battle for our lives, and the lives of our children, our husbands, our friends, our families, & our nation, is waged on our knees.

~ Stormie Omartian

There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are 'death' - a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance. Note how common this theme is in the Psalms. If we need help in meditation we can turn to scriptural texts that express this profound distress of man in his nothingness and his total need of God. Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light - he hears us, answers our prayer, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require - if only by giving us more faith to believe that he can and will help us in his own time. This is already a sufficient answer.

~ Thomas Merton

What is grace? I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella.

~ Tom Junod

The battle for our lives, and the lives of our children, our husbands, our friends, our families, and our nation, is waged on our knees.

~ Stormie Omartian

If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.

~ Phillips Brooks

When we say to people, 'I will pray for you,' we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God's heart has become one with ours.

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

Whenever you can’t balance what you see with what you believe you have conflict.

~ Shannon L. Alder

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.

~ Ole Hallesby

Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.There are no bended knees in Atheism;No supplications, no prayers;No sacrificial redemptions;No 'divine' revelations;No washing in the blood of the lamb;No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;No christs, and no saviors;No devils, no ghosts and no gods.

~ Joseph Lewis

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dull pray, the geniuses are light mockers.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.

~ Evelyn Underhill

Prayer is a many fingeredand kaleidoscopic thing—it foldsand unfolds inside of you. It entersthe many rooms you cannot enter.

~ Cecilia Llompart

Our prayers are granted as soon as we have prayed, even though the process of fulfilling our requests has not yet begun.

~ Thomas Goodwin

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.

~ Ole Hallesby

I beg you, help me, in angelic charity,Pray my efforts will reflect your mastery!

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Laughter and prayer are the two noblest habits of man, they mark us off from the brutes.

~ Christopher Morley

Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts.

~ William James

To try to pray is to pray. You can't fail at it. It's the only human endeavor I can think of where trying is doing. Reaching out is holding on. Joining in is letting go.

~ Rick Hamlin

God's fundamental goal for believers is not to protect us from harm or suffering, to make us comfortable, or to benefit from our service. You can biblically sum up God's primary aim for your whole life in one uncomfortable word: change. Ironic as it may sound, change is the one constant that God purposes for every believer, regardless of circumstances - whether you are in ministry or in a secular job, married or single, healthy or handicapped, chronically ill or terminally diseased. God's immediate and ongoing purpose for every Christian in time and on earth is to change us, to make us like Himself, to conform us to the image of His Son.

~ Layton Talbert

The person who knows Christ best is the person who will pray best.

~ Thomas Goodwin

For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself?

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

There will be times in your life when you want to pray but feel so far from God that prayer seems impossible. The flesh will tell you that God is against you, that you have gone too far and that He is no longer interested in you. But faith defies the flesh. It contradicts Satan’s lies. It rises up against defeat, gloom, and despair and finds hope in God.

~ Colin S. Smith

When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.

~ Thomas Goodwin

In most cases, verbal prayer alone does not change anything; when actions are branded with prayer, wonderful things happen. Actions alone do not make it as well; they lead to success when guided to labour by answered prayers. Pray and work!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Lord, make me less like Jonah and more like Jesus. Save me from being the kind of person who cares more about my comfort, my reputation, and my success than I do about the people You are calling me to serve. Help me to keep all of my dreams on Your altar and be ready at all times to respond with faith and obedience to Your call.

~ Colin S. Smith

Prayers and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.

~ Thomas Mann

How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here?

~ Jonathan Edwards

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of “Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss:~ God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my tongue and in my tasting. God be in my lips and in my greeting.~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling. God be in my ears and in my hearing. God be in my neck and in my humbling. God be in my shoulders and in my bearing. God be in my back and in my standing. ~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving. God be in my hands and in my working. God be in my legs and in my walking. God be in my feet and in my grounding. God be in my knees and in my relating.~ God be in my gut and in my feeling. God be in my bowels and in my forgiving. God be in my loins and in my swiving. God be in my lungs and in my breathing. God be in my heart and in my loving.~ God be in my skin and in my touching. God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining. God be in my blood and in my living. God be in my bones and in my dying. God be at my end and at my reviving.

~ Caroline Myss

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been born in God's thought, and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.This is a prayer of contentment

~ C.s. Lewis

My child, I am the Lord Who gives strength in the day of trouble. Come to Me when all is not well with you. Your tardiness in turning to prayer is the greatest obstacle to heavenly consolation, for before you pray earnestly to Me you first seek many comforts and take pleasure in outward things. Thus, all things are of little profit to you until you realize that I am the one Who saves those who trust in Me, and that outside of Me there is no worth-while help, or any useful counsel or lasting remedy.

~ Thomas À Kempis

Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion.

~ Thomas Aquinas

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.[Lincoln's maxim and philosophy]

~ Abraham Lincoln

A Strange Prayer:Dear Lord, I, the self searching illusion, has seen and experienced the outer world:relationships,success and failure,true friends, strangers and backbiters.I lived the different emotionsduring different seasons;I witnessed ups & downs,enjoyed love & hate,was good & bad,faced beauty & ugliness.There were times when I was brave,there were times when I was a coward.There were times when I was proactive,there were times when I was indecisive.After, flying high in the skies,and yet being a loser...After, being nothing & no one,and yet feeling content..I have understood the differencebetween lust and love,happiness and sadness,selfishness and selflessness.One often leads to another;another secretly carries the one!Yet I am lostbetween being and becoming.An inner voice admits thatmy heart is an unexplored realm,my mind is a prisoner to my wishful thinking,and the soul is unknown to me.Setting that unknown free... now, this is my heartiest wish.As Saurabh Sharma,the human being,Ialwayspray to thee, O lord, set me free.I don't want love,I don't want to be loved;I want myself to be love itself now.That beautiful, silent and divine existence...!I want to get merged into that.Please give me wisdom and courage; Merge me into your supreme kingdom by setting my soul free.

~ Saurabh Sharma

Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

Taking actions will fulfill your dreams and wishes, not the prayers and blessings.

~ Amit Kalantri

Lincoln had entirely outgrown juvenile delight in religious argument. Talking with God seemed to the mature Lincoln more important than talking about Him.

~ Elton Trueblood

Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.

~ Mark Batterson

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

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen