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jenevive's art connection PRAYER QUOTES
A prayer may be crystallized in a tear. A tear is enough water to float a desire to God. 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. 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. The Christian should work as if all depended on him, and pray as if it all depended on God. No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me. 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. 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. Only that prayer which comes from our heart can get to God's heart. 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. I could as soon think of living without eating or living without breathing, as living without prayer. 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 managed 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. 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. Prayer is the autograph of the Holy Ghost upon the renewed heart. 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. 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. 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. The best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything else but a cry. A man scarcely needs to be reminded that he must breathe. It is essential to his very life that he should breathe. And it is essential to our spiritual life that we should pray. I never thought it necessary to prepare a discourse to exhort you to eat, neither ought it to be necessary to exhort Christians to pray. It should be to you an instinct of your new nature, as natural to your spiritual being as a good appetite is to a man in health. There should be a holy hunger and thirst to pray. And the soul never prays so well as when it is reminded, not by the hour of the day or night, but by its real needs, and when it resorts to its place of private prayer, not because it thinks it ought, but because it feels that it must, and shall, and will go there, and is delighted at the privilege of having communion with its God. 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? CLICK HERE FOR MORE QUOTES & POETRY
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