Prayer Quotes

In the act of prayer, in praying to God, we restore our mental health.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Comin' in on a rim and a prayer - trying to get to where love is.

- Joni Mitchell

Pray, and let God worry.

-Anonymous

Life's short. Pray hard.

-Anonymous

If only there were

evil people somewhere

insidiously committing evil deeds

and it were necessary only

to separate them

from the rest of us

and destroy them.

But the line

dividing good and evil

cuts through the heart

of every human being.

And who is willing

to destroy

a piece of his own heart?

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(as quoted in "Humans" by Robert J. Sawyer)

A PRAYER FOR LEARNING FROM PAIN

My wounds may heal, but my scars may never fade.

Help me to embrace them, not despise them.

Teach me how to live with my scars,

how to tend to them,

how to learn from them.

Remind me that I have the power to turn my curses into blessings,

my shame into pride,

my sadness into strength,

my pain into compassion.

- Anonymous

Spread over me

the shelter of your peace,

that I might reside there,

through this journey

of sadness and pain

that I might some day

find the strength to return

to life and its blessings.

- David Feldt

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.

- Leonard Ravenhill

Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God.

- Andrew Murray

There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying.

-John G. Lake

I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.

- John Wesley

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.

- Abraham Lincoln

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.

-Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Wishing will never be a substitute for prayer.

-Ed Cole

One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.

-Catherine Marshall

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

-William Law

When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't pray, they don't.

-William Temple

Pray, and let God worry.

- Martin Luther

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.

- Phillips Brooks

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

-Teresa of Avila

Why is it so important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you "my beloved daughter," "my beloved son," "my beloved child." To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being.

-Henri Nouwen

So when we sing, 'Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,' we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.

-A.W. Tozer

The lover of silence draws close to God. He talks to Him in secret and God enlightens him.

-John Climacus

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell God your troubles, that God may comfort you; tell God your joys, that God may sober them; tell God your longings, that God may purify them; tell God your dislikes, that God may help you conquer them; talk to God of your temptations, that God may shield you from them: show God the wounds of your heart, that God may heal them. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. Talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration say just what you think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.

-Francois Fenelon

God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

- Oswald Chambers

Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your daily occupation -- speak, act, work in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.

-François Fénelon

God does not stand afar off as I struggle to speak. He cares enough to listen with more than casual attention. He translates my scrubby words and hears what is truly inside. He hears my sighs and uncertain gropings as fine prose.

-Timothy Jones

There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.

-Brother Lawrence