QUOTE AND VERSES
SOME QUOTES TO THINK ABOUT
"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."
Abraham Lincoln
"God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely."
Anselm of Canterbury
"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
"Prayers do shape the future in ways different from what would have been the case had no prayers been uttered. And this is because of the kind of God to whom the prayers are spoken. .... God is open to taking new directions and changing courses in view of the interaction between God and people. Yet always in view will be God's salvific will for all."
Terence Fretheim, 'Creating Space In the World For God', in *A Primer On Prayer*, ed. Paul Sponheim (Fortress, 1988) p. 61. Emphasis is in the original.
Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.
Billy Graham
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
Victor Hugo
"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
"Think of prayer less as an activity for God and more as an awareness of God. Seek to live in uninterrupted awareness. Acknowledge His presence everywhere you go."
Max Lucado, Today's Christian, November/December 2004
"Even if you did nothing in your meditation but bring your heart back, and place it again in our Lord's presence, though it went away again every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed."
Francis deSales
"You will never learn how to pray until you are moved enough to weep."
Jerry Kaufman, as found in *The Power Of A City At Prayer*, Mac Pier and Katie Sweeting (IVP, 2002), p.107
"The pursuit of a prayerful life of simple love and discipline sets us in isolation from and opposition to the mainstream, mammon-directed culture in which we live. We become deserters from technocracy, disaffiliating ourselves from its power, rejecting its false values. To pray is to drop out in the most profound and positive sense."
Kenneth Leech, *True Prayer* (Harper, 1980), p.81
"Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you the freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land."
Henri Nouwen, *With Open Hands*
"What men usually ask of God when they pray is that two and two not make four."
Unknown
"Prayer puts us on the potter's wheel, reshaping us to be God's vessels. As we beg that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we present ourselves to God to do it."
from *Churches That Make A Difference*, Olson / Unruh / Sider (Baker, 2002), p. 142
"God has instituted prayer so as to confer upon his creatures the dignity of being causes."
Blaise Pascal
There is a place where thou canst touch the eyes
Of blinded men to instant, perfect sight;
There is a place where thou canst say, "Arise"
To dying captives, bound in chains of night;
There is a place where thou canst reach the store
Of hoarded gold and free it for the Lord;
There is a place--upon some distant shore--
Where thou canst send the worker and the Word.
Where is that secret place--dost thou ask, "Where?"
O soul, it is the secret place of prayer!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Learning to pray is the way Christians discover how to speak. The primary language of the church is the way of prayer -- because in prayer the practice and the language are inseparable."
William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, *Where Resident Aliens Live*, p. 42
"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, *I Believe In the Holy Spirit* (Augsburg)
