#prayer

When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts. ↗

— David Brainerd

#divine #employed #fill #hands #heart

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. ↗

— Garth Brooks

#gifts #god #greatest #greatest gifts #prayers

Prayer for many is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists, we feel uncomfortable and out of place. Like most tourists, we therefore move on before too long and go somewhere else. ↗

— Robert McAfee Brown

#else #feel #foreign #foreign land #go

I think at some point at a moment of enlightenment in the future, the federal government and perhaps a future Supreme Court is going to say it's not a bad thing for children to hear prayer in school. ↗

— Phil Bryant

#bad thing #children #court #enlightenment #federal

Men and women are needed whose prayers will give to the world the utmost power of God; who will make His promises to blossom with rich and full results. God is waiting to hear us and challenges us to bring Him to do this thing by our praying. He is asking us, to-day, as He did His ancient Israel, to prove Him now herewith." Behind God's Word is God Himself, and we read: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, his Maker: Ask of me of things to come and concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me." As though God places Himself in the hands and at the disposal of His people who pray - as indeed He does. The dominant element of all praying is faith, that is conspicuous, cardinal and emphatic. Without such faith it is impossible to please God, and equally impossible to pray. ↗

— E.M. Bounds

#faith #god #prayer #equality

Contemporaries relate that hearing Martin Luther pray was "an experience in theology". They said the reformer began praying with such humility that he could be pitied, only to proceed with such boldness before God that the human hearer would fear for him. ↗

— A.W. Tozer

#forgiveness #prayer #experience

Joni discovered the best way to put the halter on her horse without being animal resisting and fleeing was to turn her back until he nuzzled up to her. At that point, she could slip the halter on. Just so, she surmises, sometimes God waits for us to turn our backs on what we desire most and to trust Him. ↗

— Joni Eareckson Tada

#prayer #love

Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God? ↗

— N.T. Wright

#communion-of-saints #paradise #prayer #praying-for-the-dead #purgatory

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know. ↗

— Marion Zimmer Bradley

#love #prayer #love

We thank Thee Lord For each hour of each day, For each minute spent at play, For the seed You helped us sow, For the blessed things that grow- We Thank Thee, Lord. For the roses wild that run, For the trees that shade the sun, For the rainbows brilliant blend, For the showers that You send- We Thank Thee, Lord. For the men who raise the wheat, For the bread we get to eat- For the cattle that we need, For the pastures where they feed- We Thank Thee, Lord. For our humble, small abode, For the blessings You bestowed, For the roof that shields the storm, For the walls that keep us warm, We Thank Thee, Lord. ↗

— Anthony J. Pettito

#prayer #men