I would walk through mud up to my knees to get to a group where nobody was showing off, where only God was present. The Early Church prayed – talked to God. When they sang, they talked to God and sang about God. Today we have programming, that awful, hateful word ‘programming’; but God is absent.
– AW Tozer –
You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
– GK Chesterton –
We refuse to so strive and should not be surprised at the lack of God’s mighty stirrings. Is it not amazing that we have no problem with people wearing themselves out in sports for pleasure, work for money, politics for power, and programs for charity, but think it fanatical to so pray for souls? We would die for national freedom, but never for progress in the Kingdom of God. Is it any wonder we see so little of God’s great working? Father Nash* would pray until he had to ‘go to bed absolutely sick, for weakness and faintness, under the pressure.’ The world would have no problem with such dedication except that it was due to prayer for souls. Why should it be such a strange thing to the Church?
– J. Paul Reno –
*Father Nash was the man who prayed “under the stage” during Charles Finney’s revivals.
It is in the closet, in the morning watch, that our spiritual life is both tested and strengthened. There is the battlefield where it is to be decided every day whether God is to have all, whether our life is to be absolute obedience. If we truly conquer there, getting rid of ourselves into the hands of our Almighty Lord, the victory during the day is sure. It is there, in the inner chamber, proof is to be given whether we really delight in God, and make it our aim to love Him with our whole heart.
– Andrew Murray –
Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher’s foot enters the pulpit.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
Shall I give you yet another reason why you should pray? I have preached my very heart out. I could not say any more than I have said. Will not your prayers accomplish that which my preaching fails to do? Is it not likely that the Church has been putting forth its preaching hand but not its praying hand? Oh dear friends! Let us agonize in prayer!
– Charles Spurgeon –
He that loveth little prayeth little, he that loveth much prayeth much.
– Augustine –
A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.
– EM Bounds –
Jesus gave both His hands to the nails; how can I keep back one of mine from this blessed work? Night and day He toiled and prayed for me; how can I give a single hour to selfish indulgence? Up, idle heart; stretch out thy hand to work, or uplift it to pray: heaven and hell are in earnest; LET ME BE SO…
– Charles Spurgeon –