Prayer is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition (there is nothing so much as prayer life that tells the truth about us as Christian people). Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones –
God gives us a million and one things and all we can think and pray about is that ONE he hasn’t given us … man is a MISERABLY selfish creature.
– Zac Poonen –
A prayerless man is proud and independent, and any church that neglects corporate prayer is sadly no better. Only God’s humble and needy children take the time to pray. Everyone else is just going through the motions and naively trusting in their own strength!
– David Smithers –
He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.
– John Owen –
Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things. It is the simplest and the most sublime, the weakest and the most powerful. Its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.
– EM Bounds –
from Purpose in Prayer
The potency of prayer has subdued the strength of fire; it has bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine that is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.
– St. Chrysostom –
from EM Bounds’ book Purpose in Prayer
We might as well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until he does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. Our moral imprudence puts us always in danger of accidental or reckless self-destruction. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So he conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for himself.
If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
It is a great thing to enter the inner chamber, and shut the door, and meet the Father in secret. It is a greater thing to open the door again, and go out, in an enjoyment of that presence which nothing can disturb.
– Andrew Murray –
from The Prayer Life