Quotes by American Authors - Page 73

Selfishness is never so exquisitely selfish as when it is on its knees. ... Self turns what would otherwise be a pure and powerful prayer into a weak and ineffective one.
A.W. Tozer
When praying for healing ask great things of God and expect great things from God. But let us seek for that healing that really matters the healing of the heart enabling us to trust God simply face God honestly and live triumphantly.
Arlo F. Newell
To avail yourself of His certain wisdom ask of Him whatever questions you have. But do not entreat Him for that will never be necessary.
Hugh Prather
The clue is not to ask in a miserly way-the key is to ask in a grand manner.
Ann Wigmore
We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him by brief repetitions that are requests for personal favors and nothing more.
E.M.Bounds
Our immediate temptation will be to ask for specific solutions to specific problems and for the ability to help other people as we have already thought they should be helped. In that case we are asking God to do it our way.
Bill W.
The simple heart that freely asks in love obtains.
John Greenleaf Whittier
They tell about a fifteen-year-old boy in an orphans' home who had an incurable stutter. One Sunday the minister was detained and the boy volunteered to say the prayer in his stead. He did it perfectly too without a single stutter. Later he explained "I don't stutter when I talk to God. He loves me."
Bennett Cerf
Though smooth be the heartless prayer no ear in heaven will mind it And the finest phrase falls dead if there is no feeling behind it.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.
E.M.Bounds
If we would have God in the closet God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God but by living to God.
E.M.Bounds
We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God.
E.M.Bounds
Our praying to be strong must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.
E.M.Bounds
Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit praying or quit bad conduct.
E.M.Bounds
Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.
E.M.Bounds
Prayer at its best is the expression of the total life for all things else being equal our prayers are only as powerful as our lives
A.W. Tozer
Prayer is a serious thing. We may be taken at our words.
Dwight L. Moody
He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
Herman Melville
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
Henry Ward Beecher
Our prayers must spring from the indigenous soil of our own personal confrontation with the Spirit of God in our lives.
Malcolm Boyd
Our prayers must mean something to us if they are to mean anything to God.
Maltbie D. Babcock
God may turn his ears from prattling prayers or preaching prayers but never from penitent believing prayers.
William S. Plumer
Many pray with their lips for that for which their hearts have no desire.
Jonathan Edwards
Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-I found that out.
Mark Twain
God hears no more than the heart speaks and if the heart be dumb God will certainly be dumb.
Thomas B. Brooks
Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer.
E.M.Bounds
Prayer is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble: prayer is a life attitude.
Walter A. Mueller
All those football coaches who hold dressing-room prayers before a game should be forced to attend church once a week.
Duffy Daugherty
Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
Satchel Paige
You pray in your distress and in your need would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
Kahlil Gibran
Trouble and prayer are closely related. . . . Trouble often drives men to God in prayer while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.
E.M.Bounds
If you are swept off your feet it's time to get on your knees.
Fred Beck
Prayer begins where human capacity ends.
Marian Anderson
When life knocks you to your knees and it will why get up! If it knocks you to your knees again as it will well isn't that the best position from which to pray?
Ethel Barrymore
Ordinarily when a man in difficulty turns to prayer he has already tried every other means of escape.
Austin O'Malley
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
I feel it is far better to begin with God to see His face first to get my soul near Him before it is near another. In general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else.
E.M.Bounds
Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire spiritual calamity.
E.M.Bounds
The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.
E.M.Bounds
Pray always pray beneath sins heaviest load Prayer claims the blood from Jesus' side that flowed. Pray always pray though weary faint and lone Prayer nestles by the Father's sheltering throne.
A.B. Simpson
If you can't pray as you want to pray as you can. God knows what you mean.
Vance Havner
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter of prayer but a capacity for faith the power of a thorough consecration the ability of self-littleness an absolute losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God.
E.M.Bounds
The right way to pray then is any way that allows us to communicate with God.
Colleen Townsend Evans
Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it. Painstaking care much thought practice and labour are required to be a skillful tradesman in praying. Practice in this as well as in all other trades makes perfect.
E.M.Bounds
Prayer may not change things for you but it for sure changes you for things.
Samuel M. Shoemaker
Today any successful and competent businessman will employ the latest and best-tested methods in production distribution and administration and many are discovering that one of the greatest of all efficiency methods is prayer power.
Norman Vincent Peale
The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us but that we will hear Him.
William McGill
Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory due to His name and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. The most praying souls are the most assured souls.
Thomas B. Brooks
Prayer honors God acknowledges His being exalts His power adores His providence secures His aid.
E.M.Bounds
The goal of prayer is the ear of God a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and continuous waiting upon Him pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and find that presence a constant and ever-increasing delight.
E.M.Bounds
Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails.
E.M.Bounds
Pray always pray when sickness wastes thy frame Prayer brings the healing power of Jesus' name.
A.B. Simpson
Non-praying is lawlessness discord anarchy.
E.M.Bounds
To have a curable illness and to leave it untreated except for prayer is like sticking your hand in a fire and asking God to remove the flame.
Sandra L. Douglas
We one and all of us have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
Charles Sanders Peirce
The first purpose of prayer is to know God.
Charles L. Allen
By prayer the ability is secured to feel the law of love to speak according to the law of love and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.
E.M.Bounds
What is the life of a Christian but a life of prayer!
David Brown
Men of God are always men of prayer.
Henry T. Mahan
God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. They outlive the lives of those who uttered them.
E.M.Bounds