Prayer

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To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer. ~ Claude Debussy

Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate, commonly with a sequence of words, with a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshipping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or to express one's thoughts and emotions. The words of the prayer may take the form of intercession, a hymn, incantation or a spontaneous utterance in the person's praying words. Secularly, the term can also be used in referring too "hope".

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Prayer invites the Eternal Presence to suffuse or spirits and let God's will prevail in our lives. ~ Shaarei Tefillah
  • He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
  • Then Jesus told his disciples…that they should always pray and not give up.
  • Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
  • ...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
  • To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer.
    • Claude Debussy, quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas
  • Prayer is not an asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's weakness.
  • In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. In fact, I have found people who envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Every one is a law unto himself in that respect. But there are some well-marked roads, and it is safe to walk along the beaten tracks, trod by the ancient teachers.Well, I have given my personal testimony. Let every one try and find that as a result of daily prayer, he adds some thing new to his life, something which nothing can be compared.
  • Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real.
    • Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in The Ways and Power of Love : Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transfomration (2002) by Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin, Ch. 18 : The Techniques of Altruistic Transformation (concluded), p. 339
  • Prayer needs no speech. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
    • Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in The Ways and Power of Love : Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transfomration (2002) by Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin, Ch. 18 : The Techniques of Altruistic Transformation (concluded), p. 339
  • Prayer invites the Eternal Presence to suffuse or spirits and let God's will prevail in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
    • Prayer based on statements of Abraham Joshua Heschel in Shaarei Tefillah (Gates of Prayer, a siddur). Quoted in The Jewish Moral Virtues (1999) by Eugene B. Borowitz and Frances Weinman Schwartz
  • Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable.
    • Peace Pilgrim, in Peace Pilgrim : Her Life and Work in Her Own Words‎ (1994), p. 75

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • True prayer is an earnest soul's direct converse with its God.
  • A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.
  • Prayer is the breath of a new-born soul, and there can be no Christian life without it.
  • True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire — but to desire what God would have us desire.
  • Worship is the earthly act by which we most distinctly recognize our personal immortality; men who think that they will be extinct a few years hence do not pray. In worship we spread out our insignificant life, which yet is the work of the Creator's hands, and the purchase of the Redeemer's blood, before the Eternal and All-Merciful, that we may learn the manners of a higher sphere, and fit ourselves for companionship with saints and angels, and for the everlasting sight of the face of God.
  • Prayer is not conquering God's reluctance, but taking hold upon God's willingness.
  • Prayer is the act by which man, detaching himself from the embarrassments of sense and nature, ascends to the true level of his destiny.
  • Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the infinite scale of man's wants and God's goodness.
  • Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul.
  • Prayer, then, does not consist in sweet feelings, nor in the charms of an excited imagination, nor in that illumination of the intellect that traces with ease the sublimest truths of God; nor even in a certain consolation in the view of God; all these things are external gifts from His hand, in the absence of which love may exist even more purely, as the soul may then attach itself immediately and solely to God, instead of to His mercies.
  • Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life.
  • The best and sweetest flowers of paradise God gives to His people when they are upon their knees. Prayer is the gate of heaven.
  • We lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often and long alone with God. No otherwise can the great central idea of God enter into a man's life, and dwell there supreme.
  • Any heart turned Godward feels more joy
    In one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised
    By all the feasts of earth since its foundation.
  • A good man's prayers
    Will from the deepest dungeon climb to heaven's height,
    And bring a blessing down.
  • Consider how august a privilege it is, when angels are present, and archangels throng around, when cherubim and seraphim encircle with their blaze the throne, that a mortal may approach with unrestrained confidence, and converse with heaven's dread Sovereign! O, what honor was ever conferred like this?
  • Prayer pulls the rope below, and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly; others give but an occasional pluck at the rope; but he who wins with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might.
  • O Thou by whom we come to God —
    The Life, the Truth, the Way;
    The path of prayer Thyself hast trod;
    Lord, teach us how to pray.
  • When we pray to God with entire assurance, it is Himself who hag given us the spirit of prayer.
  • In presenting the Divine promises at the throne of grace, we present the best of names at a bank that is solvent. Let us, when we would pray, consider well whether we have a promise for our plea.
  • Let faith each meek petition fill,
    And waft it to the skies;
    And teach our heart 'tis goodness still
    That grants it or denies.
  • A certain joyful, though humble, confidence becomes us when we pray in the Mediator's name. It is due to Him; when we pray in His name it should be without wavering. Remember His merits, and how prevalent they must be. " Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace."
  • Good prayers never come creeping home. I am sure I shall receive what I ask for or what I should ask.
  • For spiritual blessings, let our prayers be importunate, perpetual, and persevering; for temporal blessings, let them be general, short, conditional, and modest.
  • The prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes on into waiting, even while in sorrow and sore need, will always end in thankfulness and triumph and praise.
  • Be not afraid to pray — to pray is right.
    Pray if thou canst with hope; but ever pray,
    Though hope be weak or sick with long delay;
    Pray in the darkness, if there be no light.
  • Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?
  • Patience and perseverance are never more thoroughly Christian graces than when features of prayer.
  • Are we to suppose that the only being in the universe who cannot answer prayer is that One who alone has all power at His command? The weak theology that professes to believe that prayer has merely a subjective benefit is infinitely less scientific than the action of the child who confidently appeals to a Father in heaven.
  • Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit His returns to our requests. Lifeless services shall have lifeless answers. When men are dull, God will be dumb.
  • Ah! well it is for us that God is a loving Father, who takes our very prayers and thanksgivings rather for what we mean than for what they are; just as parents smile on the trailing weeds that their ignorant little ones bring them for flowers.
  • Then let us earnest be,
    And never faint in prayer;
    He loves our importunity,
    And makes our cause His care.
  • Expect an answer. If no answer is desired, why pray? True prayer has in it a strong element of expectancy.
  • Easiness of desire is a great enemy to the success of a good man's prayer. Our prayers upbraid our spirits when we beg tamely for those things for which we ought to die; which are more precious than imperial sceptres, richer than the spoils of the sea or the treasures of Indian hills.
  • The reason why we obtain no more in prayer, is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
    Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
  • He prayeth best who loveth best
    All things both great and small:
    For the dear God who loveth us,
    He made and loveth all,
  • He that loveth little prayeth little; he that loveth much prayeth much.
  • O Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain? Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of His wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will.
  • Like an echo from a ruined castle, prayer is an echo from the ruined human soul of the sweet promise of God.
  • He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray; and he who will be constant in prayer, shall know what it is to have a pure heart.
  • As in poetry, so in prayer, the whole subject matter should be furnished by the heart, and the understanding should be allowed only to shape and arrange the effusions of the heart in the manner best adapted to answer the end designed. From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop.
  • "Continuing instant in prayer." The Greek is a metaphor taken from hunting dogs that never give over the game till they have got their prey.
  • Have you never observed how free the Lord's Prayer is of any material that can tempt to subtle self-inspection in the art of devotion? It is full of an outflowing of thought and of emotion toward great objects of desire, great necessities, and great perils.
  • For "we know not what we should pray for as we ought; " but love leads us on, abandons us to all the operations of grace, puts us entirely at the disposal of God's will, and thus prepares us for all His designs.
  • There is something in every act of prayer that for a time stills the violence of passion, and elevates and purifies the affections.
  • When Christ went up into a mountain apart to pray, He dismissed the multitude, to teach us that when we address ourselves to God, we must first dismiss the multitude. We must send away the multitude of worldly cares, worldly thoughts, worldly concerns and business, when we would call upon God in duty.
  • Prayers born out of murmuring are always dangerous. When, therefore, we are in a discontented mood, let'us take care what we cry for, lest God give it to us, and thereby punish us.
  • I think that if we would, every evening, come to our Master's feet, and tell Him where we have been, what we have done, what we have said, and what were the motives by which we have been actuated, it would have a salutary effect upon our whole conduct.
  • Prayer is so necessary, and the source of so many blessings, that he who has discovered the.treasure cannot be prevented from having recourse to it, whenever he has an opportunity.
  • Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.
  • There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, " My God, my God!"
  • Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those that have not known Thee; open their eyes that they may see Thee — see Thee weeping over them, and saying, " Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life "— see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do "—see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen.
  • Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.
  • Prayer, with our Lord, was a refuge from the storm; almost every word He uttered during that last tremendous scene was prayer; prayer the most earnest, the most urgent, repeated, continued, proceeding from the recesses of the soul, private, solitary; prayer for deliverance, prayer for strength; above every thing prayer for resignation.
  • We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power!
    Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong,
    Or others — that we are not always strong,
    That we are ever overborne with care,
    That we should ever weak or heartless be,
    Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
    And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?
  • 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 that day.
  • The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
  • Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
  • The church converteth the whole world by blood and prayer.
  • Happy are they who freely mingle prayer and toil till God responds to the one and rewards the other.
  • From the violence and rule of passion, from a servile will, and a commanding lust, from pride and vanity, from false opinion and ignorant confidence; from improvidence and prodigality, from envy and the spirit of slander; from sensuality, from presumption and from despair; from a state of temptation and a hardened spirit; from delaying of repentance and persevering in sin; from unthankfulness and irreligion, and from seducing others; from all infatuation of soul, folly, and madness; from willfulness, self-love, and vain ambition; from a vicious life and an unprovided death, good Lord, deliver us.
  • Faithful prayer always implies correlative exertion; and no man can ask honestly and hopefully to be delivered from temptation, unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
  • Whatever we are directed to pray for, we are also exhorted to work for; we are not permitted to mock Jehovah, asking that of Him which we deem not worth our pains to acquire.
  • When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man.
  • Sometimes a fog will settle over a vessel's deck and yet leave the topmast clear. Then a sailor goes up aloft and gets a lookout which the helmsman on deck cannot get. So prayer sends the soul aloft; lifts it above the clouds in which our selfishness and egotism befog us, and gives us a chance to see which way to steer.
  • Every praying Christian will find that there is no Gethsemane without its angel.
  • Not every hour, nor every day, perhaps, can generous wishes ripen into kind actions; but there is not a moment that cannot be freighted with prayer.
  • Ejaculations are short prayers darted up to God on emergent occasions. They are the artillery of devotion, and their principal use is against the fiery darts of the devil.
  • I like ejaculatory prayer; it reaches heaven before the devil can get a shot at it.
  • When does the building of the Spirit really begin to appear in a man's heart? It begins, so far as we can judge, when he first pours out his heart to God in prayer.
  • There it is — in such patient silence — that we accumulate the inward power which we distribute and spend in action; that the soul acquires a greater and more vigorous being, and gathers up its collective forces to bear down upon the piecemeal difficulties of life and scatter them to dust; there alone can we enter into that spirit of self-abandonment by which we take up the cross of duty, however heavy, with feet however worn and bleeding.
  • Private prayer is so far from being a hindrance to a man's business, that it is the way of ways to bring down a blessing from heaven upon it.
  • If any prayer be a duty, then secret prayer must be superlatively so, for it prepares and fits the soul for all other supplication.
  • A house without family worship has neither foundation nor covering.
  • Wise is that Christian parent who begins every morning with the word of God and fervent prayer.
  • Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.
  • Ask in simplicity. True need forgets to be formal. Its utterances fly from the heart as sparks from a blacksmith's anvil. Set phrases, long sentences, polysyllabic words, find little favor with the soul that is athirst for God and His grace. How brief are the sentences of the immortal and immutable prayer, which Christ taught His disciples! Not a long word is there. Temptation is the longest, and the majority of the words are of one syllable. Do you essay to lead others in prayer? Utter no word that any that hear you cannot understand. Express their need as well as your own. Do not go to the mercy-seat on stilts.
  • Our public prayers too often consist almost entirely of passages of Scripture—not always judiciously chosen or well arranged — and common-place phrases, which have been transmitted down for ages, from one generation to another, selected and put together just as we would compose a sermon or essay, while the heart is allowed no share in the performance; so that we may more properly be said to make a prayer than to pray.
  • Let your prayers be composed of thanksgiving, praise, confession, and petition, without any argument or exhortation addressed to those who are supposed to be praying with you. Adopt no fixed forms of expression, except such as you obtain from Scripture. Express your desire in the briefest, simplest form, without circumlocution. Hallow God's name by avoiding its unnecessary repetition. Adopt the simple devotional phrases of Scripture; but avoid the free use of its figures, and all quaint and doubtful application of its terms to foreign subjects. Pray to God and not to man.
  • If you are in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because other people will not be able to keep pace with you in such unusual spirituality, and if you are not in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because you will be sure to weary the listeners.
  • In the primitive church were not prayers simple, unpremeditated, united; prayers of the well-taught apostle; prayers of the accomplished scholar; prayers of the rough but fervent peasant; prayers of the new and zealous convert; prayers which importuned and wrestled with an instant and irrepressible urgency; — were they not an essential part of that religion, which holy fire had kindled; and which daily supplications alone could fan?
  • God's hearing of our prayers does not depend upon sanctifi- cation, but upon Christ's intercession; not upon what we are in ourselves, but what we are in the Lord Jesus; both our persons and our prayers are accepted in the Beloved.
  • Your child is falling from a window. By the action of a natural law he will be killed. But he cries out for help, "Father! father!" Hearing his call, in this his day of trouble, you rush forth and catch him in your arms. Your child is saved. Natural law would have killed him, but you interposed, and, without a miracle, saved him. And cannot the great Father of all do what an earthly parent does?
  • They tell us of the fixed laws of nature! but who dares maintain that He who fixed these laws cannot use them for the purpose of answering His people's prayers? /
  • There is no such thing in the long history of God's kingdom as an unanswered prayer. Every true desire from a child's heart finds some true answer in the heart of God.
  • Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered.
    Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock;
    Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,
    Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.
    She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,
    And cries, "It shall be done," sometime, somewhere.
    Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
    Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done.
    The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
    And God will finish what He has begun.
    If you will keep the incense burning there,
    His glory you shall see sometime, somewhere.
  • Answered prayers cover the field of providential history as flowers cover western prairies.
  • I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
  • Are we silent to Jesus? Think! Have you nothing to ask Him? Nothing to thank Him for? Nothing to praise Him for? Nothing to confess? Oh, poor soul, go back to Bethlehem — to Gethsemane, to Calvary, and remember at what a cost the vail before the Holies was rent in twain that thou mightest enter it.
  • Saviour, breathe an evening blessing
    Ere repose our spirits seal;
    Sin and want we come confessing;
    Thou canst save, and Thou canst heal.
  • If I were an impenitent child of godly parents, and should die so, I would rather go into eternity facing a legion of devils than my mother's prayers.
  • In eternity it will be a terrible thing for many a man to meet his own prayers. Their very language will condemn him; for he knew his duty, but he did it not.

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