Prayer - Andrew Murray

Prayer is fellowship with the Unseen and Most Holy One.  The powers of the eternal world have been placed at the prayer’s disposal.  It is the very essence of true religion and the channel of all blessings.  It is the secret of power and life, not only for ourselves but for others, for the Church and the World.  ~Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer

The Secret Duty of Prayer

Be sure you look to your secret duty; keep that up whatever you do.  The soul cannot prosper in the neglect of it.  Apostasy generally begins at the [prayer] closet door.  Be much in secret fellowship with God it is secret trading that enables the Christian.

            

Pray alone.  Let prayer be the key of the morning and the bolt at night.  The best way to fight against sin is to fight it on our knees.  ~Philip Henry (1631-1696)

Prayer - Vance Havner

Most of us appreciate but do not appropriate what we have in Christ. We carry checks on the bank of heaven and never cash them at the window of prayer. We are Bible window-shoppers: we stroll up and down through the show-windows of God's Word and never possess what we perceive. God, who spared not His Son, shall with Him also freely give us all things. ~Vance Havner, Jesus Only/What Christ Means to Me

God rules the world and His church through the prayers of His people.  That God should have made the extension of His kingdom so dependent on the faithfulness of His people in prayer is a stupendous mystery and yet an absolute certainty.  God calls for intercessors: in His grace He has made His word dependent on them.  He waits for them.  ~Andrew Murray, “The Secret of Intercession” p22

The deepest need of the Church today is not for any material or external thing, but the deepest need is spiritual. Prayerless work will never bring in the kingdom. We neglect to pray in the prescribed way. We seldom enter the closet and shut the door for a season of prayer. Kingdom interests are pressing on us thick and fast and we must pray. Prayerless giving will never evangelize the world. ~Dr. A. J. Gordon

Distractions in Prayer

No one who has tried to pray for more than a few seconds at a time would claim that he is never distracted. It is astonishing to note how insistently and immediately irrelevant matters come to mind, noises occur, things to be attended to are remembered, people interrupt, and even physical discomforts or pains bother us which we had not noticed until we tried to pray. These things are, of course, the work of the master saboteur of souls, who knows how to render our spiritual machinery useless, by the loosening of the tiniest screw or the loss of the smallest nut. 

Distractions can be useful. They provide constant reminders of our human weakness. We recognize in them how earthbound we are, and then how completely we must depend on the help of the Holy Spirit to pray in and through us. We are shown, by a thousand trivialities, how trivial are our concerns. The very effort to focus, even for a minute, on higher things, is foiled, and we see that prayer--the prerequisite for doing anything for God--cannot be done without Him. We are not, however, left to fend for ourselves. 

"The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God" (Romans 8:26-27 JB). ~Elisabeth Elliot, “A Lamp For My Feet”

A beginner's prayers are generally an attempt to get God to pay attention to his wants. As we grow in grace, prayer becomes an attempt to turn our attention to God. His kingdom becomes our reference point for every matter that concerns us. Will this thing further or hinder the working of the will of God in me, in those I pray for, in these situations? What is on my mind today? Let me bring it at once into the light of God's countenance, refer it to his scrutiny, lay it (and my heart with it) open before Him. If I am not prepared to submit something, I am interested in myself, not in the kingdom. "Set your mind on God's kingdom and His justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well.'' (Mt 6:33 NEB). ~Elisabeth Elliot, “A Lamp For My Feet”

Many of our prayers are directed toward the quick and easy solution. Long-suffering is sometimes the only means by which the greater glory of God will be served, and this is, for the moment, invisible. We must persist in faith. God has a splendid purpose. Believe in order to see it. ~Elisabeth Elliot, "A Light for My Feet" 2 Cor 4:17, 18

No Prayer - No Power

We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power,  We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results. ~R. A. Torrey

The reason why many fail in battle is because they wait until the hour of battle.  The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on their knees long before the battle came...Anticipated your battles; fight them on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory. ~R. A. Torrey

4 Brief Chambers Quotes

The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting. ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, March 19 We scarcely believe what the Bible reveals—that God’s chosen way of working is through intercessory prayer. ~Oswald Chambers No love of the natural heart is safe unless the human heart has been satisfied by God first. ~Oswald Chambers God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. ~Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost for His Highest, Jan 2

The Key To The Greater Work

. . . I say to you, he who believes in Me, . . . greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father —John 14:12 Prayer does not equip us for greater works— prayer is the greater work. Yet we think of prayer as some commonsense exercise of our higher powers that simply prepares us for God’s work. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, prayer is the working of the miracle of redemption in me, which produces the miracle of redemption in others, through the power of God. The way fruit remains firm is through prayer, but remember that it is prayer based on the agony of Christ in redemption, not on my own agony. We must go to God as His child, because only a child gets his prayers answered; a "wise" man does not (Matthew 11:25). Prayer is the battle, and it makes no difference where you are. However God may engineer your circumstances, your duty is to pray. Never allow yourself this thought, "I am of no use where I am," because you certainly cannot be used where you have not yet been placed. Wherever God has placed you and whatever your circumstances, you should pray, continually offering up prayers to Him. And He promises, "Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do . . ." (John 14:13 ). Yet we refuse to pray unless it thrills or excites us, which is the most intense form of spiritual selfishness. We must learn to work according to God’s direction, and He says to pray. "Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest" (Matthew 9:38). There is nothing thrilling about a laboring person’s work, but it is the laboring person who makes the ideas of the genius possible. And it is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. When you labor at prayer, from God’s perspective there are always results. What an astonishment it will be to see, once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you have been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ. ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 17

R. A. Torrey

A man or woman who does not spend much time in prayer cannot properly be called a follower of Jesus Christ. Praying is the most important part of the present ministry of our risen Lord. ~R. A. Torrey, How to Pray

Pray often; for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan. ~John Bunyan Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. ~John Bunyan

Prayer With Heart

When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart. ~John Bunyan

Transfiguration of Prayer

As we lift up our soul in prayer to the living God, we gain the beauty of holiness as surely as a flower becomes beautiful by living in the sunlight. Was not our Lord transfigured when He prayed? And the ‘very fashion’ of our countenance will change, and we shall have our Mount of Transfiguration when prayer has its rightful place in our lives. Our value to God and to man is in exact proportion to the extent in which we reveal the glory of God to others. ~The Kneeling Christian

The Practice of Secret Prayer

It is not too much to say that all real growth in the spiritual life—all victory over temptation, all confidence and peace in the presence of difficulties and dangers, all repose of spirit in times of great disappointment or loss, all habitual communion with God—depends upon the practice of secret prayer. ~The Kneeling Christian

Prayer

Why are so many Christians so often defeated? Because they pray so little. Why are many church-workers so often discouraged and disheartened? Because they pray so little. Why do most men see so few brought ‘out of darkness to light’ by their ministry? Because they pray so little. Why are not our churches simply on fire for God? Because there is so little real prayer. ~The Kneeling Christian

Where Are the Intercessors?

God wondered that there was no intercessor (Isaiah 59:16) – Oh how great must be God’s wonder today! For how few there are among us who know what prevailing prayer really is! Every one of us would confess that we believe in prayer, yet how many of us truly believe the in the power of prayer? Surely there is nothing so absolutely astonishing as a practically prayerless Christian. ~The Kneeling Christian

Chadwick on Prayer

There is no power like that of prevailing prayer -- of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hanna intoxicated with sorrow, David heart-broken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat and blood.  Add to this list from the records of the church, your personal observation and experience, and always there is cost of passion unto blood.  Such prayer prevails.  It turns ordinary mortals into men of power.  It brings power.  It brings fire.  It brings rain.  It brings life.  It brings God.  ~Samuel Chadwick