Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.
Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing.
Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
[Prayer] turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.
O God, make us desperate, and grant us faith and boldness to approach Your throne and make our petitions known, knowing that in doing we link arms with Omnipotence and become instruments of Your eternal purposes being fulfilled on this earth.
A Place of Quiet Rest, Moody, 2000, p. 246.
There is no way that Christians in a private capacity can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ, as by prayer.
Quoted in: Erroll Hulse, A Call to Extraordinary Prayer for Revival.
That which begins not with prayer, seldom winds up with comfort.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 211
Prayer is indeed a mystery, but it is stressed over and over again in the New Testament as a vital prerequisite for the release and experience of God’s power. It is true that it is God who delivers, and that God stands in no need of human prayers before He can act on behalf of His afflicted servants. Yet there is the manward as well as the Godward aspect of such deliverance, and the manward side is summed up in the duty of Christians to intercede… In prayer, human impotence casts itself at the feet of divine omnipotence. Thus the duty of prayer is not a modification of God’s power, but a glorification of it.
2 Corinthians, Eerdmans, www.eerdmans.com,1962, p. 22.
In prayer, human impotence casts itself at the feet of divine omnipotence, thus the duty of prayer is not to modify God’s power but to glorify it. We’re not trying to change God’s plan, we’re just trying to get in line with it.
Comfort in Trouble. The article originally appeared (http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/47-4/comfort-in-trouble) at www.gty.org. © 1969-2008. Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
O believing brethren! What an instrument is this which God hath put into your hands! Prayer moves Him that moves the universe.
Next to the wonder of seeing my Savior will be, I think, the wonder that I made so little use of the power of prayer.
I have joyfully dedicated my whole life to the object of exemplifying how much may be accomplished by prayer and faith.
Time spent in prayer will yield more than that given to work. Prayer alone gives work its worth and its success. Prayer opens the way for God Himself to do His work in us and through us. Let our chief work as God’s messengers be intercession; in it we secure the presence and power of God to go with us.
Unless we are willing to pay the price, and sacrifice time and attention and what appear legitimate or necessary duties, for the sake of the heavenly gifts we need not look for a large experience of the power of the heavenly world in our work.
Ministry of Intercession, p 15.
When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; but when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do (Amzi Dixon).
The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends.
Ask Whatever You Wish, Sermon, www.desiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
It is easy to criticize and find fault with the conduct of kings, and write furious articles against them in newspapers, or make violent speeches about them on platforms. Any fool can rip and rend a costly garment, but not every man can cut out and make one. To expect perfection in kings, prime ministers, or rulers of any king, is senseless and unreasonable. We would exhibit more wisdom if we prayed for them more, and criticized less.
The leader must use God’s power to move human hearts in the direction he believes to be the will of God. Through prayer the leader has the key to that complicated lock… In prayer we deal directly with God and only in a secondary sense other people. The goal of prayer is the ear of God. Prayer moves others through God’s influence on them. It is not the prayer that moves people, but the God to whom we pray.
Spiritual Leadership, Moody Publishers, 1967, p. 90, 91.
There is no wonder more supernatural and divine in the life of a believer than the mystery and ministry of prayer…the hand of the child touching the arm of the Father and moving the wheel of the universe.
Quoted in: A Journey to Victorious Praying, by Bill Thrasher, Moody Publishers, 2003, p. 131.
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Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.
Earnest intercession will be sure to bring love with it. I do not believe you can hate a man for whom you habitually pray. If you dislike any brother Christian, pray for him doubly, not only for his sake, but for your own, that you may be cured of prejudice and saved from all unkind feeling.
If you want that splendid power in prayer, you must remain in loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, abiding union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
I could no more doubt the power of prayer than I could disbelieve the law of gravity.
I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working
We might not be able to speak in any pulpit we choose, but we certainly can pray for any pulpit. People may not be willing to listen to us, but they cannot stop us from praying for them. We can only be in one place at one time, but our prayers can cover more than one continent. What an awesome opportunity to realize that you can cooperate with God and lift the spirit of an individual half a world away from you.
A Journey to Victorious Praying, Moody Publishers, 2003, p. 138.
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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… Anticipate your battles; fight them on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory.
We hear much in our day of the rest of faith, but there is such a thing as the fight of faith in prayer as well as in effort. Those who would have us think that they have attained to some sublime height of faith and trust because they never know any agony of conflict or of prayer, have surely gotten beyond their Lord, and beyond the mightiest victors for God, both in effort and prayer, that the ages of Christian history have known. When we learn to come to God with an intensity of desire that wrings the soul, then shall we know a power in prayer that most of us do not know now.
Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouses of God’s infinite grace and power.
The Prayer of Power, Revell, 1924, p. 25.
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.
All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and as God can do everything, prayer is omnipotent.
Are not our prayers so often ineffective and powerless – and sometimes even prayerless – because we rush unthinkingly and unpreparedly into God’s presence, without realizing the majesty and glory of the God Whom we are approaching, and without reflecting upon the exceeding great riches of His glory in Christ Jesus, which we hope to draw upon?
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 5.
Prayer is the key which unlocks the door of God’s treasure-house. 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-depend upon the practice of secret prayer.
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, Introduction.
We may work for Christ from morn till night; we may spend much time in Bible study; we may be most earnest and faithful and “acceptable” in our preaching and in our individual dealing, but none of these things can be truly effective unless we are much in prayer. We shall only be full of good works; and not “bearing fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10). To be little with God in prayer is to be little for God in service. Much secret prayer means much public power. Yet is it not a fact that whilst our organizing is well nigh perfect, our agonizing in prayer is well nigh lost?
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 2.
Men of power are without exception men of prayer. God bestows His Holy Spirit in His fullness only on men of prayer. And it is through the operation of the Spirit that answers to prayer come.
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 10.
Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.
The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor. The one who kneels to the Lord can stand up to anything.
We are never so high as when we are on our knees.
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 1.
We may rest fully assured of this – a man’s influence in the world can be gauged not by his eloquence, or his zeal, or his orthodox, or his energy, but by his prayers. Yes, and we will go farther and maintain that no man can live aright who does not pray aright.
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 2.
Is it not worthwhile to be wholly and whole-heartedly yielded to Christ? The half-and-half Christian is of very little use either to God or man. God cannot use him, and man has no use for him, but considers him a hypocrite. One sin allowed in the life wrecks at once our usefulness and our joy, and robs prayer of its power.
The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 6.
The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer that fetched the angel.
Prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid; but when the arrow of a saint’s prayer is put into the bow of Christ’s intercession it pierces the throne of grace.
