Prayer
Luke 18:1
Pray always and do not lose heart/give up.
Ephesians 6:18
(NASB) With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.
(CEV) Never stop praying, especially for others. Always pray by the power of the Spirit.
Colossians 4:2
(NLT) Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.
(NASB) Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.
The prayers that God will always answer are "Lord, increase my faith" (Luke 17:5), "Father, make me more like Jesus" (Romans 8:29), and "In my life may You be exalted and glorified" (Philippians 1:20).
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God on Matthew 21:22 “…believing, you shall receive.”
Lord, I want more grace to glorify You. I want more simplicity of mind, and singleness of eye. I want a more holy, upright, honest walk. I want more meekness, patience, lowliness, submission. I want to know more of Jesus, to see more of His glory, to feel more of His preciousness, and to live more simply upon His fullness. I want more of the sanctifying, sealing, witnessing, and anointing influences of the Spirit.
Those petitions are usually accomplished through crosses and losses, self-denial and suffering.
John Newton “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow”
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace.
Might more of His salvation know
And seek more earnestly His face.
Twas He who taught me thus to pray
And He I trust has answered prayer.
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He'd answer my request.
And by His love's constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest.
Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart.
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yea more with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe.
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Cast out my feelings, laid me low.
Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
“Tis in this way” the Lord replied
“I answer prayer for grace and faith.”
“These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free,
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”
Richard Sibbes (See below)
The Bruised Reed
There is never a holy sigh, never a tear we shed, which is lost. And as every grace increases by exercise of itself, so does the grace of prayer. By prayer we learn to pray.
"The Knot of Prayer Loosed" on Matthew 7:7-10, 1629
To pray aright, to pour out thy heart and soul before God, to believe he hears, and will come to help thee, to pray in faith, to rend thy heart before him, to lay hold of those things in him which are for thy humiliation and consolation, to wrestle with him and strive for a blessing, to hope above hope, and, being, delayed, to wait for him till he come, this is exceeding hard to be done. If you keep trying, your striving and endeavours shall bring you through at last.
John Bunyan A Discourse Touching Prayer, 1662
https://books.google.com/books?id=tAEUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA262&lpg
Pray until you have prayed.
Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart to God through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit for such things that God has promised, or that are according to God's Word for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.
Isaac Watts A Guide to Prayer
(Prayer) is that language wherein a creature holds correspondence with his Creator; and wherein the soul of a saint gets near to God, is entertained with great delight, and, as it were, dwells with his heavenly Father.
Martin Luther
A Simple Way To Pray
If an abundance of good thoughts comes to us...make room for such thoughts. The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is better than a thousand of our prayers.
On praying through the Ten Commandments (and Scripture)
I think of each commandment as instruction, and consider what the Lord demands of me. Second, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth, a prayer. It is enough to consider (only a short passage) that kindles a fire in the heart.
Luther's Explanatory Notes on the Gospels, on Matthew 6:9 "Our Father..."
There is not a sweeter sound to the father than the voice of the child.
Explanations on the Lord's Pray, for the simple and unlettered Laymen
When thou prayest let thy words be few, but thy thoughts and affections many, and above all let them be profound. The less thou speakest the better thou prayest. Few words and much thought is a Christian frame. Many words and little thought is heathenish.
On Ecclesiastes 5:2 (HCSB) "Do not be hasty to speak, and do not be impulsive to make a speech before God."
God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
Prayer is not a work of nature, but a gift of grace; not attained by human skill and art, but taught and inspired by the Holy Ghost.
There is never a prayer put up but God doth weigh and ponder it, and then his love sets his wisdom at work to make such a return as may be most for his own glory and his child’s good.
Prayer is the key to open God’s heart, as his Spirit the key to open thine.
Thomas Brooks A Word in Season to Suffering Saints
It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they be; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they be; nor the music of our prayers, how sweet they be; nor the logic of our prayers, how methodical they are—which will prevail with God. It is only fervency, importunity in prayer, which will make a man prevail with God.
George Swinnock The Christian Man's Calling
Prayer is our chief duty and brings heaven down to man. There is no duty that has so many promises attached to it, gives more honour to God, or which receives more honour from God.
This it is that makes Satan to scare thee from prayer—because thou scare him so much by thy praying.
God esteemeth infinitely more of a heart-sprung, though broken prayer, than (making a false show of) petitions, clothed with and dressed up in the neatest and most gaudy expressions.
Prayer should be constant...like a saint's breathing. The world's poison can be expelled with this antidote. It is the key of the morning to open the door of mercy, and the bolt at night to secure him in safety.
John Newton Cardiphonia: Letters to a Nobleman
By prayer you have liberty to cast all your cares upon him that careth for you. By one hour’s intimate access to the throne of grace, where the Lord causes his glory to pass before the soul that seeks him, you may acquire more true spiritual knowledge and comfort, than by a day or a week’s converse with the best of men.
Divine providence does not only ordain what effects shall come to pass, but also by what means. God has appointed not only the effect itself, but the means to accomplish it. Prayer is a means to bring to pass that which God has determined shall be. We do not pray out of hope to alter God's eternal purposes; but we pray to obtain that which God has ordained to be received by our prayers.
Thomas Doolittle in Morning Exercises at Cripplegate
Prayer is a middle thing betwixt God’s giving and our getting. Mercies are above and good things are from above, and prayer is a means appointed by God to fetch them down.
Wesley Duewel Mighty Prevailing Prayer
https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=28430
Prayer is not limited to the humanly possible. Prayer is a work of faith. The purpose of prevailing prayer is to bring to pass things that are divinely possible and that are in God's will. . . . He has chosen to make us His co-laborer.
Jeremy Taylor "The Return of Prayers"
Prayer is the peace of our spirits, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of our recollection, the seat of our meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest.
Jonathan Edwards
The Prayer-hearing God
What is meant by God's hearing our prayers?
1. He accepts the supplications of those who pray to him. He is pleased with them. He accepts the honour we do him by our praying.
2. He reveals himself to us by special discoveries of his mercy and sufficiency. He enables us to rest in him and leave our prayers with him, submitting to his will, and trusting in his grace and faithfulness.
Thoughts on Revival
When God has something very great to accomplish for His church, it is His will that there should precede it, the extraordinary prayers of His people; as is manifest by Ezek. 36, 37, together with the context. And it is revealed that when God is about to accomplish great things for His Church, He will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication (Zach. 12:10). ...I should think the people of God in this land would be in the way of their duty to do three times as much fasting and prayer as they do.
True Christians Pray
Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life; and to say a man lives a life of faith, and yet lives a prayerless life, is every whit as inconsistent and incredible as to say that a man lives without breathing.
C.H. Spurgeon
I have heard prayers that have seemed to me like dictating to God, rather than the humble, reverent petitions which should be presented by the creature to the Creator, or by the children of God to their loving Father in heaven. We are to come boldly unto the throne of grace, yet always with submission in our hearts.
On 1 Samuel 1:10,13 (Hannah)..."prayed unto the LORD, and wept...She spake in her heart."
Give me a prayer that comes out of the depths of my heart, not because I invented it, but because God the Holy Ghost put it there, and gave it such living force that I could not help letting it out. If you have no words, perhaps you will pray better without them...
Benjamin Beddome, author of A Scriptural Exposition of the (Particular) Baptist Catechism at age 35, quoted by Spurgeon, "Prayer is the breath of God in man returning whence it came."
The Spirit knows what the mind of God is, and then He writes the mind of God upon our mind, and thus the desire of the believer is the transcript of the decree of God: hence the success of prayer.
“Behold, He Prayeth”
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/behold-he-prayeth/#flipbook/
"Spurgeon's Prayers"
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God
Psalm 141:2 "Let my prayer be set forth before you as incense; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
This passage presents the Christian to our view in his holiest and most solemn posture—drawing near to God, and presenting before the altar of His grace the incense of prayer.
True prayer is the incense of a heart broken for sin, humbled for its iniquity, mourning over its plague, and touched, and healed, and comforted with the atoning blood of God's great sacrifice.
Revelation 8: 3-4 "And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand."
This angel is none other than the Angel of the Covenant, Jesus, our great High Priest, who stands before the golden altar in heaven, presenting the sweet incense of His divine merits and sacrificial death; the cloud of which ascends before God "with the prayers of the saints." Oh, it is the merit of our Immanuel, "who gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet—smelling savor," (Ephesians 5:2) that imparts virtue, prevalence, and acceptableness to the incense of prayer ascending from the heart of the child of God. Each petition, each desire, each groan, each sigh, each glance, comes up before God with the "smoke of the incense" which ascends from the cross of Jesus, and from the "golden altar which is before the throne." All the imperfection and impurity which mingles with our devotions here is separated from each petition by the atonement of our Mediator, who presents that as sweet incense to God.
Believer in Jesus, upon the heart of that officiating High Priest your name is written; in the smoke of the incense which has gone up from that waving censer your prayers are presented. Jesus' blood cleanses them, Immanuel's merit perfumes them, and our glorious High Priest thus presents both our person and our sacrifice to his Father and our Father, to His God and our God. Oh wonderful encouragement to prayer! Who, with such an assurance that his weak, broken, and defiled, but sincere petitions shall find acceptance with God, would not breathe them at the throne of grace. Go, in the name of Jesus; go, casting yourself upon the merit which fills heaven with its fragrance; go, and pour out your grief, unveil your sorrow, confess your sin, sue out your pardon, make known your needs, with your eye of faith upon the Angel who stands at the "golden altar which is before the throne," and the incense which breathes from your oppressed and stricken heart will ascend up before God out of the Angel's hand, as a cloud, rich, fragrant, and accepted.
I John 2:1 "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."
The believer has two courts with which prayer has to do. In the court below, where prayer is offered, the Spirit is his Intercessor. In the court above, where prayer is presented, Jesus is his Intercessor. On earth—the lower court—the praying man has a Counselor instructing him for what he should pray, and how he should order his suit. In heaven—the higher court—he has an Advocate presenting to God each petition as it ascends, separating from it all that is ignorant, sinful, and weak, and pleading for its gracious acceptance, and asking for its full bestowment.
Oh, to possess a Divine counselor, dwelling in our hearts, who is acquainted with the purpose of God; who knows the mind of God; who understands the will of God; who reads the heart of God; yes, who is God Himself. What encouragement is this to more real prayer!
With such an Intercessor in the court on earth—so divine, so loving, and so sympathizing—and with such an Intercessor in the court in heaven—so powerful, so eloquent, and so successful, "let us come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:16)
I Peter 4:7 "But the end of all things is at hand: be you therefore sober, and watch unto prayer."
Watch unto prayer, with all diligence and perseverance. Expect an answer to your prayer, a promise to your request, a compliance with your suit. Be as much assured that God will answer, as that you have asked, or that He has promised. Ask in faith; only believe; watch daily at the posts and at the gates of the return; look for it at any moment, and through any providence; expect it not in your own way, but in the Lord's; do not be astonished if He should answer your prayer in the very opposite way to that you had anticipated, and it may be dictated. With this view, watch every providence, even the smallest. You know not when the answer my come—at what hour, or in what way. Therefore watch. The Lord may answer in a great and strong wind, in an earthquake, in a fire, or in a still small voice; therefore watch every providence, to know which will be the voice of God to you. Do not pray as if you asked for or expected a refusal. God delights in your holy fervency, your humble boldness, and your persevering importunity. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." (James 5:16) Pray submissively, expect hopefully, watch vigilantly, and wait patiently.
1 John 5:14-15
When we draw near to God, and ask for more love, more zeal, an increase of faith, a reviving of God's work within us, more resemblance to Christ, the subjection of some (spiritual) enemy, the mortification of some evil, the subduing of some iniquity, the pardon of some guilt, more of the spirit of adoption, the sprinkling of the atoning blood, the sweet sense of acceptance, we know and are assured that we are asking for those things which are according to the will of God, and which it is in the heart of God fully and freely to bestow.
Galatians 6:2 "Bear one another's burdens..."
If you have no needs, others have - take them to the Lord. If you are borne down by no cross, smitten by no affliction, or suffering from no need, others are - for them go and plead with your heavenly Father, and the petitions you send up to the mercy-seat on their behalf may return into your own bosom freighted with rich covenant blessings. The falls, the weaknesses, the declensions of others make them grounds for prayer. Thus, and thus only, can you expect to grow in grace, and grace to grow in you.
G. Campbell Morgan “Prayer or Fainting” on Luke 18:1
The prayer life does not consist of perpetual repetition of petitions. The prayer life consists of life that is always upward, and onward, and Godward. The passion of the heart is for the Kingdom of God; the devotion of the mind is to His will; the attitude of the spirit is conformity thereto; and the higher we climb in the realm of prayer, the more unceasing will prayer be, and the fewer will be the petitions.
J.C. Ryle Knots Untied “The Priest”
A young Christian once said to an old one, ‘My prayers are so poor and weak, that I cannot think they are of any use.’ The old Christian replied, with deep wisdom, ‘Only place them in Christ’s hands, and he makes them look so different in heaven that you would hardly know them again.’ Prayers that are worth nothing in themselves are effectual, when offered ‘through Christ,—for the sake of Christ,—through the mediation of Christ’.
A.W. Pink Studies in the Scriptures
Real prayer is communion with God, so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts, and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones "Jesus on Prayer - the False Way and the True Way" on Matthew 6:5-8
http://articles.ochristian.com/article535.shtml
The essential principle, the one thing that is important when we pray anywhere is that we must realize we are in the presence of God...the almighty, the absolute, the eternal and great God with all His power and His might and majesty, that God who is a consuming fire, that God who is 'light and in whom is no darkness at all,' that utter, absolute Holy God (and) we must remember that He is our Father. The great, the holy, the almighty God is our Father.
A.W. Tozer on Prayer (See below)
http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Apr/20/w-tozer-prayer/
True prayer is not an effort to persuade God to do our will; it is rather an effort to move into the powerful will of God so as to be swept along by it.
The Next Chapter After The Last
A life lived in Christ becomes in the true sense a life of unceasing prayer. The whole life becomes a prayer: words are verbal prayers, thoughts become mental prayers, deeds become prayers in action and even sleep may be but unconscious prayer.
Edmund Calamy The Art of Divine Meditation
https://www.westminsterassembly.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Calamy-Divine_Meditation.pdf
St. Prosper of Aquitaine (c.390-c.463)
Lex orandi, lex credendi - We pray as we believe.
John Owen “The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded”
He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.
Cortland Myers in God's Minute: A Book of 365 Daily Prayers Sixty Seconds Long for Home Worship
We leave our prayer where all prayer belongs - in the shadow of the cross.
E.M. Bounds Power through Prayer
What the church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use - men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men - men of prayer.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer...it is the ultimate test of our true spiritual condition.
Archbishop Richard Trent, “Lord, What a Change Within Us One Short Hour”, 1856
The Hymnal of The Evangelical United Brethren Church
Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make;
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take,
What parched fields refresh as with a shower.
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline, sharp and clear;
We kneel how weak; we rise how full of power!
(As we kneel in prayer before our Father, the trouble that looms over us becomes less overwhelming; we can see the true nature of the problem, and rise in God’s strength to face it.)
CAUTION
Julian of Norwich, The Revelations of Divine Love
“And this I ask without any condition.”
(We must pray fully submitted to His will, His timing, His outcome, and without conditions as to the price we may be asked to pay for answered prayer; holiness, surrender, obedience, refining by the fire of tribulation, self-denial, cross-bearing, and mortification of sin. We must pray with boldness for whatever is for our good and His glory, no matter the cost.)
Christoph Mayer, 1578
May what I ask be done, as Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt, through Thy tender mercy.
William Bates Spiritual Perfection Unfolded and Enforced, Ch. 1 from 2 Corinthians 7:1, 1699
https://books.google.com/books?id=yco-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA11&lpg
Our Savior commands us to "watch and pray, that we may not enter into temptation" (Matthew 26:41).
To watch without prayer is to presume upon our own strength; to pray without watching is to presume upon the grace of God. The Lord's Prayer is the rule of our duty and desires; we are engaged by every petition to cooperate and concur with divine grace to obtain what we pray for.
Arthur John (A.J.) Gossip (Free Church of Scotland. 1928 – 1945 Professor of Christian Ethics at Trinity College, Glasgow)
Do not lie to God. Do not burn false fire upon God's altar; do not pose and pretend, either to Him or to yourself, in your religious exercises; do not say more than you mean, or use exaggerated language that goes beyond the facts, when speaking to Him whose word is truth.
C.T. Studd
Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy...