Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God. --Andrew Murray
There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying. --John G. Lake
You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day. --Fredrik Wisloff
I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.—John Wesley
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go. -- Abraham Lincoln
Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this – always obey such an impulse. --Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Wishing will never be a substitute for prayer. --Ed Cole
One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying. --Catherine Marshall
Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?-- Corrie Ten Boom
Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan --John Bunyan
Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer. --François Fénelon
The only way to Heaven is prayer; a prayer of the heart, which every one is capable of, and not of reasonings which are the fruits of study, or exercise of the imagination, which, in filling the mind with wandering objects, rarely settle it; instead of warming the heart with love to God, they leave it cold and languishing. --Jeanne Guyon
We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another. --William Law
The Third Petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done but their own.--Aldous Huxley
Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?....Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration,
He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray. --Oswald Chambers
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. --E. M. Bounds
How often have we prayed something like, "O Lord, be with cousin Billy now in a special way"? Have we stopped to consider what it is we're requesting? Imagine that you are a parent who is preparing to leave your children with a babysitter.
Would you dream of saying, "O Betsy, I ask you now that you would be with my children in a special way?" No way. You would say, "Betsy, the kids need to be in bed by 9 pm. They can have one snack before their baths, and please make sure they finish their homework. You can reach us at this number if there's any problem. Any questions before we go?" We are very specific with our requests and instructions for our babysitters. We want them to know specifics. It should be no different with prayer. --David Jeremiah
There is a general kind of praying which fails for lack of precision. It is as if a regiment of soldiers should all fire off their guns anywhere. Possibly somebody would be killed, but the majority of the enemy would be missed. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon
When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy. --Corrie Ten Boom
When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't pray, they don't. --William Temple
Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian. --Andrew Murray
Do you know what prayer is? It is not begging God for this and that. The first thing we have to do is to get you beggars to quit begging until a little faith moves in your souls. --John G. Lake
Those who do not believe do not pray. This is a good functional definition of faith. Faith prays, unbelief does not. --John A. Hardon
Pray, and let God worry. -- Martin Luther
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 task. --Phillips Brooks
This is our Lord's will... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large.-- Julian of Norwich
If you can't pray a door open, don't pry it open.-- Lyell Rader
God's answers are wiser than our prayers. –Unknown
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers. --Teresa of Avila
God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely. --Anselm of Canterbury
We waste most of our time trying to get God to do something He has already done—or praying for God to do something He told us to do. --Jacquelyn K. Heasley
If God will do whatever He wishes, regardless of whether we pray or not, then we do not need to pray at all, and the Lord's instructions on praying for the Kingdom and the Will are superfluous. But the truth is that God waits for a Remnant to rise up and to pray in agreement with His Purpose before He does anything - He will do nothing apart from the Church. Apart from HIM, we CAN do nothing; apart from US, He WILL do nothing –Chip Brogden
We lean to our own understanding, or we bank on service and do away with prayer, and consequently by succeeding in the external we fail in the eternal, because in the eternal we succeed only by prevailing prayer. --Oswald Chambers
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. 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." --E. M. Bounds
Prayer in its highest form is agonizing soul sweat. --Leonard Ravenhill
Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The
Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life. --Leonard Ravenhill
How different the world would look, how different the state of our nation would be, if there were more sanctified priestly souls! These are souls who have the power to bless, for they intercede with sanctified hearts. They never begin their daily time of intercessory prayer without having first brought to the cross all that is unholy in their lives, so that their old self can be crucified there with Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb. –Basilea Schlink
The Church has not yet touched the fringe of the possibilities of intercessory prayer. Her largest victories will be witnessed when individual Christians everywhere come to recognize their priesthood unto God and day by day give themselves unto prayer. --John R. Mott
I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours. --William Wilberforce
We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life is he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God within him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer...Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. --Oswald Chambers
Why is it so important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you "my beloved daughter," "my beloved son," "my beloved child." To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being. --Henri Nouwen
So when we sing, 'Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,' we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. --A.W. Tozer
The lover of silence draws close to God. He talks to Him in secret and God enlightens him. --John Climacus
Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell God your troubles, that God may comfort you; tell God your joys, that God may sober them; tell God your longings, that God may purify them; tell God your dislikes, that God may help you conquer them; talk to God of your temptations, that God may shield you from them: show God the wounds of your heart, that God may heal them. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. Talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration say just what you think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God. --Francois Fenelon
Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means for getting something for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. --Oswald Chambers
If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray. - Frederick Franson
Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons; but they are helpless against our prayers. --J. Sidlow Baxter
Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great deterrent. --Leonard Ravenhill
God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede. -- Oswald Chambers
There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him. --William Law
Rich is the person who has a praying friend. --Janice Hughes
A servant of the Lord stands bodily before men, but mentally he is knocking at the gates of heaven with prayer. –John Climacus
It is necessary to rouse the heart to pray, otherwise it will become quite dry. The attributes of prayer must be: love of God, sincerity, and simplicity. --John of Kronstadt
Whether we think of or speak to God; whether we act or suffer for him; all is prayer when we have no other object than his
love, and the desire of pleasing him. --John Wesley
Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your daily occupation -- speak, act, work in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. --François Fénelon
The true spirit of prayer is no other than God's own Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the saints. And as this spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings. It naturally leads to God, to converse with him by prayer. --Jonathan Edwards
God does not stand afar off as I struggle to speak. He cares enough to listen with more than casual attention. He translates my scrubby words and hears what is truly inside. He hears my sighs and uncertain gropings as fine prose. --Timothy Jones
Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement. --Jacques Ellul
In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. -- John Bunyan
When a man has found the Lord, he no longer has to use words when he is praying, for the Spirit Himself will intercede for him with groans that cannot be uttered. --John Climacus
Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude—an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God. --Arthur W. Pink
There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. --Brother Lawrence
Prayer does not fit us for the greater work, prayer is the greater work. --Oswald Chambers
"I would rather train twenty men to pray, than a thousand to preach; A minister's highest mission ought to be to teach his people to pray." -H. MacGregor
I just read The Lost Art of Disciple Making and I must confess I was impressed by the book! I am growing in my knowledge of disciple making, a concept that was ambiguous at best in the church where I grew up, and this book is a valuable resource. If you're serious about discipling people to help them to maturity in Christ I highly recommend this book. 