Everyone faces hardship and difficulty, but the person who has faith doesn’t have to face it alone.
Here are a series of observations by great thinkers about the effectiveness and power of prayer when you feel discouraged. Select one or two that match your situation as you turn from focusing on your problems, to focusing your thoughts on God’s provision. This is much like King David in the Bible, who wrote, “This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and delivered him from all his fears.” (Psalm 34).
“God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)
PRAYER is the difference between the best YOU CAN DO and the best GOD CAN DO.
God only gives three answers to prayer:1. Yes! 2. Not yet 3. I have something better in mind.
God doesn’t move in your life when you struggle; He moves when you pray.
When life knocks you on your knees, you’re in a perfect position to pray
“I firmly believe a great many prayers are not answered because we are not willing to forgive someone” – D.L. Moody
Has someone wronged you recently? Resist the urge to judge that person. Instead, pray that God might use you to reach the offender. – Warren Wiersbe
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” – Martin Luther
“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 the day.”- Abraham Lincoln
If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal? – Charles Spurgeon
“Prayer is the rope that pulls God and man together. But, it doesn’t pull God down to us: It pulls us up to Him.” – Billy Graham
“Every Christian needs a half-hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy, then he needs an hour.” – Francis de Sales
“Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it.” – Corrie Ten Boom
“Our prayers are heard by God not according to what we try to be when we pray, but who we are when we are not praying” – Joyce Meyer
“We should spend as much time in thanking God for his benefits as we do in asking him for them.” –Vencent de Paul, Roman Catholic priest
“Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.” –Oswald Chambers, English devotional writer.
“God will either give you what you ask, or something far better.” (Robert Murray McCheyne – Scottish Evangelical Pastor)
“Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom” – Charles Spurgeon, Baptist revivalist preacher.
“In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender” – Abraham Joshua Heschel, American Jewish Theologian.
“Prayer is naught but a rising desire of the heart into God by withdrawing of the heart from all earthly thoughts.” – Walter Hilton
“He who has learned to pray has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.” – William Law, Anglican author.
“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.” – Brother Lawrence
Oswald Chambers said, “Ask God for what you want, but you cannot ask if you are not asking for a right thing. When you draw near to God, you cease from asking for things.“Your Father knows what things you have need of, before you ask him.” Then, why ask? That you may get to know Him.”
Martin Luther said,“What are the things we should pray for? First, our personal troubles…The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we can become hard-hearted and insensible to what is inside of us.”
Elton Trueblood (Quaker Philosopher) said, “At the profoundest depths in life, men talk not about God but with Him.”
D. L. Moody (19th Century Evangelist) said, “Sometimes when your child talks, your friends cannot understand what he says; but the mother understands very well. So if our prayer comes from the heart, God understands our language.”
D. L. Moody (19th Century Evangelist) said, “After we have made our requests known to Him, our language should be, “Thy will be done.” I would a thousand times rather that Gods’ will should be done than my own.”
John Wesley said,“God does nothing except in answer to Prayer.”
John Maxwell said,“Every time I have had a breakthrough in my life, it has been because of Prayer”
C.S. Lewis said,“Lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”
Walter Wink said,“History belongs to the intercessors”
Henry Ward Beecher said, “Whoever can take a church and develop in it a good prayer meeting, carry it on through years and still have it fruitful, various, spiritual — he is a General.”
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America. – Lyndon B. Johnson 1908-1973, Thirty-sixth President of the USA
All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. – Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA
All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired. – Martin Luther 1483-1546, German Leader of the Protestant Reformation
More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. – Mother Teresa 1910-1997, Albanian-born Roman Catholic Missionary
Dale Carnegie was asked, “what is the secret of your life?” Dale Carnegie replied, “Every day I pray. I yield myself to God, the tensions and anxieties go out of me and peace and power come in.
Woodrow Wilson said,”I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their servant and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of America—an America united in feeling, in purpose and in its vision of duty, of opportunity and of service.” – We thank “Paul Flatt” for submitting
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale “When you are in an upsetting situation, pray for everyone involved. Pray hard and be open to the power of God.” Prayer is a gift that blesses you and those for whom you pray and it is something that can be done at any time, in any place, whenever you have a moment to give.
“God shapes the world by prayer. The more prayer there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces of against evil” – E.M. Bounds
“No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.” E.M. Bounds
“We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.” Oswald Chambers
“Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God’s saints have been held.” E. M. Bounds
C. H. Spurgeon “If you want that splendid power in prayer, you must remain in loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, abiding union with the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work” – Oswald Chambers
“Those persons who know the deep peace of God, the unfathomable peace that passeth all understanding, are always men and women of much prayer.” R. A. Torrey
“Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things ‘above all that we ask or think.'” Andrew Murray
“There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer.” A.T. Pierson
“Heaven is full of answers to prayer for which no one bothered to ask” – Billy Graham
