Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Daily prayers can help us keep on the path that leads to eternal life. We are very unlikely to stray if we offer a humble, simple prayer at least each morning and evening to express thanks and to seek divine guidance.

If I don't go to mass, necessarily, every day, but I definitely go to the church every day. That's how I start my day. I like to get in there for about 15 to 20 minutes and say my prayers.

About four days a week, I do pretty good at having a morning prayer time. But even at that, it's a rambling sort of thing. What I have learned to do better is to try to keep my mind turned toward God and ear inclined toward God throughout the day, and I think I'm doing better at that, but I've got a long way to go.

For me, making time for God is like making time to fill my stomach - like the physical space in the stomach needs food, spiritual space in one's soul needs regular prayer.

Nine times out of ten, declension from God begins in the neglect of private prayer.

The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.

Nothing is more vital than prayer in Christian existence, and few things are more vulnerable to neglect.

The neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness.

If He has said much about prayer, it is because He knows we have much need of it.

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business in the morning and the last in the evening. Guard yourself against such false and deceitful thoughts that keep whispering, "Wait a while. In an hour or so I will pray. I must first finish this or that." Thinking such thoughts we get away from prayer into other things that will hold us and involve us till the prayer of the day comes to naught.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.

Start today by practicing constant conversation with God and continual mediation on his Word. Prayer lets you speak to God; mediation lets God speak to you.

When you get up in the morning, before you suffer yourselves to eat one mouthful of food, call your wife and children together, bow down before the Lord, ask him to forgive your sins, and protect you through the day, to preserve you from temptation and all evil, to guide your steps aright.

Prayer is not just getting ready for Christian service. Prayer is Christian service.

He that lives a prayerless life, lives without God in the world.

I would love to have a more earnest prayer life! In my life, prayer is the single most difficult discipline. I love God and there's something in me that would rather do things for God than talk to God. I'm not by nature a mystical, devotional person. I like to do things. And so it's a challenge for me to have a faithful prayer life, but I know God loves me and He's not mad at me. He just wishes I would slow down and turn things over to Him. And that's what I think you achieve through prayer.

To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.

Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything.

In your morning prayer each new day, ask Heavenly Father to guide you to recognize an opportunity to serve one of His precious children.

Prayer is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honor of a Christian.

We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him by brief repetitions that are requests for personal favors, and nothing more.

The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.

I have morning prayers and a nighttime reflection. I also read the Bible daily.

It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.

If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.