John A. Powell Quotes

True prayer is asking God what He wants.

A key to improved prayer is to learn to ask the right questions. Consider changing from asking for the things you want to honestly seeking what He wants for you. Then as you learn His will, pray that you will be led to have the strength to fulfill it.

It is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what is I will do it.

Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God's conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn't get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.

Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed.

I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.

We have to ask ourselves, 'Am I really trying to discern God's will, or determine whether I want to do it?'

Things will happen that seem to be totally contradictory, but these are God's arrangements. It was a wonderful day when I finally realized I don't have to explained or defend the will of God. My job is simply to obey it.

The greatest desire of my heart was for the Lord to manifest His will concerning me.

My life is God's life in me for Him to do with what He wants.

Prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires, as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires.

Don't just ask God for what we want. Let him teach us what we should want.

God answers prayers, but he doesn't always answer it your way.

I hit my knees and I went to him with that and I said God I want to do what you want. I don't want sports to be an idol in my life.

You'll find success in life when you stop trying to include God in your plans and Instead ask God to include you in His.

We are trying not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to him; we are trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what he wants us to do. It so often happens that in prayer we are really saying, 'Thy will be changed,' when we ought to be saying, 'Thy will be done.' The first object of prayer is not so much to speak to God as to listen to him.

In conclusion, the submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give,' brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!

Ask God to show you His plans, not bless your dreams

and here I felt a strange leaping of my heart-God did! My job was to simply follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to him in prayer.

Do I pray that the Lord gives me the desire to do his will, or do I look for compromises because I'm afraid of God's will?

Ask Jesus what he wants from you and be brave!

Prayer is a ritual! But at the root of prayer is the idea of complete bowing down in submission to the Will of God.

Prayer opens our lives for God so his will can be done in and through us, because in true prayer we habitually put ourselves into the attitude of willingness to do whatever God wills.

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word...I would be so overpowered with a sense of God's Infinite Majestey, that I would be contrained to throw myself on the ground, and offer my soul as a blank in His hands, to write on it what He pleased.

The one who listens attentively to the Word of God and truly prays, always asks the Lord: what is your will for me?