J. C. Ryle Quotes

The 'means of grace' are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord's Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification.

I read the Bible every day.

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.

In order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer, is, to continue praying; for the less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.

I meditate on God's life and I read the scriptures. I read something about Him, go through it and spend a lot of time by myself.

O blessed Saviour, give me grace like Thee, to make Religion my first, and chiefest care, and devoutly to observe, all solemn times, and all holy Rites, which relate to Thy worship.

Through prayer, fasting, and studying, God will answer.

When you get a hankering to talk or complain about what you gave up for Lent, replace that hankering by speaking the word of God. For all the times you would have done the activity that you gave up for Lent, replace it by reading the word of God. Christians should always be drawing closer to God.

We need to pray and read the Bible every day, and regardless of whatever else happens to you, that tends to keep you close to Him, because you are constantly in touch through His Word.

Christians need a time and place to sanctify themselves. It's important to take the time, and early in the morning is a wonderful time to do it.

As we regularly spend time reading God's Word and talking to Him in prayer, we put ourselves in position for Him to do things in our lives we could never do on our own.

I do devotion in the morning. I pray and I read the word.

Read the Bible daily. Make it part of your everyday business to read and meditate on some portion of God's Word. Gather your manna fresh every morning. Choose your own seasons and hours. Do not scramble over and hurry your reading. Give your Bible the best, and not the worst, part of your time. But whatever plan you pursue, let it be a rule of your life to visit the throne of grace and the Bible every day.

Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible-reading.

Prayer is the breath of life to our soul; holiness is impossible without it

Souls who do not practice prayer are like people whose limbs are paralyzed.

I have made it a practice for several years to read the Bible through in the course of every year. I usually devote to this reading the first hour after I rise every morning. As, including the Apocrypha, it contains about fourteen hundred chapters, and as I meet with occasional interruptions, when this reading is for single days, and sometimes for weeks, or even months, suspended, my rule is to read five chapters every morning, which leaves an allowance of about one-forth of the time for such interruptions.

My custom is to read four or five chapters of the Bible every morning immediately after rising. It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day. It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, makes that and the action fine.

The man who never fasts is no more in the way to heaven than the man who never prays.

Prayer is hard work. We may neglect it because we're too tired, too busy, or too distracted to put into prayer the effort required.

I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

I pray daily, and I pray in all kinds of places. I mean, I pray in bed, I pray in the Oval Office. I pray a lot. And just different as the spirit moves me. And faith is an integral part of my life.

Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.

Be constantly committed to prayer or to reading [Scripture]; by praying, you speak to God, in reading, God speaks to you.