Prayer is not optional for the Christian; it is required.
While the pulpit must hold to its unswerving loyalty to the Word of God, it must, at the same time, be loyal to the doctrine of prayer which that same Word illustrates and enforces upon mankind.
O Lord, who art our guide even unto death, grant us, I pray Thee, grace to follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. In little daily duties to which Thou callest us, bow down our wills to simple obedience.
Today is important only in light of what we do for God.
Prayer is not one of the many things the community does. Rather, it is its very beingBut when prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experienced as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.
Where most men work for degrees after their names, we work for one before our names: Saint.
Don't pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it.
The most important of your affairs in my view is prayer; whoever prays regularly has protected his faith, but whoever neglects it, is bound to be more negligent in other issues of faith.
To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice.
God deserves the best from us.
The true believer can no more live without prayer, than without food day by day.
I said God, I want to spend the rest of my life helping people, and felt a real call through a divine moment, an encounter with God. I went to my pastor and said I have a call of God to preach. He put a broom in my hand, and I began to sweep the church.
The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the things we should give up in order to pray
When I took the habit, the Lord immediately showed me how He favours those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him. No one saw what I endured... At the moment of my entrance into this new state I felt a joy so great that it has never failed me even to this day; and God converted the dryness of my soul into a very great tenderness.
But it's true I hadn't realised quite how much the discipleship of Jesus Christ would involve keeping up with email.
Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.
When Jesus says you must leave your family to follow Him, he doesn't necessarily mean physically. He means leave your dependence on them, make an emotional break with them.
