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prayer 2
- prayer
3 - prayer 4
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Pray
for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me
night and day.
For what are people better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friends?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. |
Alfred,
Lord Tennyson |
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Prayer
is not an old woman's
idle amusement.
Properly understood
and
applied, it is the most potent
instrument of action.
Mohandas Gandhi
There
is no prayer so
blessed as the prayer
which asks for nothing.
O.J.
Simon (1895)
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Personal
prayer, it seems to me, is one of the simplest
necessities of life,
as basic to the individual as
sunshine, food and water--
and at times, of course, more
so. By prayer I mean an effort
to get in touch with the
Infinite. We know that our prayers are imperfect.
Of
course they are. We are imperfect human beings.
A
thousand experiences have convinced me beyond room of
doubt
that prayer multiplies the strength of the
individual and brings
within the scope of his
capabilities almost any conceivable objective.
Dwight
D. Eisenhower |
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| L.
Robert Keck
Prayer
is not the moment when God and humans are in relationship, for that is always.
Prayer is taking initiative to
intentionally respond to God's presence. |
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A
prayer in its simplest definition is
merely a wish turned Godward.
Phillips Brooks |
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Have enough faith in the love of God to believe
that a short heartfelt prayer
is just as good as a long one. Too
long a session of prayer usually means
that in your heart you really doubt the love of God, and think that a
great deal
of effort and toil will be necessary to move Him.
Pray quietly and sincerely
for a reasonable time—and then leave the matter, expecting success.
Emmet Fox |
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There
are times in a person's life when, regardless of
the
attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees in prayer.
Victor Hugo |
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The purpose of daily
prayer is the cultivation of a sense of the sacred.
Sacred energy renews us. Lives with no more sense of
spiritual meaning
than that provided by shopping malls,
ordinary television, and stagnant
workplaces are barren
lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.
Prayer
enables us to transform the world, because it transforms
us.
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Marianne
Williamson |
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Prayer, the basic exercise of the
spirit, must be actively practiced in our private lives.
The neglected soul of the human being must be made strong enough to
assert itself once more.
For if the power of prayer is
again released and used in the lives of common men and
women;
if the spirit declares its aims clearly and boldly,
there is yet hope
that our prayers for a better world
will be answered.
Alexis Carrel |
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Lift up your hearts to Him, sometimes even
at your meals,
and when you are in company; the least
little remembrance
will always be acceptable to Him. You
need not cry very loud;
He is nearer to us than we are
aware.
Brother Lawrence |
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Prayer
is neither black magic nor is it a form of a demand note.
Prayer is a relationship. The act of praying is more
analogous
to clearing away the underbrush which shuts out
a view than it is
to begging on the street. There are
many different kinds of prayer.
Yet all prayer has one
basic purpose. We pray not to get something,
but to open
up a two-way street between us and God,
so that we and
others may inwardly become something.
John
Heuss |
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"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
O sweeter
than the marriage feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay!
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Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
for the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Wilfred T. Grenfell
The privilege of prayer to me
is one of the most cherished possessions,
because faith
and experience alike convince me that God himself sees
and answers,
and His answers I never venture to criticize.
It is only my part to ask.
If it were otherwise, I would
not dare to pray at all. |
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Pray
till prayer makes you forget
your own wish, and leave it
or merge it in God's will.
Frederick
W. Robertson |
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Through prayer we can
carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow,
all
conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger,
loneliness and misery,
not because of some great
psychological or emotional capacity,
but because God's
heart has become one with ours.
Henri Nouwen |
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William
McGill |
The
value of persistent prayer is not that
He will hear us .
. . but that we will finally hear Him. |
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God
prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart
to the
finest verses chanted by the wicked.
Voltaire |
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They tell about a fifteen-year-old
boy in an orphans' home who had an incurable stutter.
One
Sunday the minister was detained and the boy volunteered
to say the prayer in his stead.
He did it perfectly, too,
without a single stutter.
Later he explained, "I don't
stutter when I talk to God. He loves me."
Bennett Cerf |
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Most
Christians expect little from God, ask little,
and
therefore receive little and are content with little.
A.W. Pink |
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Every
time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be
new feeling
and new meaning in it which will give you
fresh courage,
and you will understand that prayer is an
education.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
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Get into
the habit of dealing with God about everything.
Unless in
the first waking moment of the day you learn
to fling the
door wide back and let God in, you will work
on a wrong
level all day; but swing the door wide open
and pray to
your Father in secret, and every public thing
will be
stamped with the presence of God.
Oswald Chambers |
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There is no hope but in prayer.
Andrew Bonar |
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This
morning I stood on the river bank to pray.
I knew then that the ancient ones
were wise to pray for peace and beauty and not for specific gifts
except fertility
which is continued life.
And I saw that if one has even a small degree of the ability
to take into and unto him or herself the peace and beauty that God
surrounds them with,
it is not necessary to ask for more.
Edith Warner |
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You
must pray for yourself constantly.
How
could it be otherwise? We worship God by
believing in Him, trusting Him, and loving
Him wholeheartedly -- and we can attain to
that only through prayer. The sole object of
our being here is that we may grow like Him --
and we can do that only through prayer.
The more we pray for ourselves the more power
will our prayers have for any other purpose
whatever; so praying for ourselves is the reverse
of selfishness -- it is truly
glorifying God.
Emmet
Fox |
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If
you are considering using prayer to help you find your way, I have
some good news:
a guarantee that your prayers will be answered.
How can I guarantee something like that?
It’s easy.
When you pray,
you are changed.
The moment you begin praying, you step into the
mystery and become part of it, and you are, inevitably, changed.
So your prayers are answered because you are
a different person after you pray.
When
you embrace the mystery and open yourself to it, a new life
is created, resistant to the old problems.
You will notice at times that
the new life isn’t what you asked for.
But asking for specific items or
for particular events to occur isn’t how I define prayer.
I cannot guarantee
that the orders you place with God will always be filled.
Prayer is not
a test of God, but a call for help to find your inner strength and
talent.
Bernie Siegel |
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Where are we taught that prayer
is something we can go to at any time,
in any place? Are we ever taught that in order to get results,
we must pray with faith and persistence? I will be among the
first to admit
that for many years my prayers were results-oriented. There was
something
I wanted, and I thought prayer could get it for me when I could not
get it
for myself. It took me quite some time to realize that prayer is
actually an affirmation
of what already exists. Prayer is a demonstration of our
willingness to receive
what exists as an outgrowth of our faith in the truth that is good for
us.
Prayer is an acknowledgement of our trust in the Divine to provide
everything we need, when we need it.
Iyanla
Vanzant |
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