Quotes & Sayings About Praying Often

I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Answer our prayers isn't that we aren't praying hard enough; the reason, more often than not, is that we aren't willing to work hard enough. Praying hard is synonymous with working hard. Think of praying hard and working hard as concentric circles. It's the way we double-circle our dreams and His promises. There comes a moment, after you have prayed through, when you have to start doing something about it. You have to take a step of faith, and — Mark Batterson

Astraeus,' Aven called out. 'God of the four winds and friend to sailors. Say a little prayer when you look at him, so he will give us what we need to keep our course.'
A little prayer?' said Jack. 'To a constellation?'
To what it represents,' said Aven.
But I don't believe in what it represents,' said Jack.
Prayers aren't for the deity,' said Aven. 'They're for you, to recommit yourself to what you believe.'
Can't you do that without praying to a dead Greek god?'
Sure,' said Aven. 'But how often would anyone do that, if not in prayer? — James A. Owen

Praying with You Lord, so often we are overwhelmed by all the tasks ahead of us. Today help us to turn our eyes to You so that we can discern between the truly important tasks and those that will not add any real value to our lives. May we look to You as our Peace today. Amen. — Sally Clarkson

While I sleep, and I sleep often these days, he spends much of his time in the church downtown. The very one I never could convince him to attend. He claims he is praying. But I know he is trying to strike a bargain with our Maker.
One hand of Black Jack, I know he says. Winner gets to keep the girl.
I know for sure, were J. granted that game of cars with the Almighty, he'd go into it with both an ace and a jack up his sleeve. — Suzanne Brockmann

Similarly, while prayer is frequently a person's first response to a disaster, it's often the least helpful. Instead of praying for disaster victims, it would be more helpful to donate blood, send donations or volunteer. These are actions that can actually have a positive effect on someone. — Armin Navabi

Often a healing takes place in ourselves as we pray for the healing of others. — Michael E. DeBakey

Countless people pray far more than they know. Often they have such a "stained-glass" image of prayer that they fail to recognize what they are experiencing as prayer and so condemn themselves for not praying. — Richard J. Foster

Unavoidably, the life of contemplation is an everyday life, a life of fidelity in small matters, small services rendered in the spirit of warmth and love which lightens every burden. The sun's brightness can from time to time (and perhaps often) be hidden in mist and cloud, but that is no reason for laying aside one's daily work. Contemplation is work, and it goes on working even when the person praying derives no apparent satisfaction from it. Contemplation is a conversation in which I am at pains not to be boring, not to say and think the same thing every day; I use my imagination and creativity to offer God at least something of myself. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

In too many churches today, people don't see manifestations of God's power in answer to fervent praying. Instead, they hear arguments about theological issues that few people care about. On Christian radio and television we are often merely talking to ourselves. — Jim Cymbala

It is often just as sacred to laugh as it is to pray. — Charles R. Swindoll

Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God's footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Don't let prayers get between you and God. The object of praying is not saying prayers. It is being with God. The different forms of prayer are simply means to open ourselves up to God's presence. Too often we confuse "praying" with "saying prayers." The more we pray, the more we want to pray. The less we pray, the less we want to pray. — Ken Untener

The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Many of us pray often, but we do not get the nourishment from our praying. This should not be so. We are not praying to an idol; we pray to the living God. He is the very God who is now in our spirit. When we speak to Him, He responds in our spirit. When we exercise our spirit, we realize Him within our spirit. If we merely exercise our mind and pray from our mouth, the Triune God within us has no way. He is not in our mind. but in our spirit. We must exercise our spirit (1 Tim. 4:7). — Witness Lee

Go to the Madonna. Love her! Always say the Rosary. Say it well. Say it as often as you can! Be souls of prayer. Never tire of praying, it is what is essential. Prayer shakes the Heart of God, it obtains necessary graces! — Pio Of Pietrelcina

I am starting to see there is a difference between "saying prayers" and honest praying. Both can sound the same on the outside, but the former is too often motivated by a sense of obligation and guilt; whereas the latter is motivated by a conviction that I am completely helpless to "do life" on my own. Or in the case of praying for others, that I am completely helpless to help others without the grace and power of God. — Paul E. Miller

The glib way people talk about prayer often reinforces our cynicism. We end our conversations with "I'll keep you in my prayers." We have a vocabulary of "prayer speak," including "I'll lift you up in prayer" and "I'll remember you in prayer." Many who use these phrases, including us, never get around to praying. Why? Because we don't think prayer makes much difference. — Paul E. Miller

Gratitude opens our eyes ... We are often praying for something God has already given us. — Steve Maraboli

People who think they have no belief quite often say they want to pray but they do not know who or what they could be praying to. Aquinas would not say to such people, 'Ah, but you see, if you became a believer, a Christian, we would change all that. You would come to understand to whom you are praying.' Not at all. He would say to such people, 'If you became a Christian you would stop being surprised or ashamed of your condition. You would be happy with it. For faith would assure you that you could not know what God is until he reveals himself to us openly.' — Herbert McCabe

We can't pray that God make our lives free of problems; this won't happen, and it is probably just as well. We can't ask Him to make us and those we love immune to diseases, because He can't do that. We can't ask Him to weave a magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people, and never to us.
People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or good boyfriends get them as a result of praying. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of they have lost, very often find their prayer answered. — Harold S. Kushner

God never intended for us to be left to pray on our own. God never changes His purpose, but He often does purpose a change. — John Owen

So these days, I'm on the lookout for grace, and I'm especially on the lookout for ways that I withhold grace from myself and from other people. At first, showing people grace makes you feel powerful, like scattering candy from a float in a parade - grace for you, grace for you. You become almost giddy, thinking of people in generous ways, allowing for their faults, absorbing minor irritations. You feel great, and then you start to feel just ever so slightly superior, because you're so incredibly evolved and gracious. But then inevitably something happens, and it usually involves you confronting one of your worst selves, often in public, and you realize that you're not throwing candy off a float to a nameless, dirty public, but rather that you are that nameless, dirty public, and that you are starving and on your knees, praying for a little piece of sweetness, just one mouthful of grace. — Shauna Niequist

I often find myself on my knees praying to something or someone to not be in control. — Dave Gahan

So often these days eating Indian food passes for spirituality. I don't meditate, I don't pray, but I eat two samosa's every day. — Dan Bern

Too often we pray ASAP prayers - as soon as possible. We need to start praying ALAT prayers - as long as it takes. — Mark Batterson

If you bow your knees more often in prayer, you will feel the presence of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence. They go on living, mortally wounded but resigned, weeping often but with no desire to strike back against the person who has injured them, praying for him and cherishing their memories until their last breath. That is love, true love, the love the angels know ... — Honore De Balzac

With people who have multiple problems, I try to start with the one I have the most experience with. I often ask people if they have a headache and if they say yes, I command it to leave repeatedly until it's gone. Obtaining victory over one thing demonstrates to you and to them that God is willing to heal them. After one thing is healed, you can move to the next thing, getting one condition healed at a time, starting with the one you have the most faith for. — Praying Medic

Teach us to pray often, that we may pray oftener. — Jeremy Taylor

When we try to express communion with God in words, we rapidly reach the end of our capacities. But in the depths of our being Christ is praying for more than we imagine. Compared to the immensity of that hidden prayer of Christ in us, our explicit praying dwindles to almost nothing. That is why silence is so essential in discovery the heart of prayer.
Although God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never wants to impose anything on us. Often God's voice comes in a whisper, in a breath of silence. Remaining in silence in God's presence, open to the Spirit, is already prayer.
It is not a matter of trying to obtain inner silence at all costs by following some method that creates a kind of emptiness within. The important thing is a childlike attitude of trust by which we allow Christ to pray within us silently, and then one day, we will discover that the depths of our being ar inhabited by a Presence. — Taize

When you are weary of praying, and do not receive, consider how often you have heard a poor man calling, and have not listened to him. — Saint John Chrysostom

Too often we pray to have patience, but we want it right now! — Robert D. Hales

Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn't easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens - I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself. — Elisabeth Elliot

Sometimes pain and illness are not meant to be removed. You can't second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it's often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can. — Stephen Levine

Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosophy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises. — PZ Myers

Prayers are instantly noticed in heaven. The moment Saul began to pray, the Lord heard him. Here is comfort for the distressed but praying soul. When our hearts are broken and we bow in prayer, we are often only able to employ the language of sighs and tears; still our groaning has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music. That tear has been caught by God and treasured in the receptacle of heaven. "Put my tears in your bottle"1 implies that they are caught as they flow. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I don't often spend more than half an hour in prayer at one time, but I never go more than half an hour without praying. — Smith Wigglesworth

Being with a friend in great pain is not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. We do not know what to do or what to say, and we worry about how to respond to what we hear. Our temptation is to say things that come more out of our own fear than out of our care for the person in pain. Sometimes we say things like 'Well, you're doing a lot better than yesterday,' or 'You will soon be your old self again,' or 'I'm sure you will get over this.' But often we know that what we're saying is not true, and our friends know it too.
We do not have to play games with each other. We can simply say: 'I am your friend, I am happy to be with you.' We can say that in words or with touch or with loving silence. Sometimes it is good to say: 'You don't have to talk. Just close your eyes. I am here with you, thinking of you, praying for you, loving you. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself. — Anne Lamott

While we are often willing to spend time reading the Bible, praying, or participating in church programs and services, few of us recognize the importance of becoming good Christian case makers. — J. Warner Wallace

Her fingers dug into the doorframe she leaned on, hoping and praying that he would just step out of the shadows and kiss her the way he had done so often in her dreams. — Elaine White

Too often, the hopeless romantics among us are wishing and praying for the Right One to come along and sweep them off their feet. But have you ever wondered first if YOU could be a Right person whom another person is worthy of having?-Elizabeth's Quotes on Love — Elizabeth E. Castillo

When I begin praying Christ into someone's life, God often permits suffering in that person's life. If Satan's basic game plan is pride, seeking to draw us into his life of arrogance, then God's basic game plan is humility, drawing us into the life of his Son. — Paul E. Miller

Sometimes, when we pray for miracles what we are really praying for is God to do the work that we are too afraid to take action about. Often, the miracle resides in us and we need to simply "be all in", rather than standing on the fence waiting. — Shannon L. Alder

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. — Eugene H. Peterson

Think about Praying Mantis. The deadliest ninja predator. Why isn't his animus a lion or a polar bear - two of the most successful killing machines in the animal kingdom? The answer is that these animals would not be right for him. Think how a praying mantis is invisible on a leaf, how they are carnivores who will devour their own species. The female will even eat her own partner once they've mated and, as hatchlings, their first meal is often one of their own siblings. These are the things that matter to Praying Mantis - and if you study his attributes, they are elements that will help you defeat him. — Jane Prowse

Often when I teach on prayer, people want to know how long I pray each day. The answer I want to give is that I have no idea, not because I haven't been praying but because I have. I want communion with Christ to be such an integral part of my daily existence that I could never assign a measure ment to it. I want prayer to be life and life to be prayer, day in and day out. — Tricia McCary Rhodes

For me, writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. — Marilynne Robinson

If you don't pray often, you won't gain a love for praying. Prayer is work, and therefore it is not very appealing to our natural sensibilities. But the simple rule for prayer is this: Begin praying and your taste for prayer will increase. The more you pray, the more you will acquire the desire for prayer, the energy for prayer, and the sense of purpose in prayer. — Leslie Ludy

I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him. — C.S. Lewis

The Christian is not always praying; but within his bosom is a heaven-kindled love
fires of desire, fervent longings
which make him always ready to pray, and often engage him in prayer. — Thomas Guthrie

We often pray for purity, unselfishness, for the highest qualities of character, and forget that these things cannot be given, but must be earned. — Lyman Abbott