The greatest thing anyone can do for God or man is pray.
Prayer wonderfully clears the vision; steadies the nerves; defines duty; stiffens the purpose; sweetens and strengthens the spirit.
The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer, nor those who say they believe in prayer, nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean these people who take time and pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important, very important, and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer. There are people that put prayer first, and group the other items in life's schedule around and after prayer.
Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.
Faith is blind...to impossibilities and deaf to doubt. It listens only to God.
Joy is distinctly a Christian word and a Christian thing. It is the reverse of happiness. Happiness is the result of what happens of an agreeable sort. Joy has its springs deep down inside. And that spring never runs dry, no matter what happens. Only Jesus gives that joy.
The real victory in all service is won in secret beforehand by prayer.
The greatest thing anyone can do for God and man is pray. It is not the only thing; but it is the chief thing. The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; not those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time and pray.
Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that men can understand.
If there are two persons praying, there are three. If three meet to pray, there are four praying. There is always one more than you can see.
You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.
One should never initiate anything that he cannot saturate with prayer.
No man's hand has ever yet reached up to take as much as the Pierced Hand is reaching down to give.
Prayer is repeating the victor's name (Jesus) into the ears of Satan and insisting on his retreat.
Spirit discernment is rare because it is expensive. It means a sensitive conscience, an instructed understanding through study of the Book of God. It means a passion for purity, for truth, for the right, for Christ Himself, and for living uncompromisingly true in the daily habit. All this lies back of a seeing spirit eye. And these things cost. Discernment is expensive.
Steadfastness, that is holding on; patience, that is holding back; expectancy, that is holding the face up; obedience, that is holding one's self in readiness to go or do; listening, that is holding quiet and still so as to hear.
The greatest thing anyone can do for God and for man is to pray. You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. Prayer is striking the winning blow ... service is gathering up the results.
Prayer strikes the winning blow; service is simply picking up the pieces.
God's greatest agency; man's greatest agency, for defeating the enemy and winning men back is intercession.
If there be anything that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is this simple and childlike repose in the arms of God.
Shoes divide men into three classes. Some men wear their father's shoes. They make no decisions of their own. Some are unthinkingly shod by the crowd. The strong man is his own cobbler. He insists on making his own choices. He walks in his own shoes.
Prayer does not influence God. Prayer surely does influence God. It does not influence His purpose. It does influence His action.
If we lose the spirit of 'go,' we have lost the very Christian spirit itself. A disobedient church will become a dead church. It will die of heart failure.
Prayer is partnership with God in His planet-sized purposes, and includes the "all things" beside, as an important detail of the whole.
The way from God to a human heart is through a human heart.
