prayer

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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
6236c7d	Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.		prayer humanity religion god heart inspirational souls weakness	Mahatma Gandhi
5f257a9	Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky--up--up--up--into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.		prayer faith inspiration	L.M. Montgomery
74986c2	"Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess: Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity. Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends. Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing. I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong. Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces.		prayer humility patience old-age	Margot Benary-Isbert
e5ccb03	The more you pray, the less you'll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You'll feel more patient and less pressured.		worship prayer worry	Rick Warren
b18c195	A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.		prayer wild-at-heart	Tennessee Williams
fc0598c	In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.		words prayer inspirational christian	John Bunyan
429a291	Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.		prayer	Terry Pratchett
746f4bb	Give me the Love that leads the wa		prayer god love inspirational	Amy Carmichael
52de61c	I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.		prayer religion god inspirational	Ravi Zacharias
240b7c0	Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God's already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn't pay Him for what He's done for me.		a-w-tozer millenniums earth worship prayer god life truth inspirational million the-truth pay ages done	A.W. Tozer
27afe35	Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.		activist beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul fathers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community jealousy marine-life-conservation medical-missions motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action real-people rescuers search-and-rescue time true-beauty prayer writing compassion inspiration philosophy truth inspirational empathetic takers communicators perspectives inner-beauty tender givers loving charity mothers community friendships service reflection judgement vanity aging	Shannon L. Alder
39e0899	Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men		prayer strength inspirational	John F. Kennedy
3b11337	For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.		prayer sorrow religious	Alexandre Dumas
3005700	Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.		prayer religion god inspirational	Mahatma Gandhi
d5e8369	Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.		prayer spirituality inspirational	Anne Lamott
d647be2	"Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom."		prayer spirituality	Anne Lamott
08e8135	We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.		prayer inspirational	Oswald Chambers
8bb7f6e	Many people pray to be kept out of unexpected problems		ability prayer problem secret life inspirational overcome praying unexpected problems confront pray	Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]
3f3a631	Never pray for justice, because you might get some.		prayer	Margaret Atwood
bfb6bf3	God will answer you prayers better than you think. Of course, one will not always get exactly what he has asked for....We all have sorrows and disappointments, but one must never forget that, if commended to God, they will issue in good....His own solution is far better than any we could conceive.		prayer spiritual inspirational christian	Fanny J. Crosby
13490ef	She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.		prayer sorrow heartache	Marilynne Robinson
446dd6a	Love is the only prayer I know.		prayer	Marion Zimmer Bradley
5b806bb	...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.		prayer past truth	Anne Lamott
11d734d	Anyone who is having troubles should pray. Anyone who is happy should sing praises. Anyone who is sick should call the church's elders. They should pray for and pour oil on the person in the name of the Lord. And the prayer that is said with faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will heal that person. And if the person has sinned, the sins will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so God can heal you. When a believing person prays, great things happen. (James 5:13-16)		happy prayer faith inspiration spirituality heal healing troubles miracles pray sing sin	Anonymous
0fe55e7	Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.		prayer nada nothing	Ernest Hemingway
d0d5288	A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.		prayer funny religion humor agnosticism bureaucracy mythology parody	Roger Zelazny
8bcc1fc	God bless us, every one!		prayer	Charles Dickens
a1724bb	God, I am trying to recover my faith. Please don't abandon me in the middle of this adventure, I prayed, pushing my fears aside.		prayer faith god recover fears	Paulo Coelho
0a127b5	Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street. He stopped here and there to sniff aught of interest. Wherever our Rat stopped, Pounce was there, close enough to see up the Rat's nose. I was so proud. Now there was a proper god, making himself useful! Since my thought might be deemed blasphemy, I said silent prayers to the Goddess and to Mithros. I begged forgiveness and asked them not to misunderstand. Since I wasn't blasted where I stood, I guess they forgave me, or they hadn't heard my blasphemy.		prayer gods	Tamora Pierce
6200f55	...he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope....		mourning grief loss relationships prayer family exit-west mohsin-hamid	Mohsin Hamid
ca802d4	"My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said. If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real-really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table. So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us. Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside."		light prayer truth real	Anne Lamott
a596e75	The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you're at the mercy of the universe for the first, and you've got some help with the second.		prayer wish	Jodi Picoult
aae679a	Help me give up my addiction to Hope.		prayer fiction	Chuck Palahniuk
023afcb	"O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope - for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse." - from Homer's Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)"		prayer creativity	Steven Pressfield
1db0996	Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us. As we engage in this communion with God more deeply and come to know the One with whom we are speaking more intimately, that growing knowledge of God reveals to us all the more brilliantly who we are and our need to change in conformity to Him. Prayer changes us profoundly.		prayer gospel	R.C. Sproul
877ded0	Thy will be done, my Lord. Because you know the weakness in the heart of your children, and you assign each of them only the burden they can bear. May you understand my love-because it is the only thing I have that is really mine, the only thing that I will be able to take with me into the next life. Please allow it to be courageous and pure; please make it capable of surviving the snares of the world.		prayer world heart life love courageous done pure lord weakness will children	Paulo Coelho
5fb0713	Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land.		prayer	Jodi Picoult
b21cf65	O God -- please give him back! I shall keep asking You.		prayer religion god	John Irving
19bb118	I have always been a firm believer in God and the power of prayer, though to be honest, my faith has made for alist of questions I definitely want answered after I'm gone.		prayer god	Nicholas Sparks
3f9c401	"Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched--by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever." (p.33)"		madness prayer depression god asymmetry atlantic blind-man blossom left-eye living-things nineteen-years-old power-of-sight clock tree sacraments bones starlight apple wind autumn colors smile questions mirror horror journey eyes	Tim Willocks
6e1c779	If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow--what's his name?--cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.		suffering prayer religion repression salvation desire	Tom Robbins
134d2e1	it is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it.		loss prayer reality grieving-mother	Khaled Hosseini
0311d1d	Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.		prayer	Zora Neale Hurston
97fd627	I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.		prayer	Terry Tempest Williams
ef3913d	God stays awake all the time. In case we need to talk to Him about something.		prayer god inspirational	Karen Kingsbury
0644ecd	I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.		courage prayer world kindness jesus god life love inspirational fortitude praying brave prudence precious stewardship grace kind pray	Marilynne Robinson
24302eb	"So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.' Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so. I thought I might finally have offended Loyd past the point of no return, like stealing the lobster from frozen foods that time, to get myself fired. But Loyd was just thinking. After a minute he said, 'No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance.' In balance.' Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with .' And what is the deal?' I asked. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.'		prayer religion	Barbara Kingsolver
bf3f042	The most important thing we can pray about for others is that they will know God better and that He will help them understand His will, grow in spiritual wisdom, and live lives that honor Him. We can pray that they will become more like Him and bear the fruit of His Spirit.		prayer inspirational bible-study	Stormie Omartian
9540d19	Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my toys will break. So none of the other kids can use 'em.... Amen.		prayer selfish toys	Shel Silverstein
b2acf9f	A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.		prayer character god	Anne Lamott
a4a9abb	If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.		prayer death comfort-zone	Anne Lamott
0cca254	My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.		prayer love	Marion Zimmer Bradley
b277442	I came to set fire to the earth. And I am watchful that the fire grow. May the fire of love grow in our hearts. May the fire of transformation glow in our movements. May the fire of purification burn away our sins. May the fire of justice guide our steps. May the fire of wisdom illuminate our paths. May the fire that spreads over the Earth never be extinguished.		prayer wisdom	Paulo Coelho
f93db2b	It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown...it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe... and mine again as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown?		prayer death love crown	George R.R. Martin
1a3eb20	On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a life would be accomplished. And now she had learnt that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic. Trusting to herself, she had fallen.		heroic prayer strength wisdom individual-will noble	Elizabeth Gaskell
2d220f8	"Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months."		prayer truth	Anne Lamott
23d7429	Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.		prayer meaning trouble	Anne Lamott
3e32bf0	You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.		prayer	Barbara Kingsolver
9826aec	Reading a book about something can be an obstacle to doing it because it gives you the impression that you are doing what you are only thinking about doing. It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of our imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you. It is like a book on a shelf. But, as Dostoyevsky says, 'love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams' ( ).		prayer faith	Peter Kreeft
b9cbe45	The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that - an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness.		prayer meditation	sue monk kidd
e987340	Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [...] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).		prayer god-s-love god-s-grace	Peter Kreeft
c1e9bca	"The angel said, "I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer."		color prayer films cinema	Jonathan Carroll
c860786	When we say to people, 'I will pray for you,' we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. 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.		prayer jesus god god-s-heart our-heart	Henri J.M. Nouwen
76f28c8	That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.		prayer	Marilynne Robinson
0c4eb1a	i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any---lifted from the no of all nothing---human merely being doubt unimaginably You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)		gratitude prayer	E.E. Cummings
8e307fe	Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.		prayer surrender	Watchman Nee
4aa082d	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?		prayer	James A. Owen
f533c2d	The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.		prayer god saints	Peter Kreeft
a45934e	Lord, I believe; help my unbelief'... is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.		prayer faith doubts weakness humility	Flannery O'Connor
a76d970	Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now.		prayer	Henri J.M. Nouwen
3e0fb0b	Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy		prayer	John Piper
e81b7b7	"Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. "I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left." In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna."		war bologna yossarian catch-22 prayer funny inspiration humor hope rational meditation superstition	Joseph Heller
b7b17b5	People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh? And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country. So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble.		prayer religion humor satire	Terry Pratchett
89fb9f1	Tangaloor, fire-bright Flame-foot, farthest walker Your hunter speaks In need he walks In need, but never in fear.		prayer	Tad Williams
a2e0495	". . . you have no idea how many people there are in the world whose day could be made and their life changed for the better if someone would just look them in the eye, smile, and say, "Hello."		prayer	Stormie Omartian
b79e641	My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!		prayer religion god	Frank Herbert
015100c	When we pray for God to illumine our path, we are saying, 'Dear God, please show me the way. What thoughts do I need to think, to be able to navigate my life at this point? What perceptions do I need; what insights will guide me? Who do I need to forgive? What parts of my personality do I need to look at; what changes do I need to make? Please come upon me and heal my life. Amen.		prayer looking-for-direction unemployment	Marianne Williamson
91c3c53	These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender? Letting go, forgiveness? Maybe just after a period of prayer, but then when the mood passes and real life rears its ugly head again? Not so much. I hate this, the fact that life is usually Chutes and Ladders, with no guaranteed gains. I cannot will myself into having these qualities, so I have to pray for them more often, if I want to be happy. I have to create the habit, just as I had to do with daily writing, and flossing.		happy prayer letting-go trust forgiveness surrender	Anne Lamott
e9344e2	When things are good in your life, take the time to build and fortify your relationship with the Lord. Never become complacent about your relationship with Him, because there's always room to grow DEEPER!		prayer relationship love lord power	Stormie Omartian
4eb0421	If you ever seem to be sliding back into the very thing you've already been set free of, don't even waste time getting discouraged. Often what seems like the same old thing coming back again may be a new layer surfacing that needs to come off. You're not going backwards--you are going deeper.		woman prayer inspirational quotes	Stormie Omartian
a98a446	I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.		time prayer	Peter Kreeft
78c2f67	...if God teaches us victory in Christ Jesus day by day, we live in the constant awareness of His greatness and His sufficiency. Hard lessons are often long-lasting lessons. Never forget that God is far more interested in our getting to know the Deliverer than simply being delivered.		prayer strongholds victory	Beth Moore
d4bb2eb	God will not give me humility, or patience, or holiness, or love as separate investments of His grace. He has given only one gift to meet our need, His Son Christ Jesus.		prayer spiritual-gifts	Watchman Nee
fa69494	One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world.		worship prayer thanksgiving	Peter Kreeft
3293aa2	Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.		hatred courage prayer failure	George R.R. Martin
8fd4a93	My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry--and often find it, too--whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.		prayer sorrow poetry	Anne Brontë
529e876	Replace worry with prayer. Make the decision to pray whenever you catch yourself worrying.		men prayer women comfort jesus faith god worry decision worrying	Elizabeth George
727db3e	We pray to obey God, not to 'play God'. We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to 'let God be God'. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt. 7:7).		prayer god	Peter Kreeft
a7c95c1	Lord, I pray that my husband will be strong in the Lord and put on the whole armor of God, so he can stand against the enemy every day. Enable him to take up the shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.		relationships prayer shield praying wife enemy husband	Stormie Omartian
115f47d	The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures.		prayer faith god sufferings	Peter Kreeft
58830c5	Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.		thoughts prayer philosophy	Peter Kreeft
170fce4	"As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing."		rage prayer psalm healing	Philip Yancey
5538a73	Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, 'Prove that you are a good person.' Another voice says, 'You'd better be ashamed of yourself.' There also is a voice that says, 'Nobody really cares about you,' and one that says, 'Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.' But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, 'You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.' That's the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen. That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us 'my Beloved'.		solitude silence prayer god	Henri J.M. Nouwen
f07caf4	I did pray. I kept on Praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering.		silence prayer	Shūsaku Endō
d14e48a	Little did the old man know how much God liked to talk to His children, how He longed to listen to them.		prayer	Debbie Macomber
6c98529	Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you, mind, body, and spirit.		prayer strength thought	Richard Llewellyn
a6b117e	You cannot always depend on prayers to be answered the way you want them answered but you can always depend on God. God, the loving Father often denies us those things which in the end would prove harmful to us. Every boy wants a revolver at age four, and no father yet has ever granted that request. Why should we think God is less wise? Someday we will thank God not only for what He gave us, but also for that which He refused.		prayer god request	Fulton J. Sheen
102b569	"Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..." It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy."		worship prayer poetry venus mythology	Ursula K. Le Guin
e26b99f	God wants us to worry about our sins we sin; the devil wants us to worry we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil's friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us close to God is the devil's enemy and our friend.		prayer faith god evil sin	Peter Kreeft
399aa36	"What is it?" "A prayer." "For a child?" She nodded. "For me?" Another nod. "On a tree?" "Trees spend all day looking up at God."		prayer god tree dialogue wish child	Mitch Albom
bfed765	One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.		prayer humility-is-a-good-friend	Peter Kreeft
bcf3541	Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.		prayer trees	Silas House
d4b7d49	The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want him for long He maketh me to lie down in green pastures and there are no green pastures He leadeth me beside still waters and still waters run deep		prayer the-lord-is-my-shepherd the-lord-s-prayer the-lords-prayer	Ernest Hemingway
f3312f7	The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia!		seeing prayer nature spirituality	Annie Dillard
bcb4b1b	The single most important piece of advice about prayer is one word: Begin!		prayer talking-to-god	Peter Kreeft
063a596	Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.		prayer god sanctity	Peter Kreeft
00065c6	No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one's owns self sufficiency.		prayer independence faith god self-sufficiency	Fulton J. Sheen
96da2c1	Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth!		prayer religious	Elizabeth Gaskell
d56a178	But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world -- and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road.		prayer christianity jesus faith religion god love sacramental sign-of-the-cross holy-trinity trinity catholic god-s-love catholicism cross jesus-christ christian creator christ	Brian Doyle
582af08	He had no idea that he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love, round that once dear head		prayer love silent-love	Elizabeth von Arnim
9aac367	"Cardan's eyebrows rise, but he has all the appearance of blissful unconcern. "My lady, you flatter me. I had no idea you were interested." Her gaze is unflinching as she passes her gift to one of Cardan's personal guard. "May you grow into the wisdom of your counselors." "The fervent prayer of many," he says."		prayer wisdom	Holly Black
d742476	"From Les Miserables: All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom. Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel. These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house.		prayer hope	Victor Hugo
cbe7635	As prayer warriors, we must remember that no matter how hopeless a situation may appear to us, God gives us power in prayer to do something about it. We may be overwhelmed by it, but God isn't. We may not see a way out, but God can. Because of Him, we can make a difference!		prayer god warrriors	Stormie Omartian
1761542	Leon Bloy wrote: 'Life holds only one tragedy: not to have been a saint		prayer saints	Peter Kreeft
cf28c25	Destructive behavior--or simply behavior that constantly annoys your spouse to the point of desperation--is not right, and there will always be a serious consequence for it in your marriage and personal life. But every attempt you make to rid yourself of that behavior and do what's right will bring reward. Today, ask God to help break any bad habits that you or your spouse may have.		marriage relationships prayer love	Stormie Omartian
60b729b	"I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt'ring eye and say, "Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?" The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life."		fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
ce7dc9f	Where women are honored, the divinities are pleased. Where they are despised, it is useless to pray to God.		feminism prayer women women-respect	Victor Hugo
2a4003f	Exchange the bad habit of worrying with the excellent habit of trusting God.		prayer faith trust god excellent exchange worry habit	Elizabeth George
1729304	Like completing a run, living today begins with preparation, planning, and prayer.		prayer faith living god love prepare run plan christian	Elizabeth George
2541fd4	It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.		prayer heart	Peter Kreeft
62aaaf8	"That wish - that prayer - both men and women would have scorned me for - "But, Father, Thou wilt not despise!" I said, and felt that it was true."		prayer love wish	Anne Brontë
36dbedc	The most powerful thought is a prayerful thought. When I'm praying for you, I am praying for my own peace of mind. I can only have for myself what I am willing to wish for you.		prayer kindness empathy compassion blessings-quotes peace-of-mind prayer-quotes prayerful-habits prayerful-life prayers-answered wish-creation wishes-fulfilled power-of-love giving charity sharing generosity selflessness prosperity inner-peace thoughtful power-of-thoughts	Marianne Williamson
2dc624c	Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.		prayer holy-spirit	Henri J.M. Nouwen
deefcef	What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.		prayer nature sky reflection	Victor Hugo
1a2e991	Our minds are always active. We analyze, reflect, daydream, or dream. There is not a moment during the day or night when we are not thinking. You might say our thinking is 'unceasing.' Sometimes we wish that we could stop thinking for a while; that would save us from many worries, guilt feelings, and fears. Our ability to think is our greatest gift, but it is also the source of our greatest pain. Do we have to become victims of our unceasing thoughts? No, we can convert our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer by making our inner monologue into a continuing dialogue with our God, who is the source of all love. Let's break out of our isolation and realize that Someone who dwells in the center of our beings wants to listen with love to all that occupies and preoccupies our minds.		prayer thinking	Henri J.M. Nouwen
6478149	A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky's stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I'll not go northing this year. I'll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow's fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow's seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.		fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
4f6b5bc	"God almighty, Franny," he said. "If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you'd like him to have been."		prayer jesus	J.D. Salinger
c7e7489	God's side is determined not by geography, but by those who do His will. If Germans, English, Japanese, and Americans prayed right, they would all be praying for the same intention: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And what is that Will? The reign of Justice and Charity in the hearts of men. Through a prayerful contemplation of war we will see not soldiers of different nations in combat, but one great family, quarreling, fighting, wounding, and all in need of the peace and charity of Christ which we hope to obtain by our supplications.		prayer the-church	Fulton J. Sheen
a83201d	Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but don't forget that he never promised he'd say yes. He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all. Except one thing. Just one thing . . . . That he cares . . . That is all. Nothing else.		prayer god	Madeleine L'Engle
444c637	When we pray, instead of trying to produce love in our souls toward God, we should be basking in God's love for us. How foolish to stay indoors in the cold, dark little room off the self, trying to turn on the light and turn up the heat, when we can just go outside into God's glorious Sonlight and receive his rays! How silly to fuss with artificial tanning salons and lotions and lights when the Son is out!		prayer sonlight presence	Peter Kreeft
0afc43b	We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.		prayer joy god love	Peter Kreeft
a9fbe21	There is something in us that fears prayer as a maggot fears light. We must do violence to this voice, for it is not ourselves. It is our Enemy.		perseverance prayer	Peter Kreeft
cc70df3	the only unfailing guide I've ever found through the innumerable blind alleys of my life as a writer, man, husband, father, citizen, steward, or believer, is the love burning in my heart. for me, prayer is about one thing: making contact with that love. though it burns in there like a candle flame, hot, bright, beautiful, love's flame is so fragile... keeping one's love burning, and living in accord with that burning: this, to me, is prayer.		prayer spirituality religion	David James Duncan
e46c532	"But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this. Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary. I want to surrender but have no idea what that means. He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair hope...		prayer prayers alcoholics-anonymous atheist desperation	Mary Karr
0c49359	O God, make me worthy of this calling, that the name of Jesus may be glorified in me and I in him.		prayer god	Arthur Bennett
0211ad4	We learn from pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door. Yet maybe if you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you'll have a moment of intuition. Maybe you'll see at least one next right step you can take.		pain prayer intuition	Anne Lamott
ab024a2	Prayer usually means praise, or surrender, acknowledging that you have run out of bullets.		prayer praise surrender	Anne Lamott
2aaa6bb	...I interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is Prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often to you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes - well, maybe seven. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often. Many of those I talked to experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves. Does this sound familiar? (pp. 14/Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?)		prayer faith	Philip Yancey
af29bb0	O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.		prayer faith religion pride	John Piper
cb29811	"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly." --Richard David Bach The caterpillar believes it is dying because it's being sealed in a tomb. The Master knows that the caterpillar is not dying, and is simply transitioning (to something more). This points out that things are never over, that change is carrying us, (so often kicking and screaming), to higher states of being. I find it interesting that the caterpillar spends it's caterpillar existence crawling, (on a lone weed in the midst of an endless beautiful forest), surviving on bitter, poisonous leaves. Yet resists the changes to come. After the caterpillars "death"... And upon the butterflie's rebirth... The butterfly lives out it's butterfly existence experiencing all of the forest's wonders, being carried by the wind, landing on beauty, and drinking sweet nectar, all the while, being shielded from harm by the caterpillar's bitter and poisonous experiences of eating the weeds.		prayer kindness spirit compassion meaning trust inspiring spiritual-quotes forgiveness	Raymond D. Longoria Jr.
1ec1fc2	"It's not that we start with beliefs and doctrine and then come up with worship practices that properly "express" these (cognitive) beliefs; rather, we begin with worship, and articulated beliefs bubble up from there. "Doctrines" are the cognitive, theoretical articulation of what we "understand" when we pray."		worship prayer	James K.A. Smith
82b1d40	And why had those prayers been focused heavenward? Well, it kind of made sense, didn't it? Even when there were no more options for the body, the heart's wishes find a way out, and as with all warmth, love rises. Besides, the will to fly was in the nature of the soul, so its home had to be up above.		heaven prayer	J.R. Ward
53cea79	we know little of the things for which we pray		prayer naivete supernatural	Geoffrey Chaucer
5c17979	...if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear!		prayer mercy	Frances Hodgson Burnett

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