“Prayer is everything; it’s a duty as well as a privilege, a right as well as a responsibility. We tend to use prayer as a last resort when it should be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but Jesus wants us to pray before we do anything at all.” (Oswald Chambers)
Fact: The Bible is a book of prayers.
Out of 667 recorded prayers, there are 454 recorded answers.
Unanswered Yet?
Faith cannot be unanswered.
Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock;
Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,
Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.
She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,
And cries, “It shall be done,” sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done.
The work began when your first prayer was uttered.
And God will finish what He has begun.
If you will keep the incense burning there,
His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.
-Robert Browning
“Perhaps one reason God delays His answers to our prayers is because He knows we need to be with Him far more than we need the things we ask of Him.”
–Ben Patterson
I got up early one morning,
And rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish,
I didn’t have time to pray.
Troubles just tumbled about me,
And heavier came each task.
“Why doesn’t God help me?” I wondered.
He answered, “You didn’t ask.”
I tried to come into God’s presence;
I used all my keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided,
“Why, child, you didn’t knock.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty,
But the day toiled on gray and bleak.
I wondered why God didn’t show me.
He said, “You didn’t seek.”
I woke up early this morning,
And paused before entering the day.
I had so much to accomplish
That I had to take time to pray.
-Grace L. Naessens
“Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Always does not mean that we are to neglect the ordinary duties of life; what it means is that the soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer-chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father, that the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and that the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest.
-E.M. Bounds in Purpose for Prayer
I met God in the morning
When my day was at its best,
And His presence came like sunrise,
Like a glory in my breast.
All day long His presence lingered,
All day long He stayed with me,
And we sailed in perfect calmness
O’er a very troubled sea.
Other ships were blown and battered,
Other ships were sore distressed,
But the winds that seemed to drive them,
Brought to us a peace and rest.
Then I thought of other mornings,
With a keen remorse of mind,
When I, too, had loosed the moorings,
With His presence left behind.
So I think I know the secret,
Learned from many a troubled way:
You must seek Him in the morning,
If you want Him through the day!
-Ralph Spaulding Cushman
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