prayer

May spending time with You be my first priority, may listening and obeying mark my life, may extravagant childlike joy and amazement mark my demeanor, may an openness to share your grace quickly and easily flow from me, may I seek your forgiveness and excitedly accept it.

True love waits...

God promises to hear and answer our prayers, but he doesn't always answer the way we want him to.

But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.

The kingdom comes when Jesus becomes king of your life. But it has to be your life.

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.

It's a sweet thing to sit quietly in the early-morning darkness and talk to God for a while. It's amazing what you gain from the conversation.

How do we listen to his voice? With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you." (35). Easier said than done. "What will happen then? What will we hear? Let God take care of that. Seek only him, do not use him as a means to seek any other end. He is not your Santa, he is your Savior. I cannot tell you what he will give you, except for one thing: he will give you himself. He will give you more of himself the more you want him, that is, the more you love him. He wants to pour infinite riches into your soul; prayer is a way of opening up your soul so more of God can enter.

Prayer is a jouney, a path that is created only by walking it. It creates and reveals oneself in the process.

In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you've been taught.

. . . you must not build upon foundations of prayer and contemplation alone, for, unless you strive after the virtues and practice them, you will never grow to be more than dwarfs.

New rules__e needed new rules. No one opens the main doors but me. No one leaves the property without me. No one goes outside without letting me know. I had these horrible images in my head of kids being restrained against their wills, of kids crying my name out, begging me to help them when I was powerless. Desperate times_ Lord, my soul called out. Lord_somehow that__ as far as I could get. I didn__ have the words.

The power of prayer is still the greatest ever known in this endless eternal universe.-The Watcher in The Avengers #14

...It is far more sinful to pray irregularly than not to pray at all.

My prayer life IS my life.

Patience is the path to opportunities. We gain patience through prayer and meditation. Within that vein, we never consider ourselves having failed.

The single most important piece of advice about prayer is one word: Begin!

Grace works that way. It's a kind word from a gentle person with an impossible prayer. It's a force sometimes transmitted best hand to hand in a dark place.