When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart.
Author: John Bunyan Source: A Puritan Golden Treasury
You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan.
(We pray) not to inform God or instruct Him but to beseech Him closely, to be made intimate with Him, by continuance in supplication; to be humbled; to be reminded of our sins.
Author: John Chrysostom Source: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, 19:4.
Whether or not our prayer is heard depends not on the number of our words, but on the fervor of our souls.
When we look at the ungodly, we are not to hate them - but to pity them, mourn over them, and pray for them. Nor have we any right to boast over them; for, by nature, and of ourselves, we are no better than they.
It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.
Author: John Stott Source: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, IVP, 1978, p. 119.
Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.
Author: John Stott Source: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, IVP, 1978, p. 186.
God's command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the necessity we have of His grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.
Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life.
The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin to damn the whole world.