The Tremendous Power of Prayer - Hardcover

A Summit Meeting

Prayer seems to be a very popular topic these days. Articles on prayer and other spiritual subjects have appeared in such major secular publications as Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Time, and U.S. News & World Report. Most of the material in these articles seemed to equate the word prayer with petition, asking God for such things as good health or more financial resources.

Yet praying involves much more than asking God for things we need or want for ourselves, no matter how important or worthy those requests or petitions may be. And prayer is more than reciting words and phrases we’ve learned by heart. The passage in the New Testament called “The Lord’s Prayer” was Christ’s direct response to His disciples’ plea to “teach us to pray.” It is certainly worth repeating, but not if we simply rattle it off by rote, without our hearts and minds in it.

There are many forms of prayer: praising God, interceding for others, confessing our sins, and thanking Him for all the blessings we enjoy. While petition is probably the most common type, prayer has another dimension, which is perhaps the most neglected. Prayer is a “two-way street.” Listening to God should always be an important part of our prayer time.

There are those who claim to have literally heard the voice of God, and we would not dispute them. For most of us, however, the voice of God is a “still, small voice” that may come through a passage of Scripture, the admonition of a friend, or an inner conviction that “this is the way; walk ye in it.” But if we are to hear that voice, we must quiet our hearts and listen closely; we must, as the Bible tells us, “Be still and know that I am God.”

The quotations that follow describe and define prayer in many ways: a golden key, a scourge to Satan, powerful energy, vast and vital, a spiritual gymnasium, fellowship with God, a strong wall and fortress, the breath of the newborn soul, and the nerve that moves the muscle of Omnipotence. May these and the other comments that follow help us get a clearer understanding of how tremendous prayer is, and may we apply it continually in our own lives.

Prayer is vital. It is the pathway to tranquility and peace of soul. A man’s prayers are the measure of his Christianity, understanding of spiritual matters, and experience of God. To fail in prayer is to fail in all else. Prayer is the place of testing and conflict; for prayer challenges all doubt, all disillusionment, all material, and cardinal preoccupation.
E. M. Blaiklock

Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.
Hannah More

Prayer is the voice of faith.
John Home

Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of Omnipotence.
Edwin Hartsill

Prayer is not a substitute of work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.
George A. Buttrick

Prayer is for the religious life what original research is for science—by it we get direct contact with reality.... We pray because we are made for prayer, and God draws us out by breathing himself in.
P. T. Forsyth

Prayer is a mysterious instrumentality and can, in the final analysis, be employed to full effect and with perfect success only by those who are helpless.
O. Hallesby

Prayer is not getting things from God, but getting into communion with God.
Henrietta C. Mears

Prayer is simply intelligent, purposeful, devoted contact with God. Where that contact is established and maintained, prayer will work infallibly according to its own inherent laws.
Charles H. Brent

Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need. It is the voice of the beggar, conscious of his poverty, asking of another the things he needs. Not to pray is not only to declare there is nothing needed, but to admit to a non-realization of that need.
E. M. Bounds

Prayer is a cry of hope.
French Proverb

Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation —and to me the most important part is listening to God’s replies.
Frank C. Laubach

Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.
Andrew Murray

Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man.... Prayer is a turning of one’s soul, in heroic reverence, in infinite desire and endeavor, towards the Highest, the All-Excellent, Omnipotent, Supreme.
Thomas Carlyle

Prayer is the answer to every problem there is.
Oswald Chambers