With many things on my prayer docket this week, it’s left me content to share three particular and immensely encouraging quotes from older saints of the faith, on the subject of prayer.

Presented without comment (for I have much to learn myself):

Charles Spurgeon –

“…it is the habit of faith, when she is praying, to use pleas. Mere prayer sayers, who do not pray at all, forget to argue with God; but those who would prevail bring forth their reasons and their strong arguments and they debate the question with the Lord. … Oh brethren, let us learn thus to plead the precepts, the promises, and whatever else may serve our turn; but let us always have something to plead. Do not reckon you have prayed unless you have pleaded, for pleading is the very marrow of prayer.

E.M. Bounds –

Importunate praying is the earnest, inward movement of the heart toward God. It is the throwing of the entire force of the spiritual man into the exercise of prayer. Isaiah lamented that no one stirred himself, to take hold of God. Much praying was done in Isaiah’s time, but it was too easy, indifferent and complacent. There were no mighty movements of souls toward God. There was no array of sanctified energies bent on reaching and grappling with God, to draw from him the treasures of his grace. Forceless prayers have no power to overcome difficulties, no power to win marked results, or to gain complete victories. 

J. Hudson Taylor –

The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity…if we want to see might wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God’s standing challenge, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and might things which thou knowest not.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. – Matthew 7:7