Three Thoughts on Prayer

As we come to the end of our Small Group study on prayer I hope that you have been able to grow in the ways that you communicate with God. Certainly, if we've learned anything, we know that this is an ongoing process. Perhaps more questions have been raised for you than answered - hopefully you will continue to seek God's wisdom in these areas.

Here are three quotes on prayer I've come across in the last couple of days. I think they say some very true things about God and the mystery of prayer:

Phillip Yancey
I pray in astonished belief that God desires an ongoing relationship. I pray in trust that the act of prayer is God's designated way of closing the vast gulf between infinity and me. I pray in order to put myself in the stream of God's healing work on earth. I pray as I breathe - because I can't help it. Prayer is hardly a perfect form of communication, for I, and imperfect, material being who lives on an imperfect, material planet am reaching out for a perfect, spiritual Being. Some prayers go unanswered, a sense of God's presence ebbs and flows, and often I sense more mystery than resolution. Nevertheless I keep at it, believing with Paul that "now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (From Prayer, Does it Make any Difference?.)

Brother Lawrence
We must continually work hard so that each of our actions is a way of carrying on little conversations with God, not in any carefully prepared way but as it comes from the purity and simplicity of the heart.
(From The Practice of the Presence of God.)

Richard Foster
To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. (From Celebration of Discipline)