prayer

Dear God,I hurt. Please hold me.Amen

Jesus designed the Lord's prayer to reveal His desire to give us more fully, graciously, and suitably the very things we most want but seek elsewhere. He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so that we will have the greater blessings he longs to lavish on us.

Grant unto us, Lord, that we may set our hope on Thy name_and open the eyes of our hearts, that wemay know Thee.___e beseech Thee, Lord and Master, to be our help and succour. Save those among us who are intribulation; have mercy on the lowly; lift up the fallen; show Thyself to those in need; heal the sick; turnagain the wanderers of Thy people; feed the hungry; ransom our prisoners; raise up the weak; comfortthe faint-hearted. Let all nations know that Thou art God alone, and that Jesus Christ is Thy Son, andthat we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture.___e praise Thee who art able to do these and better things than these, through Jesus Christ the HighPriest and Guardian of our souls, through whom be glory and majesty to Thee, both now andthroughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lenghtily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs.

Do you not pray, Miss Smallwood?'She avoided his gaze. 'No.''God is speaking to you every day,' he said softly. 'You might return the favor.'She raised her chin. 'I don't hear Him.''Do you listen?'She looked at him, clearly offended, then turned away again. 'I used to pray, until I found God was not listening, at least not to my pra

Death is God when love is mine.Prayer preys when we__e divine

Mrs. Mudkin closed her eyes. "We should pray.""I ain't praying," Crazy Cora said. Mrs. Mudkin said, "Lord, please bless---""I ain't praying.""--this land and the people who--""I ain't praying.""--have toiled on this earth--""Stop that praying.""I can pray if I want to.""Then be quiet about it.

Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.

It is possible to induce incorrect notions of cause and effect in most people in just a few minutes. All that is necessary is to expose them to rewards which they believe they are generating based on their actions when in fact the rewards are randomly awarded. People will latch onto any seeming success and repeat it, even when they have to explain repeated failures as well. It appears practically impossible, or at least very rare, for humans not to be influenced by immediate experiences of concrete results. This is true even if the experiences turn out to have limited theoretical validity. The moment of surprise is not when people repeat alchemical failures but when they begin to do something else.

As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing.

Public prayers of are of little value unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.'" Moira smiled as she quoted the ancient sage, then shrugged. "It made sense to me. After that, I started laying my problems and needs before God and asking for grace and guidance and whatever other virtues he thought I needed.

Don__ ever discount the cry of your heart. God may be working in your heart to bring about his sovereign plan.

I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin' to solid sense and learning, regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life, especially Protestant American religious life, that things bottom out completely.

We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

When Jesus said ast and you__l get it, He meant things of the spirit, not the flesh. Grandpa said Jesus meant us to ast for hope, forgiveness, and all like that. Ast __ep us not be scared, hep us not be greedy, give us courage to try_Ast any such and God will give it to you. But don__ ast Him not to let fire burn, or say spare me from death.

For a few moments, raising his arms desperately, the Reverend Mouret implored Heaven. His shoulder-blades cracked, with such fantastic force did he pray. But soon enough his arms fell to his sides, his hopes abashed. From heaven came one of those silences utterly void of hope known to the devout.

Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.