AWT Prayer

PRAYER ISN’T A MATTER of getting on your knees. Prayer is the elevation of the heart to God and that is all a man needs to praise, to pray and to worship.

THERE IS A GREAT DEAL of praying being done among us that does not amount to anything!… There is no possible good that can come in our trying to cover up or deny it.\tThe truth is that there is enough prayer made on any Sunday to save the whole world—but the world is not saved. About the only thing that comes back after our praying is the echo of our own voices.\tI contend that this kind of praying which is so customary among us has a most injurious effect upon the Church of Christ.

TRUE PRAYER CANNOT BE imitated nor can it be learned from someone else. Everyone must pray as if he alone could pray, and his approach must be individual and independent—independent, that is, of everyone but the Holy Spirit.

THE ARTLESS LITTLE CHILD is still the divine model for all of us. Prayer will increase in power and reality as we repudiate all pretense and learn to be utterly honest before God as well as before men.

“Keep me, Lord, from ever hardening down into the state of being just another average Christian.

When we become too glib in prayer we are most surely talking to ourselves.

IF UNANSWERED PRAYER continues in a congregation over an extended period of time, there will be a chill of discouragement settling over the praying people. If we continue to ask and ask and ask like petulant children, never expecting to get what we ask for but continuing to whine for it, we will become chilled within our beings.

As we go on into God we shall see the excellency of the life of constant communion where all thoughts and acts are prayers, and the entire life becomes one holy sacrifice of praise and worship.

Prayer is not a sure fire protection against error for the reason that there are many kinds of prayer and some of them are worse than useless.

In our private prayers and in our public services we are forever asking God to do things that He either has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask Him to come when He is already present and waiting for us to recognize Him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts.

The best way to keep the enemy out is to keep Christ in. The sheep need not be terrified by the wolf; they have but to stay close to the shepherd. It is not the praying sheep Satan fears but the presence of the shepherd.

It is futile to beg God to act contrary to His revealed purposes. To pray with confidence the petitioner must be certain that his request falls within the broad will of God for His people.