Prayer Formula Quotes

The best formula for a prayer that gives J.O.Y:
J- 1st, Pray to JESUS
O- 2nd, Pray for OTHERS
Y- 3rd, Pray for YOURSELF
Most people distort the formula by praying selfish prayers for their own personal gains. JYO is not the spelling for joy. In JOY, O comes before Y. It means you pray for OTHERS before YOURSELF. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. ~ E. Stanley Jones

John Knox's dying words were, 'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy kirk.' Such was the last prayer of a great man without whom there would have been no America, no Puritans, no Pilgrims, no Scottish covenanters, no Presbyterians, no Patrick Henry, no Samuel Adams, no George Washington. Could it have been so simple? John Knox's agenda was far from political. All he wanted were more pastors and elders. This is our agenda. Lord grant true pastors to Thy church! ~ Kevin Swanson

We are the natural nurturers of the Earth Mother. The Earth Mother needs our help, she needs our prayers. We need to educate the women of the world that prayer works. ~ Agnes Baker Pilgrim

Prayer is more than a plea, it is a place where we must spend time if we are to learn its power. ~ Billy Graham

A PRAYER FOR TODAY Lord God, my aim is to be a good and faithful servant of Yours. I surrender all of my life to You and to Your ends ... . Amen. ~ Kurt Bjorklund

Tried to teach him The Lord's Prayer once." His eyes traveled out beyond the hut for a moment, toward the gritty, featureless hardpan. "Guess this ain't Lord's Prayer country. ~ Stephen King

Prayer alone will not make a happy life. A happy life must be built. You must act. ~ Dalai Lama

Prayer and staying positive is certainly a good start toward a happier a life, but it is not enough. The way out of Egypt requires packing up, moving on and wandering around until you find Canaan. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Scatter as a prayer
escaping my lips...

as orchids
blooming in clouds. ~ Sanober Khan

His intercession was not only solidarity but identification with us: he bears all of us in his Body. And thus his whole life as a man and as Son is a cry to God's heart; it is forgiveness, but forgiveness that transforms and renews. I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me; he suffered and suffers for me; he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought, not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

...all my life I prayed to a star – Later discovered it was Venus – I was praying to Aphrodite and wondering why she was sending me you -sad... ~ John Geddes

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If He has said much about prayer, it is because He knows we have much need of it. ~ Charles Spurgeon

All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer. ~ Samuel Beckett

The earth offers gift after gift - life and the living of it, light and the return of it, the growing things, the roaring things, fire and nightmares, falling water and the wisdom of friends, forgiveness. My god, the forgiveness, time, and the scouring tides. How does one accept gifts as great as these and hold them in the mind?

Failing to notice a gift dishonors it, and deflects the love of the giver. That's what's wrong with living a careless life, storing up sorrow, waking up regretful, walking unaware. But to turn the gift in your hand, to say, this is wonderful and beautiful, this is a great gift - this honors the gift and the giver of it. Maybe this is what [my friend] Hank has been trying to make me understand: Notice the gift. Be astonished at it. Be glad for it, care about it. Keep it in mind. This is the greatest gift a person can give in return.

'This is your work,' my friend told me, 'which is a work of substance and prayer and mad attentiveness, which is the real deal, which is why we are here. ~ Kathleen Dean Moore

I shall stay and tell my tale, hope that it may serve some purpose, that eyes shall see it and learn, that the future will not repeat the mistakes of the past. That is my prayer, but what use is prayer to a god that has abandoned all things . . . ~ John Gwynne

It's a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he's feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. "Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness." "I particularly like that last phrase," Mom said. "About protecting your own happiness." "But how can you protect your own happiness when you can't control the beatings?" I asked. "That's the point, Will. You can't control the beatings. But maybe you can have some control over your happiness. As long as he can, well then, he still has something worth living for. And when he's no longer able, he knows he's done all he can." In my mind, I replaced the word beatings with cancer. ~ Will Schwalbe

Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [ ... ] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29). ~ Peter Kreeft

God is ready to give more quickly, and to give more than you ask; yea, he offers his treasures if we only take them. It is truly a great shame and a severe chastisement for us Christians that God should still upbraid us for our slothfulness in prayer, and that we fail to let such a rich and excellent promise incite us to pray. ~ Martin Luther

Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits. ~ Joy Williams

When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

And I'll tell you another thing, you won't find any candidate that supports prayer in school and gay marriage. For that reason alone, people should vote for an independent-thinking person. ~ Kinky Friedman

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. ~ John Bunyan

This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness - in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light. ~ Honore De Balzac

Sometimes it helps to begin our prayers by confessing we don't feel like praying-and ask God to help us with our preference to be doing something else. ~ David Jeremiah

It is amazing how may drivers, even at the Formula One Level, think that the brakes are for slowing the car down. ~ Mario Andretti

Barring a miracle, the family that has existed since antiquity will likely crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise, ~ James Dobson

If you give your life as a prayer, you intensify the prayer beyond all measure. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Thank you from the heart to all those who in various ways are near me or follow me spiritually with affection and prayers from afar. To each one of you, I ask you to continue to support me by praying to God to let me be his gentle and firm pastor of his church. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn't help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.
Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn't know about.
Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.
But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.
She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.
Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me. ~ Gary Haynes