Why We Should Pray Quotes

There are two main reasons why we may not be bringing forth the fruit we should. It may be because of ignorance, because we may never have been taught the meaning of the work of Christ for our present lives. ~ Francis Schaeffer

We can't take anything from this world with us. That's why the Bible says we should store up heavenly treasures." "How do you suggest getting those?'" she asked, trying not to seem intrigued. "By buying stock in God's kingdom," he answered as he found another pearl on the ground and handed it to Eve. "How do you do that?" she asked, taking the pearl and putting it into her pocket. "When you choose to do His will instead of your own," he answered. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner

There is no moral reason for humanity to continue, if its ends are limited to itself. And this is how we must stop seeing ourselves. This is why we destroy each other. If we disregard the life around us, why should we not be equally disregarded? ~ Paul Xylinides

Thoughts of the Brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements -- change -- in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it -- i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself). [...] We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our thre ~ Philip K. Dick

It had seemed so foreign to me - the idea that you could move forward without a painful airing of grievances on both sides. But maybe - maybe it wasn't necessary to pick apart pain. Maybe some things just weren't worth fighting about. Some friends weren't friends anymore, but family - and there were different rules for family. It didn't make sense to sit down with family and detail all the reasons they'd upset you - for many reasons, not least among them the fact that they could whip out a checklist of your transgressions themselves. And after you'd both picked apart the carcasses, why would you want to be friends again? Maybe the important thing was to recognize that everyone felt wronged and slighted - but the point worth concentrating on was that everyone loved each other. If we worked from that premise, we should be fine. Or anyway, I hoped we would. ~ Megan Crane

I stand in the sacred human presence. As I do now, so should you stand some day. I pray to your presence that this be so. Let the future remain uncertain for that is the canvas to receive our desires. Thus the human condition faces its perpetual tabula rasa. We possess no more than this moment where we dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create. ~ Frank Herbert

Amen meaneth assuredly, namely, that I am sure that petitions of this kind are accepted by my Heavenly Father, and heard by him, because he hath commanded us, that we should pray after this manner, and hath promised that he will hear us. Amen, Amen: that is, truly, certainly, so be it. ~ Martin Luther

We pray for trifles without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times, to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor. ~ Seneca The Younger

If we face recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should sacrifice a profit. It's management's risk and management's responsibility. Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer? ~ Akio Morita

I wonder why men always talk about politics?" Mary speculated. "I suppose, if we had votes, we should, too." "I ~ Virginia Woolf

As a former District Attorney and Attorney General, I know the urgency of providing safe homes, schools and neighborhoods for all. This remarkable tour-de-force is a powerful study of one promising solution: a data-rich, eminently readable demonstration of why we should treat gun violence as an American epidemic. ~ Scott Harshbarger

All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don't see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder. ~ Obafemi Awolowo

Why is it that some people, you know, think we should obey the Constitution sometimes and not other times. ~ Ron Paul

There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live. ~ Karen Horney

As we face our vulnerability and weakness, there are things you and I should pray for regularly. We should pray for purity of desire, wisdom to recognize the enemy's tricks, and strength to fight the battles we can't avoid. ~ Paul David Tripp

Children, we may go to the temple, reverently circumambulate the sanctum sanctorum and put our offering in the charity box, but on our way out if we kick the beggar at the door, where is our devotion? Compassion towards the poor is our duty to God. Mother is not saying that we should give money to every beggar that sits in front of a temple, but do not despise them. Pray for them as well. When we hate others, it is our own mind that becomes impure. Equality of vision is God. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

The emphasis should be on why we do a job. ~ W. Edwards Deming

Maybe we should be directing our anger elsewhere - like toward Wall Street. Why is it we never think of Big Business when we think of welfare recipients? Companies take more of our tax dollars, and in much more questionable ways, than do those who are trying to heat their apartments with a kerosene stove. ~ Michael Moore

I don't think you should spend your life praying for things, but I do believe you should thank God for what He's given you ... but I think the scripture teaches us that we can pray for our dreams, pray for the big things ... he's not a small God; this God is incredible. ~ Joel Osteen

But, someone will say, does God not know, even without being reminded, both in what respect we are troubled and what is expedient for us, so that it may seem in a sense superfluous that he should be stirred up by our prayers-as if he were drowsily blinking or even sleeping until he is aroused by our voice? But they who thus reason do not observe to what end the Lord instructed his people to pray, for he ordained it not so much for his own sake as for ours. Now he wills-as is right-that his due be rendered to him, in the recognition that everything men desire and account conducive to their own profit comes from him, and in the attestation of this by prayers. But the profit of this sacrifice also, by which he is worshiped, returns to us. Accordingly, the holy fathers, the more confidently they extolled God's benefits among themselves and others, were the more keenly aroused to pray ... ~ R.C. Sproul

Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can't know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die? ... Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can't. we have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine. ~ David Almond

We do not pray to God to instruct Him as to what He should do; neither for a moment must we presume to dictate the method of the divine working. ~ Charles Spurgeon

We should go," he said gruffly, his face inscrutable.

"Why?" Her heartbeat thundered. She gripped his arms tight to keep herself from twining her own about his neck.

He lowered his mouth to her ear, brushing it with a feather-soft kiss. "It isn't safe."

Her answering shiver had nothing to do with the cold. She had never stood so close to any man, had never fought the urge to press herself even closer.

"What could happen?" she whispered.

He cupped her face in his hands. "Anything. ~ Erica Ridley

There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry. Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted fragance and flavor of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant to the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should understand why he will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian does well to continue Indian. ~ Henry David Thoreau

What I'm suggesting is we are going to look back, and we're going to see what happened in Syria, and we're going to see the larger destabilization of the Middle East, the rise of extremism, and we're going to wonder ... Why didn't we at least try to force a political solution - at an acceptable cost to us, because no one is saying we should send in ground troops - and if we did it would be worse than doing nothing ... If we do not act, we are going to look back and wonder why we didn't. ~ Anne-Marie Slaughter

Every year several million people are killed quite pointlessly by epidemics and other natural catastrophes. And we should shrink from sacrificing a few hundred thousand for the most promising experiment in history? Not to mention the legions of those who die of under-nourishment and tuberculosis in coal and quicksilver mines, rice-fields and cotton plantations. No one takes any notice of them; nobody asks why or what for; but if here we shoot a few thousand objectively harmful people, the humanitarians all over the world foam at the mouth. Yes, we liquidated the parasitic part of the peasantry and let it die of starvation. It was a surgical operation which had to be done once and for all; but in the good old days before the Revolution just as many died in any dry year - only senselessly and pointlessly. The victims of the Yellow River floods in China amount sometimes to hundreds of thousands. Nature is generous in her senseless experiments on mankind. Why should mankind not have the right to experiment on itself? ~ Arthur Koestler

I thought we were meeting by the field house," I call out as I make my way over.
He doesn't even turn around. "Nah, I'm pretty sure I said the parking lot."
"You definitely said the field house," I argue. Why can't he ever just admit that he's wrong?
"Geez, field house, parking lot. What difference does it make?" Mason asks. "Give it a rest, why don't you."
I shoot him a glare. "Oh, hey, Mason. Remember when your hair was long and everyone thought you were a girl?"
Ryder chuckles as he releases a perfect spiral in Mason's direction. "She's got you there."
"Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?" Mason catches the ball and cradles it against his chest, then launches it toward Ben. I just stand there watching as they continue to toss it back and forth between the three of them. Haven't they had enough football for one day?
I pull out my cell to check the time. "We should probably get going."
"I guess," Ryder says with an exaggerated sigh, like I'm putting him out or something. Which is particularly annoying since he's the one who insisted on going with me.
Ben jogs up beside me, the football tucked beneath his arm. "Where are you two off to? Whoa, you're sweaty."
I fold my arms across my damp chest. "Hey, southern girls don't sweat. We glow."
Ben snorts at that. "Says who?"
"Says Ryder's mom," I say with a grin. It's one of Laura Grace's favorite sayings--one that always makes Ryder wince.
"The hardware store," Ryder ~ Kristi Cook

May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, "Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you." Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God's power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control? ~ Gordon H. Clark

At the cross, Jesus paid the penalty we should have paid, by enduring the wrath of God we should have endured. And this required him to do something unprecedented. It required him to provide the ultimate level of obedience - one that we'll never be asked to emulate. It required him to give up his relationship with the Father so that we could have one instead. The very thought of being torn away from the Father caused him to sweat great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). And at the crescendo of his obedience, he screamed, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). ~ Anonymous

In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I prefer not to call them demons. It demeans their nature.
"But isn't that what they are?"
"We should pity them more than fear them Alfred. They were angels once."
"Yea, but didn't you say they rebelled against God? They got what they deserved."
"Perhaps." He sighed. "Yet do we not all hope and pray that we ourselves escape that we truly deserve? None have fallen as far or as irrevocably as the outcasts of heaven. Did you not find them beautiful." " ... They have gazed upon the very face of God, the face they will see no more for all eternity-and so I pity them. Even as I envy them for having seen it. ~ Rick Yancey

Many of us pray often, but we do not get the nourishment from our praying. This should not be so. We are not praying to an idol; we pray to the living God. He is the very God who is now in our spirit. When we speak to Him, He responds in our spirit. When we exercise our spirit, we realize Him within our spirit. If we merely exercise our mind and pray from our mouth, the Triune God within us has no way. He is not in our mind. but in our spirit. We must exercise our spirit (1 Tim. 4:7). ~ Witness Lee

There must be some reason, I thought, why we should go on year after year, with this lump of debt, scrailing earth down to stone, giving so much and with no return. There must be some reason why I was made quiet and homely and slow, and then given this stone of love to mumble. ~ Josephine Winslow Johnson

We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; were always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. ~ Paulo Coelho

At the heart of Galatians 2 is not an abstract individualized salvation, but a common meal. Paul does not want the Galatians to wait until they have agreed on all doctrinal arguments before they can sit down and eat together. Not to eat together is already to get the answer wrong. The whole point of his argument is that all those who belong to Christ belong at the same table with one another.

The relevance of this today should be obvious. The differences between us, as twentieth-century Christians, all too often reflect cultural, philosophical and tribal divides, rather than anything that should keep us apart from full and glad eucharistic fellowship. I believe the church should recognize, as a matter of biblical and Christian obedience, that it is time to put the horse back before the cart, and that we are far, far more likely to reach doctrinal agreement between our different churches if we do so within the context of that common meal which belongs equally to us all because it is the meal of the Lord whom we all worship. Intercommunion, in other words, is not something we should regard as the prize to be gained at the end of the ecumenical road; it is the very paving of the road itself. If we wonder why we haven't been travelling very fast down the road of late, maybe it's because, without the proper paving, we've got stuck in the mud. ~ N.T. Wright

William Stillman continues his fascinating exploration of the myriad connections between autism and human personality. The Soul of Autism makes a strong case for why we should embrace rather than fear the differences between us. ~ Dean Hamer

Why should he treat Elizabeth as if he harbored any feelings for her, including anger?
Elizabeth sensed that he was wavering a little, and she pressed home her advantage, using calm reason: "Surely nothing that happened between us should make us behave badly to each other now. I mean, when you think on it, it was noting to us but a harmless weekend flirtation, wasn't it?"
"Obviously."
"Neither of us was hurt, were we?"
"No."
"Well then, there's no reason why we should not be cordial to each other now, is there?" she demanded with a bright, beguiling smile. "Good heavens, if every flirtation ended in enmity, no one in the ton would be speaking to anyone else!"
She had neatly managed to put him in the position of either agreeing with her or else, by disagreeing, admitting that she had been something more to him than a flirtation, and Ian realized it. He'd guessed where her calm arguments were leading, but even so, he was reluctantly impressed with how skillfully she was maneuvering him into having to agree with her. "Flirtations," he reminded her smoothly, "don't normally end in duels."
"I know, and I am sorry my brother shot you."
Ian was simply not proof against the appeal in those huge green eyes of hers. "Forget it," he said with an irritated sigh, capitulating to all she was asking. "Stay the seven days."
Suppressing the urge to twirl around with relief, she smiled into his eyes. "Then could we have a truce for the time I'm here ~ Judith McNaught

We look at our own problems, and we say ... why? Maybe we should look at our blessings and ask the same thing. ~ Susan May Warren

I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we did live forever, then we would live forever, which is why I would not live forever. ~ Heather Whitestone

we should consider how they came to be, how and why America has changed, and what this might mean for what America is becoming. ~ Yuval Levin

Should we involve the police? Or should we pray? ~ S.A. David

Well, let's all get maudlin, shall we? George, stop on the way and get us some red-hot pokers to put out our eyes. Oh, and while you're at it, I think we should see about adding salt for our wounds, too. (Solin)
Quite good, sir. Is there any particular place you'd care for me to stop? I've heard the market is a good place for pokers. That is, if you're agreeable to a short detour. (George)
What do you two think? Run-of-the-mill pokers, or a better quality. Oh hell, why not use rusty spoons. They'd hurt more. (Solin) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Death has no age limits; that is why we should appreciate each moment of life by getting to know God and doing all we can to love others through works of Faith. ~ Pauline Seaport

I can't help but recall, at this point, a horribly elitist but very droll remark by one of my favorite writers, the American "critic of the seven arts", James Huneker, in his scintillating biography of Frédéric Chopin, on the subject of Chopin's étude Op. 25, No. 11 in A minor, which for me, and for Huneker, is one of the most stirring and most sublime pieces of music ever written: "Small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it."

"Small-souled men"?! Whew! Does that phrase ever run against the grain of American democracy! And yet, leaving aside its offensive, archaic sexism (a crime I, too, commit in GEB, to my great regret), I would suggest that it is only because we all tacitly do believe in something like Hueneker's' shocking distinction that most of us are willing to eat animals of one sort or another, to smash flies, swat mosquitos, fight bacteria with antibiotics, and so forth. We generally concur that "men" such as a cow, a turkey, a frog, and a fish all possess some spark of consciousness, some kind of primitive "soul" but by God, it's a good deal smaller than ours is - and that, no more and no less, is why we "men" feel that we have the perfect right to extinguish the dim lights in the heads of these fractionally-souled beasts and to gobble down their once warm and wiggling, now chilled and stilled protoplasm with limitless gusto, and not feel a trace of guilt while doing so. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter