"But obedience in the matter of prayer is costly and takes commitment.  On Monday night as our week of prayer began, a mere thirty-four adults showed up out of a regular church attendance of twenty-three hundred.  By Thursday, only seventeen adults were praying.  I was totally discouraged."  Stephen Arterburn, Every Man's Battle

"There is in the Christian life great need of watchfulness and of prayer, of selfdenial and of striving, of obedience and of diligence. But "all things are possible to him that believeth." "This is the victory that overcometh, even our faith."

What a difference there is between a deeply exercised and spiritually burdened heart pouring out itself before God in fervent supplication and the utterance of verbal petitions by rote!  Arthur W. Pink

A much loved prayer of St Francis of Assisi:

"By consequence, 'whatsoever he doeth , it is all to the glory of God.'  In all his employments of every kind, he not only aims at this (which is implied in having a single eye ), but actually attains it.... (John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection)

We are evil, O God, and help us to see it and amend....Robert Lewis Stevenson - Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

To-day we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to worship, some upon duty.... (Robert Louis Stevenson-Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn)

Lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, and country. Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us out of our tribulation into a quiet land.... (Robert Lewis Stevenson, Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn)

That is why it was not surprising that, at that time, I did not rejoice over the wonder of redemption, and that others could not see the joy of Jesus in me.  And it was no wonder that I was not happy.  I had taken the wrong path, the path of cheap grace, which was not the way of Jesus Christ and which could never lead me to the goal.  If we do not fight, we will not be crowned.  And what a fight the Lord demands of us! It is a fight to the point of shedding blood, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us (chapter 12: 4).

Giving thanks for the providence and tender mercies of the day is fitting lest we presume upon the watchcare of His Sabboth Rest while we sleep defensless were it not for His Grace.

How do you start your day?  Is it with coffee only?  We would think ourselves misused if we did not fill our stomachs with food.  But what if we began our day without fellowship with the Father?  Take a short sojourn with the Lion of Dundee and see if you might find some encouragement for your souls.

We are His lambs, and therefore ought to be ready to suffer, even to the death, without complaining.  John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection

Lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us to the mote that is in our brother’s.  Robert Louis Stevenson-Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

PRAYER has to do with the entire man.  Prayer takes in man in his whole being, mind, soul and body.  It takes the whole man to pray, and prayer affects the entire man in its gracious results. E. M. Bounds — The Essentials of Prayer

In this situation of this assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding? (Dr. Benjamin Franklin, LL. D.)

"I ought to pray before seeing any one.  Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin secret prayer.  This is a wretched system.  It is unscriptural.  Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: ‘Early will I seek thee'; ‘Thou shalt early hear m y voice.' Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me.  The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed.  Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out of tune, I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see his face first, to get my soul near him before it is near another.” (Robert Murray M'Cheyne)

It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition.  There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. . . . Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God. . . . And have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others?  It should not be so; but it often is.  So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense (Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount)

 The Association for Christian Conferences, Teaching & Service, (ACCTS), Christian Military Fellowship (CMF), Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF) and other Christian organizations invite you to help us “pray our military forces through the war on terror.”

"Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. (Catherine Booth)

Brevity: Shortness; conciseness; contraction into few words; applied to discourses or writings.

 The soul must solemnly remind itself of Who it is that is to be approached, even the Most High, before whom the very seraphim veil their faces (Isaiah 6:2).  Though Divine grace has made the Christian a son, nevertheles

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Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to play the man under affliction.  Robert Louis Stevenson - Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

The sea around us, which this rain recruits, teems with the race of fish; teach us, Lord, the meaning of the fishes.  Let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of the clans of thy handiwork.  Robert Louis Stevenson-Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

"Aid us, if it be thy will, in our concerns.  Have mercy on this land and innocent people."  Robert Louis Stevenson - Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

For our absent loved ones we implore thy loving-kindness.  Keep them in life, keep them in growing honor; and for us, grant that we remain worthy of their love....Robert Louis Stevenson—Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

“These mercies were kept back from them in order to humble them, and to bring them to a sense of their sins, and an acknowledgement of them.”  Dr. John Gill

Before we show how that possibility may be realized, let us solemnly ponder what brought that poor soul into such a sorry plight a plight into which both writer and reader will certainly fall unless we are ever on our prayerful guard.  Arthur W. Pink, Practical Christianity

And now, when the clouds gather and the rain impends over the forest and our house, permit us not to be cast down; let us not lose the savour of past mercies and past pleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memory survive in the hour of darkness....Robert Lewis Stevenson

Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonor to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when the day comes, may die in peace....  Robert Lewis Stevenson

The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties.  Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry....Robert Lewis Stevenson—Vailima Prayers and Sabbath Morn

"Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do."  Andrew Murray