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Even when we cannot see the why and wherefore of God's dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always. --J. I. Packer
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We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. --A. W. Tozer
3
Prayer is neither official nor formal nor ceremonial, but direct, hearty, intense. Prayer is the helpless and needy child crying to the compassion of the Father's heart and the bounty and power of the Father's hand. The answer is sure to come as the Father's heart can be touched and the Father's hand be moved. --E. M. Bounds
4
I have often felt that it takes more confidence in God to pray to Him about a little thing than about great things. We imagine that our great things are somehow worthy of God's attention, though in truth they are little enough to Him. And then we think that our little things must be so insignificant that it is an insult to bring them before Him. . . . If you put your confidence in God, you will take your great things and little things to Him, knowing He will never belie your confidence. --Charles Spurgeon
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God does not stand afar off as I struggle to speak. He cares enough to listen with more than casual attention. He "translates" my scrubby words and hears what is truly inside. He hears my sighs and uncertain gropings as fine prose. --Timothy Jones
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I have learned that God's timing is not my timing in the big and little things about which I pray. Sometimes God keeps me persisting in prayer, becoming more fervent in my wrestling with Him, through days, months, even years. I just wait for His answer to come-when He decides it is time to send it. But He always answers. --Evelyn Christenson
7
When God doesn't show up when you think He should, don't get discouraged. Many times I have prayed believing that my prayer was part of God's perfect will, yet He didn't move as quickly as I wanted Him to. One time I had to wait sixteen years for Him to answer. But when He did, it was the right answer at the right time. While I was waiting on Him, I wondered what was happening. Sometimes I asked if He really heard me. Was I praying right? What else could I do? But deep within He assured me that He would see me through. He'll do the same for you. --Thelma Wells
8
The world says, "Be active; be busy; be industrious." But God says, "Be STILL; be quiet; don't rush." This is not just a cessation of activities, but a quietness of heart and spirit in which we are aware of His presence. In the center of our soul is a place where God dwells, and where, if we enter and close out every other sound, He will speak to us. --Millie Stamm
9
Come, Lord Jesus, and abide in my heart. How grateful I am to realize that the answer to my prayer does not depend on me at all. As I quietly abide in You and let Your life flow into me, what freedom it is to know that the Father does not see my threadbare patience or insufficient trust, rather only Your patience, Lord, and Your confidence that the Father has everything in hand. In Your faith I thank You right now for a more glorious answer to my prayer than I can imagine. Amen. --Catherine Marshall
10
God doesn't conform to a holy standard; He is the standard. He never does anything wrong. He never errs. He never causes something to happen that isn't right. There are no degrees to His holiness. He is holy, flawless, without error, without sin, fully righteous, utterly, absolutely, infinitely holy. --John MacArthur, Jr.
11
We're not to spend our days in watching our own vices, in gazing at our own sins, in stirring and raking up all the mud of our past lives; but to lift our thoughts from our own corrupt nature to Him who put on that nature in order to deliver it from corruption, and to fix our contemplations and our affections on Him who came to clothe us in His perfect righteousness, and through whom and in whom, if we are united to Him by a living faith, we too become righteous. --Augustus Hare and Julius Charles Hare
12
To wait for someone else, or to expect someone else to make my life richer, or fuller, or more satisfying, puts me in a constant state of suspension. --Kathleen Tierney Andrus
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Our being is in the hands of omnipotent Goodness, by whom what appears casual to us is directed for ends ultimately kind and merciful; and that nothing can finally hurt him who debars not himself from the divine favour. --Samuel Johnson
14
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side. --Abraham Lincoln
15
We must meet our hurts, our disappointments, our frustrations, the malice of our enemies, the provoking habits of our friends -- our trials and temptations of every sort -- with an attitude of active and practical surrender and trust. Only then will we be able to spread our wings and fly above them all to the "heavenly places in Christ." From that vantage point we will be able to see our problems through the eyes of Jesus, and they will lose their power to harm or distress us. --Catherine Jackson
16
We need deliberately to call to mind the joys of our journey. Perhaps we should try to write down the blessings of one day. We might begin; we could never end; there are not pens or paper enough in all the world. --George A. Buttrick
17
The promises of Scripture are not mere pious hopes or sanctified guesses. They are more than sentimental words to be printed on decorated cards for Sunday School children. They are eternal verities. They are true. There is no perhaps about them. --Peter Marshall
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God puts His ear so closely down to your lips that He can hear your faintest whisper. It is not God away off up yonder; it is God away down here, close up -- so close up that when you pray to Him, it is more a kiss than a whisper. --Thomas De Witt Talmage
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The great love of God is an ocean without a bottom or a shore. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon
20
Let us never forget that the Husbandman is never so near the land as when he is plowing it, the very time when we are tempted to think He hath forsaken us. His plowing is a proof that He thinks you of value, and worth chastening: for He does not waste His plowing on the barren sand. He will not plow continually, but only for a time, and for a definite purpose. Soon, aye soon, we shall, through these painful processes and by His gentle showers of grace, become His fruitful land. Lettie B. Cowman
21
God is there to meet you in the center of all your trials, and to whisper His secrets, which will make you come forth with a shining face and an indomitable faith that all the demons of hell shall never afterwards cause to waver. --E. A. Kilbourne
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If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day. --Robert Browning
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The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this: irritations get into his shell . . . . And when he cannot get rid of them, he uses the irritations to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has the chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only prescription: make a pearl . . . . And it takes faith and love to do it. --Harry Emerson Fosdick
24
God possesses infinite knowledge and awareness which is uniquely His. At all times, even in the midst of any type of suffering, I can realize that he knows, loves, watches, understands, and more than that, He has a purpose. --Billy Graham
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Snuggle in God's arms. When you are hurting, when you feel lonely . . . let Him cradle you, comfort you, reassure you of His all-sufficient power and love. --Kay Arthur
26
When your burden becomes too heavy, when life's ways become too dark, when the heart is too sore, when you are ready to perish, it is not amiss to pray to God to open the heavens, and through a rift in the sky to shine down into your heart some of the light of the Glory World. --B. H. Carroll
27
Prayer has divided seas, rolled up flowing rivers, made flinty rocks gush into fountains, quenched flames of fire, muzzled lions, disarmed vipers and poisons, marshaled the stars against the wicked, stopped the course of the moon, arrested the rapid sun in its great race, burst open iron gates, conquered the strongest devils, commanded legions of angels down from heaven. Prayer has bridled and changed the raging passions of man, and routed and destroyed vast armies of proud, daring atheists. Prayer has brought one man from the bottom of the sea, and carried another in a chariot of fire to heaven; what has prayer not done! --Unknown
28
God knows how hard you've tried. How tired you get, how empty your soul can feel even when your days and nights are crowded with all you do in the name of the Lord. God knows the longings of your spirit, unfulfilled places of your heart. God knows your needs, even when you don't have a clue. --Penelope J. Stokes
