This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.
My mother was a Sunday school teacher. So I am a byproduct of prayer. My mom just kept on praying for her son.
Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one's self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation the source of strength is one's self. When one prays he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
Prayer is not passive. It takes a big man to pray - and to admit that he prays.
My 4-year-old son prays every night for his best friend who is the same age - our next door neighbor in Liberia, a little Liberian boy: 'Dear God, please don't let him get Ebola.' I'm proud of him for thinking about his friend and praying for him but that's not a prayer that a 4-year-old should have to consider.
Repentance, prayer, and pondering over the scriptures are essential parts of our qualifying for the gifts of the Spirit in our priesthood service. Further magnification of our power to serve will come as we respond with faith to go forward in our callings with the Holy Ghost to help us.
Jews have deep respect for the Queen and the royal family. We say a prayer for them every Sabbath in synagogue. We recite a special blessing on seeing the Queen.
The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect piece of poetry. I always feel at peace and moved when I recite it.
The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.
As we regularly spend time reading God's Word and talking to Him in prayer, we put ourselves in position for Him to do things in our lives we could never do on our own.
In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.
I try to remind myself not to go anywhere or do anything without asking for spiritual direction through prayer and meditation.
I had one request when I started doing the plays. My prayer was, 'God, let me do well enough to be able to take care of my mother.' I was able to do that 'til the day she died because of my audience.
For me, prayer is not so much me setting out a shopping list of requests for God to consider as it is a way of 'keeping company with God.'
I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully.
My grandparents and my mom prayed the rosary a lot, and later in life, I had a priest friend of mine teach me centering prayer, based on Father Thomas Keating's work. That led to practicing different kinds of meditation off and on as I got older.
In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.
The 'means of grace' are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord's Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification.
Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation.
