It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck.
The serenity prayer, 'God grant me the strength to accept...' That's a prayer that's actually in my car. I say it every day.
The physical voice we use in prayer need not be great nor startling; even should we not lift up any great cry or shout, God will yet hear us.
Just as you wouldn't leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn't start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.
The more I get connected to my own breath and my own yogic experience and my own prayer and my own idea, the ideas that have existed for so long - that we all belong to each other and we could live a deeper spiritual existence - the more I get connected to that, the more I shun this world.
A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
'Grace' is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come - you really just have to stew in your life until it's time to go. But sometimes, somebody else's faith in you can do wonders.
The Lord's prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.
I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin, and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first.
My 'Book of Prayer' is the most important thing I carry. If I'm tense about something or need to pray for protection for my kids, it always helps.
Two of the central ingredients to our family are food and faith, so sitting down together and thanking God for the food He's provided means everything to us. Prayer is a natural part of our lives - not only around the dinner table, but all day long.
I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things.
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.
Heavenly Father has given a simple pattern for us to receive the Holy Ghost not once but continually in the tumult of our daily lives. The pattern is repeated in the sacramental prayer: We promise that we will always remember the Savior. We promise to take His name upon us. We promise to keep His commandments.
God is looking for people to use, and if you can get usable, he will wear you out. The most dangerous prayer you can pray is this: 'Use me.'
True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us.
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
God is not a vending machine where if you put in enough prayer quarters we get a Reese's Pieces bag that pops out.
You pray for things and accept the blessings when they come, you know? And it is about how you talk to yourself and what you say morning, noon and night about what you want to happen in your life. Some folks call that creative visualization. Other people call it prayer. But it is about that message that you send out there to yourself.
