“The Lord's Prayer is an excellent model, but it was never intended to be a magical incantation to get God's attention. Jesus gave this prayer as a pattern to suggest the variety of elements that should be included when we pray.”
Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)
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Bill Hybels 74
American writer 1951Related quotes
Ayatollah Meshkini in a Friday Sermon at Qom: Pray that God Ends the Lives of Bush, Blair and Sharon Soon. Iranian Leaders Must Promote Nuclear Activities http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/400.htm December 2004.
2004
Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)
“We should seek not so much to pray but to become prayer.”
"No TIme for Neutrality", p. 107
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
“Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God.”
The Efficacy of Prayer (1958)
Context: Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate. It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare not leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.” Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best? Well, He who served Him best of all said, near His tortured death, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” When God becomes man, that Man, of all others, is least comforted by God, at His greatest need. There is a mystery here which, even if I had the power, I might not have the courage to explore. Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.
As quoted in "Bruce Parry: 'My job doesn't allow me a private life" by Cassandra Jardine in The Telegraph (19 September 1007) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/09/19/nosplit/fttribe119.xml