Prayer is always essential, but thought is essential, too, because prayer can be just an escape mechanism, almost at times a cry in the dark by people who are desperate and defeated. Prayer must be intelligent, and it is only to those who realize that their bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost that the answer will be given and the power will come.Spiritual Depression (173)
If you could be brought once to love secret prayer, and to converse feelingly with God in his word, your heaven will begin on earth; you will enjoy more pleasure than in all manner of riches.
God ordains our prayers as means of receiving what he plans to give, all to enrich our relationship to him. As the perfect Father of his children, he reserves the right to answer the requests we should have made rather than those we actually made when we have asked for the wrong thing; but he will take action one way or another in every situation of need that we bring before him. Systematic Theology A Lecture
A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
Do you pray? One of the things that happens in your prayer life is if you think that you gotta earn the favor of God you'll never be a prayer. If you understand the favour of God was granted you in Jesus Christ you'll have a tendency to run to Christ and not from him.Rezweek 2010 Night 1
God is always willing for us to hit the mark when He directs our arrows. When He teaches us to wrestle, He then intends we should prevail. Spiritual breathings are attended with spiritual blessings. Nothing will ascend to heaven but what came down from heaven. That prayer meets with no answer which is not offered up in faith.
A wife takes sanctuary not only in her husband's house but in his heart. The tree of love should grow up in the family as the tree of life grew up in the garden. They that choose their love should love their choice. They that marry where they affect not will affect where they marry not. Two joined together without love are but two tied together to make one another miserable.
He is not a covetous man who lays up something providentially, but he is a covetous man who gives out nothing willingly. He is as prudent a man who sometimes distributes discreetly as he who accumulates hastily. Men frequently discover more wisdom in laying out than in laying up. Reader, the hope of living long on earth should not make you covetous, but the prospect of living long in heaven should make you bounteous. Though the sun of charity rise at home, yet it should always set abroad.
Where there is no confidence in God, there will be no continuance with God. When the wind of faith ceases to fill the sails, the ship of obedience ceases to plough the seas.
Religious company brings fire to our graces to kindle them when they are freezing, but irreligious company brings water to quench them when they are flaming. Nonsuch Professor, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A74686.0001.001