Quote 1585
prayer changes things. Or to put it more theologically, God ordains prayer as a means to change history. There are things that happen because of prayer, and things that do not happen because of no prayer. In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says that if his people will humble themselves and pray, then he will forgive their sin and heal their land. In Luke 11:9-10, Jesus says that he who seeks, finds. And James 4:2 says that if we don't have things we need, it is because we do not ask. Prayer really does work.
John Frame
Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Kindle Locations 26957-26961). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.4K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
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)
I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is.
Prayer is the answer to the disease of self-confidence.
One fervent prayer in secret will speak more for our sincerity than many in public.
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
In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. N/A
Prayer must be fired with zeal and fervency.
What is prayer? It is an offering up of our desires to God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ.Ten Commandments, 239
All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God, not a multitude of words heaped together.
I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.
The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning.
Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart.
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.
I am profoundly grateful to God that He did not grant me certain things for which I asked, and that He shut certain doors in my face.
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
Let prayer be the key to open the morning and the bar to shut the evening.
As a body without a soul, much wood without fire, a bullet in a gun without powder, so are words in prayer without spirit.Commentary on Old/New Testaments 5 - 334
If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.Disciplines of a Godly man
Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.
When we speak of God's presence, we are not, of course, speaking of a physical presence, for God is incorporeal. What we mean, rather, is that he is able to act on and in the creation and to evaluate authoritatively all that is happening in the creation. Since God controls and evaluates all things, he is therefore present everywhere, as present as an incorporeal being can be. But in this chapter, we are interested in something more than mere presence. For God is not only present in the world; he is covenantally present. He is with his creatures to bless and to judge in terms of the standards of his covenant.Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Kindle Locations 1778-1783). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.
There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard.The Doctrine of the Word of God
The Sabbath belongs to the Lord alone and not to any man. But in Mark 2: 28, Jesus claims lordship over it. Clearly, this use of kyrios is a claim to deity. The Sabbath is God's dwelling in time, the temple his dwelling in space. As with the Sabbath, Jesus is greater than the temple, the dwelling place of God (Matt. 12: 6). It is his house, as the Sabbath is his day (Matt. 21: 12– 13).Systematic Theology
The Sabbath day in the OT was the day that belonged especially to the Lord. It is "a Sabbath to the LORD your God" (Ex. 20: 10). But Jesus declares that the Sabbath belongs to him: "So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2: 28). Jesus is the head of the covenant, a role that only Yahweh could play.Systematic Theology
In Scripture, however, the goal of human life is to glorify God. Our dignity is to be found not in what we do, but in what God has done for us and in us. Our meaning and significance are to be found in the fact that God has created us in his image and redeemed us by the blood of his Son. The biblical writers, therefore, are not horrified, as modern writers tend to be, by the thought that we may be under the control of another. If the other is God, and he has made us for his glory, then we could not possibly ask for a more meaningful existence.Systematic Theology
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