If Jesus is to save you, you must pray. If your sins are to be forgiven, you must pray.
If the Spirit is to dwell in your heart, you must pray.
If you are to have strength against sin, you must pray.
If you are to dwell with God in heaven, your heart must talk with God upon earth by prayer.
Oh! do not be a prayerless Christian, whatever others may think right. Begin to pray this day if you never prayed before. Remember if you and I are to meet each other with joy at Christ’s appearing, you must pray.
- J.C. Ryle, Tract: I Have Something to Say unto You
Articulating Your Prayers
Let us pray more, and let us pray more earnestly. Let those who never prayed begin to pray. Let those who have prayed pray better.
Pray for yourselves — that you may know the Lord Jesus, and cleave to Him — that you may be kept from falling — that you may serve your generation — that you may be sober in prosperity, patient in trial, and humble at all times.
Pray for the congregation to which you belong — that the word of the Lord may have free course in it, and be glorified — that the household of faith may become stronger and stronger, and the household of unbelief weaker and weaker.
Pray for your country — that her ministers may preach the Gospel, and be sound in the faith — that her rulers may value the Bible, and govern according to it — and that so her candlestick may not be taken away.
And pray for your minister — that he may be strong to work, and willing to labor for your good, that all his sicknesses may be sanctified, and all his health given to the Lord — that he may be ever taught of the Spirit, and thus be able to teach others — that he may be kept faithful unto death, and so be ready to depart when he is called.
Let us all pray, one for the other — I for you, and you for me — and we shall be blessed in our deed!
- J.C. Ryle, Tract: Consider Your Ways
Desire in Prayer
You have seen a dog after a long run; how he stands with opened mouth panting for life and breath. Oh, that we had desires after God and divine things strong enough to make us thus open our mouth and pant! We may never have seen a stag in extremis, but I dare say David had. He had seen it in the fierce hunt, when it longed to have its smoking sides in the water brooks and to drink long draughts, and he said, “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”
Nothing puts such energy into prayer as intense anguish of desire. Desire comes out of a sense of want; and in proportion as the necessity is overwhelming, the fervency of the desire will be vehement. My brethren, we have not, because, although we ask, we use a kind of asking which is as though we asked not.
An old Puritan says, “He that prays to God without fervor asks to be denied.” There is a way of asking for a thing in which the person to whom the request is made finds it very easy to decline the request, but persons in dire necessity understand how to put the case, so that only a very hard-hearted person could say “no.” They know how to place their petition in such a way that the request wins, not merely because of the rightness of the petition, but also because of the very style in which it is put. We must learn how to pray with strong crying and tears, for there are mercies which cannot be gained by any other mode of supplicating.
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, from a sermon entitled "Opening The Mouth"
