Pete Greig > Quotes

“I asked for strength that I might achieve; He made me weak that I might obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things; I was given grace that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy; I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life; I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I received nothing that I asked for, all that I hoped for. My prayer was answered, I was most blessed.”
― Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

“The best bit of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Too many people are missing their destiny a year at a time because they're too scared to think in decades!"
(p. 127)”
― Pete Greig, Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing

“But I am learning to understand that I may never fully understand. I am learning to be a bit more okay with not being okay. Life sometimes hurts, but I’ve discovered that deleting God from the equation doesn’t actually help. It merely removes all meaning and morality from the mess and all real hope from the future. And so I’m sort of stuck with God, even when I don’t understand him. Even when I don’t completely like him. Turns out he is all I’ve got. And maybe this is where hallowing actually begins.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. MATTHEW”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Prayer is more than a lighted candle,’ insists the theologian George A. Buttrick. ‘It is the contagion of health. It is the pulse of Life.’23 A real relationship with God means walking with him daily, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It means talking with him intimately, like Moses with whom ‘The Lord would speak … face to face, as one speaks to a friend.’24 And it means listening attentively to his voice because, as Jesus said, ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.’25”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“God’s great aim has always been, and will forever be, relationship with us. Sometimes, He may deprive us of something in order to draw us to Someone. And when we reciprocate—when we decide that we want Him more than we want His stuff—the most amazing thing happens. We are rewired and our requests are either altered as we grow to know and to prefer what He wants for us, or they are simply answered because, in seeking first the kingdom of God, “all these things” are given to us as well (Matt 6:33).”
― Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

“Ironically, it is when we finally accept the fact that life is not a five-star hotel and lay down our indignation at the way we are being treated that we begin to find hope. As long as we rage against the heavens, we remain impoverished in our pain. But when we allow our eyes to fall to the mire, we discover a wealth of little epiphanies glimmering in the puddles at our feet. When G. K. Chesterton finally gave up trying to be optimistic about the world and accepted that it was fallen, far from feeling depressed, his heart “sang for joy like a bird in spring.”7”
― Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

“Everyone prays,’ he pointed out. ‘Even non-Christians pray. The difference when Christians do it is that they are climbing into the lap of their heavenly Father.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer

“A prayer room is first and foremost a living room—a place where the Father waits for his children to come and climb into his arms.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer

“The best way to start praying, therefore, is actually to stop praying. To pause. To be still. To put down your prayer list and surrender your own personal agenda. To stop talking at God long enough to focus on the wonder of who he actually is. To ‘be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him’.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Jesus is what God sounds like. He’s literally the “living Word of God.” Hearing his voice is not so much a skill we must master, therefore, as a master we must meet.”
― Pete Greig, How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Several years after the war, Corrie ten Boom was speaking about her experiences in Munich, when one of her former S.S. guards approached her at the end of the church service. ‘“How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. ‘Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? “Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.” I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. “Jesus,” I prayed, “I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.” As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If he wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is his concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton says: ‘God is far too real to be met anywhere other than in reality.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“It's more important to know whom you are called to be with than what you are called to do.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer Is Awakening a Generation

“The day we start taking credit for the fact that he answers prayer we are in deep, deep trouble.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer

“To truly encounter Jesus is to be knocked sideways, astonished, overwhelmed. Mild interest means you have not yet met him. —Simon Ponsonby”
― Pete Greig, How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“(See Toolshed: How to Fast.)”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“greatest theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, said that ‘to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world’. And”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer

“we are qualified for Christian service by our praying not our preaching, by our desire to worship him and not our workload on his behalf, by knowing Jesus personally and not just by knowing a lot of interesting things about him. If you lose God’s presence you lose everything, but if you know his presence you already have everything you will ever need.”
― Pete Greig, Dirty Glory: Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You

“The best bit of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up. You’ve got to keep it simple so that the most natural thing in the world doesn’t become complicated, weird and intense. You’ve got to keep it real because when life hurts like hell you’re going to be tempted to pretend you’re fine. And then at other times, when you make a mess of things, you’re going to be tempted to hide from God (which never really works) and end up hiding from yourself (which works quite well). And you’ve got to keep it up because life is tough, the battle is fierce, and God is not an algorithm. The journey of faith demands a certain bloody-mindedness of us all, not least in the realm of prayer.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Amid sparkling creativity, spectacular innovation and unprecedented wealth, growing up in the West means for many a sense of alienation and a craving for intimacy, authenticity and hope.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer Is Awakening a Generation

“Las grandes pruebas de la vida invariablemente nos dejan huellas; nos marcan con amargura o nos hacen mejores. Nunca nos dejan igual (página 212). Me di cuenta de que había dos maneras en que podía responder a la situación: reaccionar con amargura o procurar transformarla en una fuerza creadora.118 Pete sugiere que tratemos de encontrar caminos de enlazar creativamente con el silencio recordando, buscando y hablando claro sobre el modo en que Dios ha hablado y se ha movido.”
― Pete Greig, Cuando Dios guarda silencio: Capte el silencio de una oración no contestada

“pesar de todos los avances tecnológicos y el aumento de la expectativa de vida, hay una fragilidad extraordinaria en nuestra generación. Colapsamos fácilmente, nuestros matrimonios se desbaratan y somos rápidos para ofendernos. En nuestro mundo obsesionado con la celebridad, el escape a la muerte y anestesiado contra el dolor, necesitamos que se nos recuerde que es normal tener dificultades, enfermarnos, experimentar problemas financieros y enfrentar el rompimiento de relaciones. Jesús nos promete: “Ustedes tendrán tribulación” (Juan 16:33), pero no muchos de nosotros pegamos ese versículo en nuestro refrigerador. Al contrario, cuando encontramos dificultades, nos sentimos traicionados. Preguntamos: ¿por qué yo? Como si esas cosas no acosaran al seguidor de Cristo. Como si fuéramos inmunes a las enfermedades que afligen a nuestros vecinos.”
― Pete Greig, Cuando Dios guarda silencio: Capte el silencio de una oración no contestada

“So I'm waiting for God, and God is waiting for me to see if I am really waiting for him, and not just wanting things from him.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer Is Awakening a Generation

“Life sometimes hurts like hell but I’ve discovered that deleting God from the equation doesn’t actually help. It merely removes all meaning and morality from the mess, and all real hope from the future”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“Miracle is just a word we use for the things The Powers have deluded us into thinking that God is unable to do. (Walter Wink)”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“A Christian who prays only when they feel like it may survive but they will never thrive. Their vast, innate potential will be stunted because grace needs a little space to take root between the cracks of a person’s life.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“God brings his presence ‘into the house’, and we are called to release it back out into the world or the blessing will die.”
― Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer