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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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 more we say yes to Jesus, the more familiar and precious his voice becomes until ultimately, at the end of the road, at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, we look back as the sun sets and whisper in wonder and joy, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked?”
― Pete Greig, How to Hear God: 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

“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

“One of the problems, ironically, can be prayer. In prayer, we set our hopes high and call it faith. We pray for the perfect spouse, healthy children, successful careers, and serene families. We don’t just wish for these things but actually train ourselves to expect them! We fear the worst if we should ever lower our sights. Yet this is false faith. The apostle Paul longed not just “to know Christ . . . [and] the power of his resurrection,” but also “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10 NIV 1984). The Christian witness and our ultimate hope is not merely a miraculous succession of miraculous escapes from all human affliction. Rather it is the joy of a deepening relationship with the “man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isa. 53:3 NIV 1984) who loves us and lives in us. I’m not suggesting that we should pray for hard times but rather that when such times come, we should feel a little less outrage and a lot more hope because Jesus, who went through similar struggles, predicted that we would have them and promised to be with us in the midst of them.”
― Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

“Andrew Murray, a nineteenth-century South African writer, said that “the power of prayer depends almost entirely upon our apprehension of who it is with whom we speak.”1 When we are scared and hurting, when life feels chaotic and out of control, it is more important than ever to anchor ourselves in the absolute and eternal truth that we are dearly loved and deeply held by the most powerful being in the universe. Let this be the great non-negotiable in our lives, the platform for all our other thoughts, and the plumbline for our prayers.”
― Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

“Por eso esas palabras de Barth son reconfortantes: Lo que forja a un hombre de oración es que se presente delante de Dios con su petición. Las otras teorías de la oración pueden haber surgido de pensamientos muy profundos y pueden lucir muy bien, pero todas sufren de cierta artificialidad porque carecen de algo simple y concreto: se pierden en las alturas y profundidades donde no hay lugar para el hombre que realmente ora, que simplemente hace una petición.4”
― Pete Greig, Cuando Dios guarda silencio: Capte el silencio de una oración no contestada

“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

“(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

“Andrew Murray, escritor sudafricano del siglo diecinueve, dijo una vez: “El poder de la oración depende casi en su totalidad de nuestro entendimiento de a quién está dirigida y de lo que decimos”.5 Cuando la vida nos hiere, eso es más importante que el hecho de llorar en los brazos de Dios como un niño que se mece en sus brazos, recordando que Él es el primero y principal Abba, el Padre.”
― Pete Greig, Cuando Dios guarda silencio: Capte el silencio de una oración no contestada

“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

“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

“Archbishop Justin Welby says, the Lord’s Prayer is ‘simple enough to be memorised by small children, and yet profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer’.6”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People