Status Updates From How to Pray: Reflections an...

“‘If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.’ […] Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whisky or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies.”

“There is no question whether an event has happened because of your prayer. When the event you prayed for occurs, your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs, your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe.”

“The Christian is not to ask whether this or that event happened because of a prayer. He is rather to believe that all events without exception are answers to prayer in the sense that whether they are grantings or refusals the prayers of all concerned and their needs have all been taken into account.”

“But one of the things taken account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering.”

“And perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resort to help them when the great trials come, so those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones. We must not be too high minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s.”

“It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”

“…and why should my asking or not asking be one of the things He takes into account? At any rate, He said He would—and He ought to know. (We often talk as if He were not very good at Theology!)

“If it is foolish and impudent to ask for victory in a war (on the grounds that God might be expected to know best), it would be equally foolish and impudent to put on a mackintosh—does not God know best whether you ought to be wet or dry?”

“It’s not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.”