Status Updates From How To Pray

“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.”