Craig T. Owens

A challenging and educational look at prayer from the unique perspective of Oswald Chambers is If Ye Shall Ask. You can read my book review of this book and another book on prayer Chambers wrote by clicking here. These are some of the quotes that I especially liked from this book.

“Prayer is not an interruption to personal ambition, and no man who is busy has time to pray. What will suffer is the life of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer.”

“The purpose of prayer is to reveal the Presence of God, equally present at all times and in every condition.”

“Our Lord in His teaching regarding prayer never once referred to unanswered prayer; He said God always answers prayer.” 

“As long as we are self-sufficient and complacent, we don’t need to ask God for anything, we don’t want Him; it is only when we know we are powerless that we are prepared to listen to Jesus Christ and to do what He says.”

“If prayer is not easy, we are wrong; if prayer is an effort, we are out of it.” 

“If once we accept the Lord Jesus Christ and the dominion of His Lordship, then nothing happens by chance, because we know that God is ordering and engineering circumstances.”

“A thing is worth just what it costs. Prayer is not what it cost us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray. It cost God so much that a little child can pray. It cost God Almighty so much that anyone can pray.” 

“It is not a prayer that is strenuous, but the overcoming of our own laziness.”

“We must be in continual practice so that when we find ourselves in a tight place we are perfectly fit to meet the emergency.” 

“There is no such thing as a holiday for the beating of your heart. If there is, the grave comes next. And there is no such thing as a moral or spiritual holiday. If we attempt to take a holiday, the next time we want to pray it is a struggle because the enemy has gained a victory all around, darkness has come down and spiritual wickedness in high places has enfolded us. If we have to fight, it is because we have disobeyed; we ought to be more than conquerors.”

“God’s silences are His answers.”

“Can it be said of us that Jesus so loved us that He stayed where He was because He knew we had a capacity to stand a bigger revelation?”

“Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand.” 

“Jesus Christ does not make monks and nuns, He makes men and women fit for the world as it is (see John 17:15).”

“God does not expect us to work for Him, but to work with Him.” 

“God will not leave us alone until we are one with Him, because Jesus has prayed that we may be.”

“A Christian’s duty is not to himself or to others, but to Christ. We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work. It is the supreme activity of everything that is noblest in our personality.”

“As long as we get from God everything we ask for, we never get to know Him, we look upon Him as a blessing-machine, that has nothing to do with God’s character or with our characters. … Then why pray? To get to know the Father.”

“All other fields have the glorious but risky snare of publicity; prayer has not.”