Faith Quotes

"A clergyman once said to me that a railway compartment, if one has it to oneself, is an extremely good place to pray in “because there is just the right amount of distraction.” When I asked him to explain, he said that perfect silence and solitude left one more open to the distractions which come from within, and that moderate amount of external distraction was easier to cope with."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"A man can’t be always defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it."

- C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

"We have long since agreed that if our prayers are granted at all they are granted from the foundation of the world. God and His acts are not in time. Intercourse between God and man occurs at particular moments for the man, but not for God."

- C.S. Lewis

"He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created."

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty --and every other moment from the beginning of the world-- is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashed in flames."

- C.S. Lewis

"What I mean is this. An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God – that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers."

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Meantime, however, we want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are. And if my idea of prayer as “unveiling” is accepted, we have already answered this. 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."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"We say that we believe God to be omniscient; yet a great deal of prayer seems to consist of giving him information."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"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."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"Forgive us …. As we forgive…. To forgive for the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offence again every time it recurs to the memory---there’s the real tussle."

- C.S. Lewis

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"As if we said, “In my ignorance I have asked for A, B, and C. But don’t give me them if you foresee that they would in reality be to me either snares or sorrows.”… If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?"

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose."

- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"Find an experience fully God-centered, asking of God no gift more urgently than His presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the highest degree, and unmistakably real."

- C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

- C.S. Lewis

"“Well, I do think someone might have arranged about our meals,” “I'm sure Aslan would have, if you'd asked him,” said [the horse]. “Wouldn't he know without being asked?” [asked the girl]. “I've no doubt he would,” said the Horse (still with his mouth full). “But I've a sort of idea he likes to be asked.”"

- C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

"Prayer succeeds when all else fails."

- E.M. Bounds

"The greatest benefactor this age could have is the man who will bring the teachers and the church back to prayer."

- E.M. Bounds

"Sainthood’s piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long."

- E.M. Bounds

"What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use - men of prayer, men mighty in prayer."

- E.M. Bounds

"Prayer is not learned in a classroom but in the closet."

- E.M. Bounds

"Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still."

- E.M. Bounds

"True prayer must be aflame. Christian life and character need to be all on fire."

- E.M. Bounds

"No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame."

- E.M. Bounds

"The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day."

- E.M. Bounds

"We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer. It surmounts or removes all obstacles, overcomes every resisting force and gains its ends in the face of invincible hindrances."

- E.M. Bounds

"God draws mightily near to the praying soul."

- E.M. Bounds

"You know the value of prayer: it is precious beyond all price."

- E.M. Bounds

"The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we give to it."

- E.M. Bounds

"Without devotion prayer is an empty form, a vain round of words."

- E.M. Bounds