"How can God speak to us if we don't take time to listen? Quietness is essential to listening. If we are too busy to listen, we won't hear. It takes time and quietness to prepare to listen to God."
Charles Stanley


"An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate."
Charles Stanley


"To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The more we pray, the more we come to heartbeat of God. Prayer starts the communication process between ourselves and God. All the options of life fall before us. At that point we will either forsake our prayer life and cease to grow, or we will pursue our prayer life and let Him change us.

Either option is painful. To not grow in His likeness is to not enjoy his fulness. When this happens, a haunting voice continues to ask, 'What could I have become in him if I would have been a man of prayer?’'To grow in His likeness is to enjoy His fullness. When this happens, the priorities of the world begin to fade away."
Richard Foster


"I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man may be nourished.... I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation of it."
George Mueller of Bristol


"I have lived to thank God that not all my prayers have been answered."
Jean Ingelow



There is a place where thou canst touch the eyes
Of blinded men to instant, perfect sight;
There is a place where thou canst say, "Arise"
To dying captives, bound in chains of night;
There is a place where thou canst reach the store
Of hoarded gold and free it for the Lord;
There is a place--upon some distant shore--
Where thou canst send the worker and the Word.
Where is that secret place--dost thou ask, "Where?"
O soul, it is the secret place of prayer!
Alfred Lord Tennyson