Sources:
- John Wesley quote: Several collections of quotations include this, for example, "15 Famous Quotes and 5 Principles about Prayer" from the Christian Post. I am unable to find an original source.
- John Chrysostom, 349 – 407, Church father and archbishop of Constantinople, quoted in A Treasury of Prayer, The Best of E.M. Bounds on Prayer in a Single Volume, compiled by Leonard Ravenhill, p. 22. Here is a fuller version of that quote:
The potency of prayer has subdued the strength of fire, it has bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the fates of heaven, assuaged diseases, dispelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. There is (in it) an all-sufficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings! - Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855, Christian existentialist philosopher. In ”Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing; spiritual preparation for the office of confession” (1956) by Søren Kierkegaard, translated from Danish by Douglas Van Steere; Chapter 3: Barriers to Willing One Thing: Variety and Great Moments Are Not One Thing.
Full quote: The person making the confession is not like a servant that gives account to his lord for the management which is given over to him because the lord could not manage all or be present in all places. The all-knowing One was present at each instant for which reckoning shall be made in the account. The account of what is done is not made for the lord’s sake but for the servant’s sake, who must even render account of how he used the very moment of rendering the account. Nor is the person confessing like one that confides in a friend to whom sooner or later he reveals things that the friend did not previously know. The all-knowing One does not get to know something about the maker of the confession, rather the maker of confession gets to know about himself. Therefore, do not raise the objection against the confession that there is no point in confiding to the all-knowing One that which He already knows. Reply first to the question whether it is not conferring a benefit when a man gets to know something about himself which he did not know before. A hasty explanation could assert that to pray is a useless act, because a man’s prayer does not alter the unalterable. But would this be desirable in the long run? Could not fickle man easily come to regret that he had gotten God changed? The true explanation is therefore at the same time the one most to be desired. The prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who offers it. It is the same with the substance of what is spoken. Not God, but you, the maker of the confession, get to know something by your act of confession. - C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963, Scholar and writer. The Problem of Pain, New York, Harper-Collins, 1940. Here is the quote in its context:
Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. Do we suppose that they can do Him any good, or fear, like the chorus in Milton, that human irreverence can bring about ‘His glory’s diminution’? A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not yet God—though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain. Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to ‘put on Christ’, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little. - Therese de Lisieux, 1873-1897, Carmelite nun, canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1925. Manuscrits autobiographiques, C 25r. Her quote is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” - John Calvin, 1509-1564, Theologian and reformer. In Ann J. Townsend, Prayer without pretending. Chicago: Moody Press, 1973.