C. S. Lewis Pray Quotations

Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments one following another...Ten-thirty-- and every other moment from the beginning of the world--is always Present for Him. If you like to put it this way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

In worship, God imparts himself to us.

The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'

When golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift?

If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?

A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.

If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.

For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.

I pray because I can't help myself...

When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.

Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person.

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you. Since but one voice is heard, it

At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget[...]that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.

If you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.

I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.

Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.

I think it very wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.

Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones they forget.

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.

The world was made partly that there may be prayer; partly that our prayers might be answered.

We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us.

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

Prayer does not change God; it changes me.

Our prayers for others flow more easily than those for ourselves. This shows we are made to live by charity.

I don't pray so that I can change God. I pray so that God can change me.

I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.