Quotable

The job of every Christian is to pray. Yet we want to do something important for God;... Prayer seems like such a small thing to do.... But to Jesus, prayer is everything; it’s a duty as well as a privilege, a right as well as a responsibility. We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but Jesus wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there is nothing else we can do, but Jesus wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us...don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time.... And so we try to help God along. Many times we even try to answer our own prayers. We have the idea that more people will become Christians if we can make God look good to them. So we try to convince them of God’s generosity by proving that He answers prayer. If we can just help God spruce up His image a little, we can get more people on His side, right? Wrong! He wants us to pray. Always, and about everything. During times of joy [and] sorrow. He wants us to talk to Him, not about Him. He even wants us to talk to Him about unbelievers before we talk to unbelievers about Him. Prayer is our holy occupation. Plain and simple.

—Oswald Chambers