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Know how to Pray ( 22 )

Quotations from the writings of Ellen G. White with the phrase . . .

Know how to Pray

We need to know how to pray. It is not tame, spiritless prayers that take hold of the divine attributes. Prayer is heard by God when it comes from a heart broken by a sense of unworthiness. Prayer was instituted for our comfort and salvation, that through faith and hope we may lay hold on the rich promises of God. Prayer is the expression of the desires of a soul hungering and thirsting for righteousness. In Heavenly Places, page 75.5

We do not half know [how] to pray. We do not know how to get the victory. If only we [would] come to Him and knew how to pray, our hearts would be melted and we would see the blessing of God, and our hearts would become softened by the love of Christ. And when the love of Christ is there, why, then you can do anything. But it has been Satan's studied work to keep the love of Christ out of our hearts. But the trouble is, there is a great lot of ceremony and form. What we want is the love of Christ, to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves. When we have this, there will be a breaking down as with the walls of Jericho before the children of Israel. But there is such an amount of selfishness and desire of supremacy in our ranks. Why, it is most painful. We see it everywhere. {1SAT 57.2} {1888 159.2}

Growth in grace is shown in an increasing ability to work for God. He who learns in the school of Christ will know how to pray and how to speak for the Master. Realizing that he lacks wisdom and experience, he will place himself under the training of the Great Teacher, knowing that only thus he can obtain perfection in God's service. And daily he becomes better able to comprehend spiritual things. Every day of diligent labor finds him at its close better fitted to help others. {AG 309.5} {HP 320.4} {RH, April 29, 1909 par. 4}

And thus should our physicians labor. They are doing the Lord's work when they labor as evangelists, giving instruction as to how the soul may be healed by the Lord Jesus. Every physician should know how to pray in faith for the sick, as well as to administer the proper treatment. At the same time he should labor as one of God's ministers, to teach repentance and conversion, and the salvation of soul and body. Such a combination of labor will broaden his experience and greatly enlarge his influence. {CME 27.4} {7MR 104.1}

The physician should know how to pray. In many cases he must increase suffering in order to save life; and whether the patient is a Christian or not, he feels greater security if he knows that his physician fears God. Prayer will give the sick an abiding confidence; and many times if their cases are borne to the Great Physician in humble trust, it will do more for them that all the drugs that can be administered. {CH 324.1}

"Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean." Turn quickly to Jesus Christ. Yield your pride, your self love, your selfish aspirations, your love of the world, which are death to spirituality. Repent quickly. Delay not in deciding, lest you be too late. Elevate your soul's aspirations to higher spheres of action in Christian activities. Those who do this are the only class in our churches that will grow. They will speedily attain the highest moral efficiency and the clearest spiritual perceptions. They will have unusual vigor and steadiness of faith. They will know how to pray and be persevering and earnest in prayer. And all those who are deeply and interestedly engaged in the salvation of others, are the more surely working out their own souls' salvation with fear and trembling. The piety that does not reveal itself in working interestedly for others, will become a form, strengthened, bigoted, self-conceited. Coming in contact with souls for whom Christ has died, seeking to bring them to repentance, and evidencing a love for their souls, will call them out of themselves, so that they will not be exclusively engaged for their own selfish interests, either in temporal pursuits or in spiritual things. God has shown it to be our duty not to live for ourselves. Christ pleased not himself. {RH, June 7, 1887 par. 11}

Let our youth live and work as in the sight of Heaven, and not strive to put forth something new and startling, but to present the simple, blessed lessons which Christ has given to his disciples to be passed along the lines to our times. Let their actions testify that they know how to pray, how to labor personally for souls for whom Christ has died, not waiting for some promising subject, but laboring for the sinner just as he is, revealing to him the love of Christ for fallen man. {YI, May 4, 1893 par. 2}

Those who know how to Pray

In the place of bearing your perplexities to a brother or a minister, take them to the Lord in prayer. Do not place the minister where God should be. The minister of Christ is like other men. True, he bears sacred responsibilities, but he is not infallible. He is compassed with infirmity, and needs grace and divine enlightenment. He needs the heavenly unction, in order to do his work with success. Those who know how to pray, who know what are the invitations of the gospel of Christ, show dishonor to God when they lay their burdens upon finite men. It is always right to counsel together; it is right to converse together; it is right to make the difficulties that present themselves in any enterprise plain before your brethren and your ministers. But do not depend upon man for wisdom. Seek God for the wisdom that comes from above. Ask your fellow laborers to pray with you; and the Lord will fulfill his word, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst." {YI, February 15, 1900 par. 6}

In the place of bearing your perplexities to a brother or a minister, take them to the Lord in prayer. Do not place the minister where God should be. The minister of Christ is like other men. True, he bears sacred responsibilities, but he is not infallible. He is compassed with infirmity, and needs grace and divine enlightenment. He needs the heavenly unction, in order to do his work with success. Those who know how to pray, who know what are the invitations of the gospel of Christ, show dishonor to God when they lay their burdens upon finite men. It is always right to counsel together; it is right to converse together; it is right to make the difficulties that present themselves in any enterprise plain before your brethren and your ministers. But do not depend upon man for wisdom. Seek God for the wisdom that comes from above. Ask your fellow laborers to pray with you; and the Lord will fulfill His Word, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst."-- YI Feb. 15, 1900. {PaM 217.5}

Those who know how to pray, who know what are the invitations of the gospel of Christ, who know the immutability of His promises, show dishonor to God when they lay their burden upon finite men. It is right, always, to counsel together. It is right to converse together. It is right to make the difficulties that present themselves in any enterprise plain before your brethren and your minister. But do not so greatly dishonor God as to depend on man for wisdom. Seek God for the wisdom that cometh from above. Ask your fellow laborers to pray with you, and the Lord will fulfill His word, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).-- MS 23, 1899. {1MCP 262.3}

But God has given to every man his work, and there is need of devoted, earnest, humble workers in all parts of the wide harvest-field. In Australia and the islands of the sea, there is need of hundreds of workers; and yet there are but few engaged in this important part of the field. The churches already raised up, need the help of sincere, earnest missionaries from America. We would rejoice to see humble, God-fearing, faithful stewards of the grace of God come to this country, for we believe much good could be accomplished. We do not call for those who are simply orators; but we are prepared to appreciate those who have searched the Scriptures, and found delight in the truth of God, who have discerned the light, accepted and appreciated it, and walked in the light as Christ is in the light. We would appreciate men who can bring from the treasure house of God things new and old, who can feed the sheep and the lambs with the pure provender unmixed with chaff; men who know how to pray sincerely, and know how to take hold of the might of the Strength of Israel. We would welcome men who have the heavenly anointing, who can hold forth the word of life, because they live by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. The experience of such men is composed of that upon which they feed, and they are partakers of the grace of Christ, and possess the true refinement of those who walk with God; for they are meek and lowly of heart, having learned in the school of Christ. {RH, February 28, 1893 par. 11}

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