Prayer Changes Us

In the introduction to his book, Dimensions of Prayer, the Quaker Douglas Steere quoted P.T. Forsyth,


I used to think it was a lack of discipleship, but the church in America has no lack of access to knowledge.  What is the cause of a person who "prays a prayer" at six, attends church his or her entire life, and yet has no measurable spiritual difference in their life sixty years later?

I am more and more convinced that the problem is so many “believers” never spend any quantitative time in the presence of God.  They attend church, they sing the songs, they might even be able to check off the “read my Bible daily” box, but they don’t pray or spend any real time in God's presence.

Steere said “There can be no standing still.  The religion of Jesus Christ is not a holding operation.  In the flyleaf of English leader Oliver Cromwell’s Bible was penned, ‘He that is not getting better is getting worse.’”

This is why I’m spending time trying to write on prayer.  I have spent years studying the Word of God, I received a Masters of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry, but I will be honest…nothing changes me like time in the presence of God.  Nothing changes me like prayer.

Let me close with another quote from Steere, “In learning to pray, no laboratory is needed but a room, no apparatus but ourselves.  The living God is the field of force into which we enter in prayer, and the only really fatal failure is to stop praying and not to begin again.”