"I lack the fervency, vitality, life in prayer which I long for. I know that many consider it fanaticism when they hear anything which does not conform to the conventional, sleep-inducing eulogies so often rising from Laodicean lips; but I know too that these same people can tolerate sin in their lives without so much as tilting one hair of their eyebrows. Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective." - Jim Elliot
"People do it [prayer while keeping God in the box] all the time. Prayer in the box, however, is bland, harmless, anemic, routine, earthbound, faithless, heartless, hopeless, and - worst of all- fireless... As you would expect, fire goes out in the box - it is not possible for God to manifest Himself in any way. That would not be tolerated... The easiest way to determine if your faith is in the box is to evaluate your prayer life objectively. Simply ask yourself, when I pray, am I expecting God to penetrate my world? What ministry initiative am I involved in that is doomed to failure unless God intervenes? How much fire - or how much of God's manifest presence - am I seeing in answer to prayer? When we learn to exercise faith while praying, our prayers open the door and invite God's supernatural activity into our world." -Fred Hartley
Prayer on Fire pp. 83,90-91
"The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeing a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer." -Charles Spurgeon
"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying." - Leonard Ravenhill
