I'm reading "Red Moon Rising" by Pete Greig and Dave Roberts, and I've never been so inspired in my life. I need this sort of revival. I WANT this sort of revival. I want a relationship with God - not an experience or a set of experiences. I want to be hungry for - even addicted to - prayer. I want to want to enter in to God's presence. I want REVIVAL. First in my heart, in my family, in the YA class, at Calvary, in Indianapolis, in Indiana, in the country, in the world.

Some thoughts on prayer:

C. H. Spurgeon, "Pray, Always Pray":
God thinks much more of your desire than of the words in which they are expressed. It may be natural for a scholar to consider the accuracy of your terms, but God especially notes the sincerity of your soul. There is no other place where the heart should be so free as before the mercy seat. There, you can talk out your very soul, for that is the best prayer you can present. Do not ask for what some tell you that you should ask for, but for that which you feel the need of, that which the Holy Spirit has made you to hunger and thirst for, you ask for that.

John Dawson:
A prayer room is not some giant spiritual vending machine: Just put in enough money and you're guaranteed a can of Coke. A prayer room is first and foremost a living room - a place where the Father waits for His children to come and climb into His loving arms. It's a place where we can experience peace so that we can make peace later; a place where we can accept forgiveness so that we can live our lives as priests at work; a place where we receive our Father's acceptance so that we can love even those who laugh at us later in the day.

Count Zinzendorf:
No man liveth unto himself.
- Be kind to all men.
- Be true to Christ.
- Send the gospel to the world.

Brennan Manning:
...[P]rayer is not primarily about changing things somewhere out there. It is first and foremost about changing something "in here" - in the heart. The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself become the prayer. You leave the prayer room able as Jesus' hands and feet on earth. This is what it means to pray continually, to see with the eyes of Jesus and to hear with His ears with every waking moment.

Henri Nouwen, "The Way of the Heart":
The literal translation of the phrase "pray always" is "come to rest." The Greek word for rest is hesychia and so Nouwen wrote, "Hesychia, the rest which flows from unceasing prayer, needs to be sought at all costs, even when the flesh is itchy, the world alluring and the demons noisy." As we prayed continually, God was speaking to us powerfully. Prayer, we were reminded, was about climbing into the lap of our Father rather than triggering some vast spiritual machine. It was about coming to rest in constant awareness of in our undeserving lives, and we must never start striving and straining under the false burdens of guilt.

"Prayer brings incredible answers to deep needs. It can lead to genuine breakthroughs in calling people, villages, and cities back to God. But the most important thing that any prayer, or prayer room, from Alaska to Australia can provide is a place where people can be alone with their eternal Father, a place where you and I can study His features, find comfort in His love, learn to recognize His quiet voice, seek His advice, and pour out our childish hearts to Him. In the prayer room, we pick up God's mannerisms; we grow in His likeness. We actually become the answer to many of our prayers. And of course that's the greatest miracle of all."

i must be high (lyrics)

Thoughts on Prayer