Raise a Hallelujah and Reinvigorate Your Spirit With These 50 Prayer Quotes

Romans 12:12 instructs believers: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." But what does being faithful in prayer look like? These 50 prayer quotes bring to life this specific spiritual discipline's transformative power and purpose!

Prayer is an opportunity for believers to be intentional about acknowledging God's sovereignty, praising Him and submitting to His plans on a regular basis. While one of the most common approaches to prayer may look like bowing your head before bed and sharing thanks, concerns, and hopes to God, other examples of prayer include breath prayer, silent meditation, singing worship songs, utilizing a prayer journal, praying the Psalms/scriptures, going on prayer walks and more.

Sometimes, we may feel the urge to pray, but don't quite know where to begin. Other times, it may seem pointless and frustrating when we don't see our circumstances change. However, while some intercessory prayer or prayer chains focus on requesting a certain outcome, prayer itself requires a humble posture of seeking God's will ahead of our own (even when we don't understand it), and its practice helps regularly strengthen the faith of the believer.

Prayer is an essential, instrumental part of the Christian walk—the Bible reminds us of the importance of praying without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and how God listens to our words (Psalm 17:6). Ready to reinvigorate your prayer life? These 50 quotes about prayer are sure to inspire you to prioritize and appreciate this miraculous, powerful spiritual discipline!

50 Prayer Quotes

1. "Prayer is how we press our hands into the invisible and find the hand of Christ reaching back." — James K. A. Smith

2. "Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness.” — Mahatma Gandhi

3. "Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him." — Gordon B. Hinckley

4. "You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance." — Kahlil Gibran

5. "In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence." — Mother Teresa

6. "I think we have to pray in faith and with belief that His nos are always a providential yes to something else." — Melissa Kruger

7. "The power of prayer doesn’t come from the words we say, but from the One who hears them." — Annie VanderHeiden

8. "Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education." — Fyodor Dostoevsky

9. "Prayer is chatting with God, in freedom and with simplicity. In the midst of both calm and chaos, prayer moves us to internally sit still at his feet. Prayer can change our thinking and bring peace, as we remember that he controls everything. Prayer reminds us that he is the end to which we affirm and steward our callings in life. Prayer allows us to see God actively listening and responding to our needs. Prayer brings closeness and authenticity to our relationship with him." — Shekea Moreno

10. "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." — Martin Luther

11. "We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties." — Oswald Chambers

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12. "We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray." — Corrie ten Boom

13. "God will answer you prayers better than you think. Of course, one will not always get exactly what he has asked for....We all have sorrows and disappointments, but one must never forget that, if commended to God, they will issue in good....His own solution is far better than any we could conceive." — Fanny J. Crosby

14. "Through praying the Psalms, I just realized that prayer is so much about who God is. And so much about reminding myself who God is in the midst of whatever I’m going through. So as cliche as it sounds, the Psalms have been really pivotal in my understanding of prayer." — Jasmine Holmes

15. "Amen really just essentially means in Hebrew like, 'Let it be' or 'So be it.' It's a true and heartfelt acknowledgment and an affirmation that we believe God will do as He's promised. Amen is saying, 'Hear, hear,' or 'I affirm in faith that God is hearing what I'm saying.'" — Laura Wifler

Related: Uplifting Bible Verses About Faith

16. "We pray in Jesus's name—which is typically what we say at the end of the prayer to close—because we're acknowledging the reality of the gospel: that there is no way we can come to the Father, plead before the throne, even call him Father, without the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf." — Emily Jensen

17. "Teaching our kids to pray can seem so daunting when we don’t know what to say too. But the beauty of our gracious God is that he doesn’t need our perfectly crafted words. Growing in our own prayer lives has the ability to speak volumes to our kids." — Valerie Woerner

18. "Enjoy the simple presence of God in silence, without the need to offer words." — Rich Villodas

19. "Those who pray well are honest, vulnerable, frustrated, hopeful, learning, and most of all they are listeners." — Scot McKnight

20. "He is as much with us in our quiet, alone times as he is in the day when we have no space of our own. We can talk with him as a baby clings to our knee. We can listen to him while we are standing at the kitchen sink. We can seek him when sitting comfortably with a Bible in hand as well as while whisking throughout our home tending to needs." — Shekea Moreno

21. "He who kneels the most, stands the best." — D.L. Moody

22. "Praying the Bible isn’t complicated. Read through a few verses of Scripture, pause at the end of each phrase or verse, and pray about what the words suggest to you." — Donald Whitney

23. "God's goal is to conform us into the image of Jesus and prayer is a gift to do it. It's not about getting, it's about becoming." — Dr. Derwin L. Gray

24. "We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all." — Oswald Chambers

25. "True intimacy with God always brings humility.” — Beth Moore

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26. "I just love the idea of how prayer reveals how personal God is." — Jackie Hill Perry

27. "So often, we want big directional signs from God. God just wants us to pay attention. But we need to leave enough space in our days to get up from our prayers and actually look for God in the moment-to-moment things that happen." — Lysa TerKeurst

28. "It is remarkable that in all of his writings, Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances." — Timothy Keller

29. "Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer." — L.M. Montgomery

30. "I believe that the state of a person’s prayer life is an indicator of the condition of that person’s heart.” — Mary Kassian

31. "Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?" — Corrie ten Boom

32. "The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays." — Søren Kierkegaard

33. "Prayer does make a difference—a life-changing, mind-blowing, earth-rattling difference." — Lysa TerKeurst

34. "It's definitely both things—where we can come to him casually and be able to speak to God with a one-word prayer or to talk with him. At the same time, we do want to teach our children, and have a posture ourselves, of recognizing the enormous privilege that it is to approach the throne and to be able to say: if prayer changes things and a prayer matters, then I want to give it my full attention and my full focus and to speak in a way that honors the Holy God that is in charge of the whole universe." — Laura Wifler

35. "God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows." — Timothy Keller

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36. "'Help' is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, 'Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.'” — Anne Lamott

37. "What things do you need to tell the Lord from a place of concern and humility? What questions linger, what worries do you harbor, and what do you need to hand over to him?" — Annie VanderHeiden

38. "The prayers of the saints have brought me great comfort over the years, not only giving me language to express my deepest fears and best hopes to God but also reminding me that I'm not alone." — Andrew Peterson

39. "When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal." — Mahatma Gandhi

40. "True prayer, not just mindless, halfhearted petitions, is what digs the well God wants to fill with faith." — Beth Moore

41. "Think of boredom during silent prayer as an act of purification. In this uneventful moment, God purifies us of the false god of good feelings.” — Rich Villodas

42. "Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts." — Mother Teresa

43. "Sometimes I go to God and say, 'God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already.' God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me." — A.W. Tozer

44. "Prayer is a posture of dependence and need.” — Dr. Derwin L. Gray

45. "Being a person who struggles with anxiety, I have found that having a habit of just consistently talking to God and saying, 'You know what? I feel my heart is beating really fast and I don’t really know why I’m worried right now, but You know, and so please help.'" — Jasmine Holmes

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46. "If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough." — Meister Eckhart

47. "The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

48. "If you look at the scriptures and you look at all of the examples of people praying before God, there was a humility, yet a freedom that they expressed—whether it’s Hannah, whether it’s David, whether it’s Hezekiah, whether it’s Jesus, whether it’s Paul, whether it’s the early church. I think looking at how they approach God helps us to know that we can approach him, too." — Jackie Hill Perry

49. "Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden." — Corrie ten Boom

50. "The more you pray, the less you'll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You'll feel more patient and less pressured." — Rick Warren

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