If you want to know how to pray, pick up your Bible and a book by Andrew Murray. Andrew Murray’s key passage was John 15:7 “if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you may ask whatever you wish and it will be given you.” For Murray, prayer was not just something you did. It was a life lived in intimate fellowship with Christ. Abiding was the secret to that fellowship and asking was the natural outflow of a life lived for the glory of God. Below are several quotes that I pray might inspire you to become a man or woman of prayer. Prayer is the most important thing we can do. Murray will leave no doubt as to why that is true. Here are just a few of his convicting and convincing quotes taken from three of his most influential books. 

“The inner chamber is where the victory is obtained. The enemy uses all his power to lead the Christian, and above all the minister, to neglect prayer. He knows that however admirable the sermon may be, however attractive the service, however faithful the pastoral visitation, none of these things can damage him if prayer is neglected.” The Prayer Life, p. 27

“God’s child can conquer everything by prayer. Is it any wonder that Satan does his utmost to snatch that weapon from the Christian, or to hinder him in the use of it? How does Satan hinder prayer? By temptation to postpone or curtail it, by bringing wandering thoughts and all sorts of distractions, through unbelief and hopelessness. Happy is the prayer hero who, through it all, takes care to hold fast and use his weapon. Like our Lord in Gethsemane, the more violently the enemy attacked the more earnestly he prayed and ceased not till he had obtained the victory.”  The Prayer Life, p. 28

“Christ had just said, “ask and it shall be given”; God’s giving is inseparably connected with our asking. He applies this principle especially to the Holy Spirit. As surely as a father on earth gives bread to his child, so God gives the Holy Spirit to them who ask him. The whole ministration of the Spirit is ruled by the one great law: God must give, we must ask.” The Ministry of Intercessory Prayer, p. 23

“In this matter of prayer we are sure that God does not demand of us impossibilities. He does not weary us with an impractical ideal. He will give the grace to do what He asks, to pray that our intercessions shall, day by day, be a pleasure to him and to us, a source of strength to our conscience and our work, and a channel of blessing to those for whom we labor.”  The Ministry of intercessory Prayer, p. 53

“‘Lord teach us to pray.” Yes to pray. That is what we need to be taught. Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the feeble child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which we can rise. It is fellowship with the unseen and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed at its disposal. It is the very essence of true religion, the channel of all blessings, the secret of power and life.” With Christ in the School of Prayer, p. 2

“By His Holy Spirit, He has access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that hinders the prayer, or by giving us the assurance that we please God. He teaches, by giving not only thoughts of what to ask or how to ask, but by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor. We may indeed most joyfully say, “Who teaches like Him?” Jesus never taught his disciples how to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well but much of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to men. Not power with men, but power with God is the first thing. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.” With Christ in the School of prayer, p. 4.


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