The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Philip YanceyRead
Like all good things, prayer requires some discipline. Yet I believe that life with God should seem more like friendship than duty. Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation. In other words, prayer has features in common with all relationships that matter.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Prayer is a disciplined yet personal relationship with God, akin to friendship rather than a mere obligation.
In this quote, Philip Yancey emphasizes that prayer, much like any significant relationship, requires discipline and commitment. However, it shouldn't be approached solely as a duty; rather, it should embody the qualities of friendship, encompassing both joyful and challenging moments. This perspective highlights the complexity and variability of true relationships, whether with God or with others, suggesting that both the ecstatic and mundane experiences are integral to meaningful connection.
Themes
PrayerFriendshipDisciplineRelationshipsGod
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a sermon to illustrate the nature of prayer as a relationship.
More from Philip Yancey
All quotes →If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
Philip YanceyRead
In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Philip YanceyRead
Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Philip YanceyRead
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
Philip YanceyRead
We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
Philip YanceyRead
Similar quotes
They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.
Erich Maria RemarqueRead
Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don't over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.
Leo BuscagliaRead
I get so sick and tired of hearing people gripe about what their parents did to them. You know what your parents did to you? The best thing they could do. The best thing they knew how, the only thing in many cases that they knew how. Nobody has set out maliciously to hurt their child, unless they were psychotic.
Leo BuscagliaRead
We live in a generation of not being in love and not being together_x000D_ But we sure make it feel like we're together._x000D_ Cause we're scared to see each other with somebody else
DrakeRead
I had no future with the Dodgers, because I was too closely identified with Branch Rickey. After the club was taken over by Walter O'Malley, you couldn't even mention Mr. Rickey's name in front of him. I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known.
Jackie RobinsonRead
I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.
John GreenRead