Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Prayer connects us to a higher power, enabling us to influence the course of our lives and the world.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon illustrates the power of prayer as a vital link between human intention and divine capability. It suggests that through prayer, our desires and requests are transmitted to a higher power, referred to as omnipotence, allowing our actions to be empowered and effective in the world. Essentially, it conveys the belief that prayer can be a driving force for change and support in our lives.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a church sermon discussing the importance of faith, one might say, 'As Charles Spurgeon noted, prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.'
More from Charles Spurgeon
All quotes →When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Similar quotes
Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked?
The greatest security we can have in this world that we are in the grace of God, does not consist in the feelings that we have of love to Him, but rather in an irrevocable abandonment of our whole being into His hands, and in a firm resolution never to consent to any sin great or small.
Look at me. I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land - the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can't see it.
The idol is the expression of religion.
Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.
Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.