Bill Hybels Quotes

If Christ's followers aren't growing, it is because they are not making a habit of evaluating their lives. They don't step back and ask, "What's working and what's not working?"

Confession is probably the most neglected area of personal prayer.

I soon began writing out my whole prayer and reading it back to God. Previously I'd get no further than "Dear God" and I'd already be thinking of the person I was going to meet for lunch or the board meeting agenda or what my family members and I would be doing later that evening. But when I began to move pen across paper, it became much easier to remain focused.

God isn't interested in stock phrases. Talk to him. Talk to the Father sincerely.

Sensing the carelessness and one-sidedness of our prayers, we start to feel guilty about praying. Guilt leads to faint-heartedness and that in turn leads to prayerlessness.

If your ear is open to the afflicted, God will keep his ear open to you.

How do you pray a prayer so filled with faith that it can move a mountain? By shifting your focus from the size of your mountain to the sufficiency of the Mountain Mover and then stepping forward in obedience.

Never forget that if you are God's child through Jesus Christ, you are praying to a Father who couldn't love you more than he already does.

If your life is rushing in many directions at once, you are incapable of the kind of deep, unhurried prayer that is vital to the Christian walk.

If you have pumped your fist at God, the good news is that you can come back into fellowship with him right this minute.

Developing prayer fitness is similar to developing physical fitness: we must follow a pattern in order to stay balanced.

One prayer routine that is balanced and easy to remember is found in the word ACTS, an acrostic whose four letters stand for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

Prayer busters (causes of unanswered prayer) are prayerlessness, unconfessed sin, unresolved relational conflict, selfishness, uncaring attitudes, and inadequate faith.

The key is to practice praying - and to practice praying regularly, privately, sincerely and specifically.

I can write about prayer, you can read about prayer...but sooner or later you have to fall to your knees and just plain pray. Then, and only then, will you begin to operate in the vein of God's miracle-working ways.