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Hannah More once said, "Prayer is the application of want to Him who alone can relieve it, the voice of sin to Him who alone can pardon it. It is the urgency of poverty, the prostration of humility, the fervency of penitence, the confidence of trust. It is not eloquence, but earnestness; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul. It is the "Lord, save, I perish" of drowning Peter...It is not a mere conception of the mind nor an effort of the intellect, nor an act of the memory, but an elevation of the soul towards its Maker. It is the devout breathing of a creature struck with a sense of its own misery and of the infinite holiness of Him whom it is addressing, experimentally convinced of its own emptiness and of the abundent fulness of God, of His readiness to hear, of His Power to help, of His willingness to save...Prayer is right in itself as the most powerful means of resisting sin and advancing in holiness. It is above all might, as everything is, which has the authority of [Holy] Scripture, the command of God, and the example of Christ."

(SOURCE: Hannah More, from a sermon by George Dillahunty, Praying About our Problems, SermonCentral.com, 7/1/08)

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