I never read a portion of this book without feeling convicted that it is rare that I truly pray.  I hope this post encourages you to seek our God with the earnestness that glorifies Him and that He's worthy of...

"To think that we puny people may speak with God and through God we may move all worlds.  Yet when your prayers are heard, creation will not be disturbed.  Though the greatest ends be answered, providence will not be altered for a single moment...all will go on the same, and yet your prayers will have affected everything.  They will speak to the decrees and purposes of God as they are being daily fulfilled; and the decrees will all shout to your prayer, "You are our brother; we are decrees, and you a prayer; but you are yourself a decree, as old, as sure, as ancient as we are."  Our prayers are God's decrees in another shape.  The prayers of God's people are but God's promises breathed out of living hearts, and those promises are the decrees, only put into another form and fashion.  Do not say, "How can my prayers affect the decrees of God?"  They cannot, except to the degree that your prayers are decrees, and that as they come out, every prayer that is inspired of the Holy Spirit in your soul is as omnipotent and as eternal as that decree which said, "Let there be light: and there was light." (Gen. 1:3)

Prayer is a real, actual thing...to be able to say, "I know He has heard me now.  I will look for my God, and hear what He will say to my soul."

I would that we came to speak to God just out of our hearts.  It would be a grand thing for our prayer meetings.  They would be better attended and more fruitful if every man would shake off that habit of formality and talk to God as a child talks to his father, asking Him for what we want and then sitting down and being done.  I say this with all Christian earnestness...[do not merely imitate former prayers of saints, for] God wants the new oil just distilled from the fresh olive of your own soul.  He wants spices and frankincense, incense and myrrh, brought from the ophir of your own soul's experience.  Do not learn the language of prayer but seek the spirit of prayer. 

Look upward, and let us weep.  O God, You have given us a mighty weapon, and we have permitted it to rust.  You have given us that which is mighty as Yourself, and we have let that power lie dormant.  Would it not be a crime if a man were given an eye that he would not open or a hand that he would not lift up?  And what must we say of ourselves when God has given us power in prayer-matchless power, full of blessedness to ourselves, and of unnumbered mercies to others- and yet that power lies still...Weep, believer.  We have been defeated and our banners trail in the dust because we have not prayed.  Go back to your God and confess before Him that you were armed and carried bows but turned your back in the day of battle.  Go to your God and tell Him that if souls are not saved, it is not because He has not power to save but because you have never travailed for perishing sinners.  Your spirit has not been moved.  Wake up, wake up, and be astonished: you have neglected prayer.  Wrestle and strive with your God, and the blessing shall come - the early and the latter rain of His mercy, and the earth shall bring forth plenteously, and all the nations shall call Him blessed.

Once more, look up and rejoice.  Behold, He cries to you still, "Seek my face."   Prayer is real power and real pleasure.  God waits, to be gracious, to YOU."

~excerpts from The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life