John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

It is not wrong to ask if it is not wrong to want it. Every Christian ought to get his heart's desires and his prayers in accord. Anything you have a right to want, you have a right to pray for. If you do not have a right to pray for it, then it is wrong to want it. About any particular matter, the Christian ought to ask for what he wants, or quit wanting it. - John R. Rice

Worry is a horrible sin. Worry is the opposite of faith and trust. John Wesley said, I would no more fret than to curse and swear." And God's cure for worry is to pray about EVERYTHING. - John R. Rice

Oh, Christian, do not shut God out of a single corner of your heart! Tell Him everything! Ask Him for literally everything your heart desires! The presumption is that God wants you to have everything you want. Unless it would do you harm or dishonor Him, He would certainly want you to have your heart's desire. So pray for everything you want, meet God's conditions and get it. Or if you take a matter to God, and He shows you He does not want to give it to you, then ask Him to take that hurtful desire, of which He does not approve, out of your heart. Ask Him for anything you want, or stop wanting it! - John R. Rice

God loves you, loves you so much that His love could only be measured by the gift of His own dear Son, the awful price of Calvary. He is so anxious for your happiness and welfare that if you find the prayer He would have you pray, the one He is most willing to answer, it will include a larger number of the best things, the happiest things, than any prayer you could even think of without His help (Rom. 8:32). - John R. Rice

To pray in the will of God does not mean asking less, but more. And praying for just what God wants you to have will result in far more happiness than if you could have everything you wished with some of it outside the will of God. In this matter, loving surrender is not only right; it is wise. What God wants to give you is just exactly what you would want if you knew enough to want it, if you knew as God does, just how happy it would make you, and how long the blessing of it would last. Thus knowingly to pray contrary to the will of God is folly, and for God to answer such prayers would wrong you as much as it would wrong Himself. - John R. Rice

The modern idea and the modern practice about prayer is so indefinite that it is silly and wicked. Prayer is very definitely asking God for something. It ought to be as specific as a sick man's calling a doctor, as a housewife's giving an order to the grocery-man, as an unemployed man's asking for a job, as a child's asking for an ice-cream cone. - John R. Rice

In Mark 11:24 Jesus said, "What things soever ye desire, when you pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
There are many marvelous truths in this promise, but note that Jesus certainly meant that a Christian ought to have certain definite desires in his mind when he prays and then ought to be able to trust God and get exactly those things from God which he requests. Prayer, in the Bible sense, is getting down to brass tacks and asking God for exactly what you want. Prayer is not only ASKING, but it is ASKING SOMETHING. It is hardly prayer if it is not definite. - John R. Rice