R. A. Torrey Quotes on Prayer from How to Pray, by Chapter
R. A. Torrey had a gift for putting a truth in one sentence you can remember. His book How to Pray is full of them. These quotations are taken word for word from the 1900 text, grouped by subject, with the chapter each one comes from so you can read it in context. For an overview of the whole book, see the chapter-by-chapter summary of How to Pray.
Why we must pray
Torrey's first chapter gives eleven reasons for steady prayer. These lines carry the weight of it.
How seldom we pray things through!
How to Pray, chapter I
Evidently prayer took much of the time and strength of Jesus, and a man or woman who does not spend much time in prayer, cannot properly be called a follower of Jesus Christ.
How to Pray, chapter I
The measure of our appropriation of grace is determined by the measure of our prayers.
How to Pray, chapter I
One night of prayer will save us from many nights of insomnia. Time spent in prayer is not wasted, but time invested at big interest.
How to Pray, chapter I
Prayer and power are inseparable.
How to Pray, chapter I
Prayer often avails where everything else fails.
How to Pray, chapter I
He also tells how he came to Christ, and who had been praying:
I had forgotten my mother's prayers, and I afterward learned that one of my college classmates had chosen me as one to pray for until I was saved.
How to Pray, chapter I
Coming to God, not just asking
In chapter II Torrey insists that real prayer is addressed to God, with our minds on Him and our hearts in it.
The prayer that has power is the prayer that is offered unto God.
How to Pray, chapter II
If we put so little heart into our prayers, we cannot expect God to put much heart into answering them.
How to Pray, chapter II
The earnestness that we work up in the energy of the flesh is a repulsive thing. The earnestness wrought in us by the power of the Holy Spirit is pleasing to God.
How to Pray, chapter II
There is power in united prayer.
How to Pray, chapter II
Obedience and sincerity
One unconfessed act of disobedience on our part will shut the ear of God against many petitions.
How to Pray, chapter III
If we make it our study to find out and to do the things which are pleasing to God, He will make it His study to do the things which are pleasing to us.
How to Pray, chapter III
The prayer that God answers is the prayer that is real, the prayer that asks for something that is sincerely desired.
How to Pray, chapter III
In Jesus' name and by God's will
Torrey's famous illustration is a check drawn on the bank of heaven.
I have nothing deposited there, I have absolutely no credit there, and if I go in my own name I will get absolutely nothing; but Jesus Christ has unlimited credit in heaven, and He has granted to me the privilege of going to the bank with His name on my checks, and when I thus go, my prayers will be honored to any extent.
How to Pray, chapter IV
To pray then in the name of Christ is to pray on the ground, not of my credit, but His; to renounce the thought that I have any claims on God whatever, and approach Him on the ground of Christ's claims.
How to Pray, chapter IV
On knowing God's will, he points us to the promises:
To study the Word to find what God's will is as revealed there in the promises, and then simply take these promises and spread them out before God in prayer with the absolutely unwavering expectation that He will do what He has promised in His Word.
How to Pray, chapter IV
Praying in the Spirit, and faith
It is the prayer that God the Holy Spirit inspires that God the Father answers.
How to Pray, chapter 4
When we first come into God's presence we should be silent before Him.
How to Pray, chapter 4
When we feel least like praying is the time when we most need to pray.
How to Pray, chapter 4
Faith must have a warrant. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith.
How to Pray, chapter 4
Keeping on
God delights in the holy boldness that will not take "no" for an answer. It is an expression of great faith, and nothing pleases God more than faith.
How to Pray, chapter 4I
He makes us pray through.
How to Pray, chapter 4I
As a rule this is not submission, but spiritual laziness.
How to Pray, chapter 4I
George Muller prayed for two men daily for upwards of sixty years.
How to Pray, chapter 4I
The Word and prayer
Prevailing prayer is almost an impossibility where there is neglect of the study of the Word of God.
How to Pray, chapter 4II
The prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ear.
How to Pray, chapter 4II
If we would feed the fire of our prayers with the fuel of God's Word, all our difficulties in prayer would disappear.
How to Pray, chapter 4II
Thanksgiving
We should be just as definite in returning thanks as we are in prayer.
How to Pray, chapter 4III
Returning thanks for blessings already received increases our faith and enables us to approach God with new boldness and new assurance.
How to Pray, chapter 4III
What hinders prayer
Chapter IX names seven hindrances. Here are a few of its sharpest lines; the full list is in Torrey's hindrances to prayer.
A selfish purpose in prayer robs prayer of power.
How to Pray, chapter IX
Any one who would have power in prayer must be merciless in dealing with his own sins.
How to Pray, chapter IX
The generous man is the mighty man of prayer. The stingy man is the powerless man of prayer.
How to Pray, chapter IX
Any one who is nursing a grudge against another has fast closed the ear of God against his own petition.
How to Pray, chapter IX
When to pray
The secret place of prayer is the place to fight our battles and gain our victories.
How to Pray, chapter X
Nights of prayer to God are followed by days of power with men.
How to Pray, chapter X
Apparently the busier Christ's life was, the more He prayed.
How to Pray, chapter X
The victory of Calvary was won that night in the garden of Gethsemane.
How to Pray, chapter X
Our whole life should be a life of prayer.
How to Pray, chapter X
Prayer and revival
A revival is a time of quickening or impartation of life.
How to Pray, chapter XI
Revivals are bad for saloons and theaters, but they are good for bookstores and Bible agencies.
How to Pray, chapter XI
Every true revival from that day to this has had its earthly origin in prayer.
How to Pray, chapter XII
The great cry of our day is work, work, work, new organizations, new methods, new machinery; the great need of our day is prayer.
How to Pray, chapter XII
Great revivals always begin first in the hearts of a few men and women whom God arouses by His Spirit to believe in Him as a living God, as a God who answers prayer …
How to Pray, chapter XII
Reading the quotes in context
A good quote is a door, not a room. Each of these sits inside an argument from Scripture, and Torrey always gives the verse he's building on. Read How to Pray free and you'll see how the pieces fit. To learn about the preacher and teacher behind these lines, read Who Was R. A. Torrey?