Alone With God Quotes

“Prayer is not an attempt to get God to agree with you or provide for your selfish desires, but that it is both an affirmation of His sovereignty, righteousness, and majesty and an exercise to conform your desires and purposes to His will and Glory”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“When believers have a low view of God, everything focuses on meeting felt needs within the body of Christ. When the church adopts such a perspective, it often offers people nothing more than spiritual placebos. It centers on psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, and a myriad of other diversions to attempt to meet perceived and felt needs.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“A true Christian does not see God's promise of forgiveness as a license to sin, a way to abuse His love and presume on His grace. Rather, he sees God's gracious forgiveness as the means to spiritual growth and sanctification. He continually thanks God for His great love and willingness to forgive.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“Without a proper view of God there cannot exist a proper view of man.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“Although changing our society by calling it back to a safer morality is a noble goal, that has never been Christ's goal for His church. The church has but one mission in this world: to lead people destined to spend eternity in hell to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and an eternity in heaven. If people die in a communist government or a democracy, under a tyrant or a benevolent dictator, believing homosexuality is right or wrong, or believing abortion is a woman's fundamental right to choose or simply mass murder, that has no bearing on where they will spend eternity. If they never knew Christ and never embraced Him as their Lord and Savior, they will spend eternity in hell.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“Prayer begins and ends not with the needs of man but with the glory of God (John 14:13). It should be concerned primarily with who God is, what He wants, and how He can be glorified.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“If you are ever to know power and passion in your prayer life, you need to pray with a devout heart-with a pure motive seeking only the glory of God. You also need to pray with a humble heart seeking only the attention of God, not men. Finally, you need to pray with a confident heart knowing full well that God already knows what you need.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“We are not heard for our many words, but for the cry of our hearts.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“Because ours is such a free and prosperous society, it is easier for Christians to feel secure by presuming on instead of depending on God's grace. To many believers become satisfied with physical blessings and have little desire for spiritual blessings.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“Imagine spending an entire workday with your best friend at your side. You would no doubt acknowledge his presence throughout the day by introducing him to your friends or business associates and talking to him about the various activities of the day. But how would your friend feel if you never talked to him or acknowledged his presence? Yet that’s how we treat the Lord when we fail to pray. If we communicated with our friends as infrequently as some of us communicate with the Lord, those friends might soon disappear. Our fellowship with God is not meant to wait until we are in heaven.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life.…”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“Commentator Arthur W. Pink wrote: If God is in heaven then prayer needs to be a thing of the heart and not of the lips, for no physical voice on earth can rend the skies, but sighs and groans will reach the ears of God. If we are to pray to God in heaven, then our souls must be detached from all the earth. If we pray to God in heaven, then faith must wing our petitions.4”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“A Christian should carry the weapon of all prayer like a drawn sword in his hand. We should never sheathe our supplications. Never may our hearts be like an unlimbered gun, with everything to be done to it before it can thunder on the foe, but it should be like a piece of cannon, loaded and primed, only requiring the fire that it may be discharged. The soul should be not always in the exercise of prayer, but always in the energy of prayer; not always actually praying, but always intentionally praying.1”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“For the faithful, Spirit-filled Christian, every place becomes a place of prayer.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“God’s purpose in prayer is not for us to inform or persuade Him to respond to our needs but to open sincere and continual lines of communication with Him. Prayer, more than anything else, is sharing the needs, burdens, and hungers of our hearts with a God who cares. He wants to hear us and commune with us more than we could ever want to commune with Him, because His love for us is so much greater than our love for Him.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“Impotence in prayer leads us, however unwillingly, to strike a truce with evil. When you accept what is, you abandon a Christian view of God and His plan for redemptive history.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“It thrills me to know that the God who created the entire universe, who is the God of space, time, and eternity, who is infinitely holy and completely self-sufficient, should care about supplying my physical needs. Just as loving human fathers want to provide for the needs of their children, so God is concerned that we receive enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to rest.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“If you ever want to experience power and passion in your communication with the Lord, you must begin by making sure your motives are like those of the publican in Luke 18:13–14, who approached God with a humble and penitent attitude.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“For Christians, prayer is like breathing. You don’t have to think to breathe because the atmosphere exerts pressure on your lungs and forces you to breathe. That’s why it is more difficult to hold your breath than it is to breathe. Similarly, when you’re born into the family of God, you enter into a spiritual atmosphere wherein God’s presence and grace exert pressure, or influence, on your life. Prayer is the normal response to that pressure. As believers, we all have entered the divine atmosphere to breathe the air of prayer. Only then can we survive in the darkness of the world.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“If you are ever to know power and passion in your prayer life, you need to pray with a devout heart—with a pure motive seeking only the glory of God. You also need to pray with a humble heart, seeking only the attention of God, not men. Finally, you need to pray with a confident heart, knowing full well that God already knows what you need. If you go to God on those terms, He will reward you in ways you could never imagine, and you’ll learn the value of being alone with God.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“Christians actually need to be confronted by their real need-an understanding of God's holiness and their own sinfulness-so they can be usable to Him for His Glory. When we have a right relationship to God, every aspect of our lives will settle into its divinely ordained place. ... We are still to need other needs but it begins with a high view of God.”
― John F. MacArthur, Alone With God

“When programs, methods, and money produce impressive results, there is an inclination to confuse human success with divine blessing. Christians can actually behave like practical humanists, living as if God were not necessary. When that happens, passionate longing for God and yearning for His help will be missing—along with His empowerment.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Alone With God

“How His electing grace and predestined purpose can stand beside His love for the world and desire that the gospel be preached to all people, still holding them responsible for their own rejection and condemnation, is a divine mystery.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“When all our needs are met and all is well in our lives, we tend to take credit for what we have, to feel that we carry our own loads. We work hard to earn the money we need to buy food and clothes, pay our rent or mortgage. But even the hardest-working individual owes all he earns to God’s provision. Moses reminded Israel that God “is giving you power to make wealth” (Deut. 8:18).”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“If the church today took the effort it spends on political maneuvering and lobbying and poured that energy into intercessory prayer, we might see a profound impact on our nation.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“If you want to pray for one another, don’t pray for the physical necessities only—make it your priority to pray for the important spiritual issues of life because they are of the greatest concern to God. His ultimate purpose is to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“When I pray, “Your kingdom come,” I am saying to God’s Holy Spirit, “Spirit of Christ within me, take control and do what You will for Your glory.” A true child of God won’t be preoccupied with his own plans and desires but with the determinate program of God, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“Our nation now affirms, through its legislative bodies and courts, a distinctively anti-Christian agenda. Anything singularly Christian has been virtually swept away under the aegis of equal rights and moral freedom. The divine standards and biblical morality that our nation once embraced are assaulted constantly. Moral freedom now reigns. Materialism and the breakdown of the family are epidemic. Abortions, sexual evils, drugs, and crime are rampant. And our leaders are at a loss to know what to do because there are no standards left to provide controls for these problems.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“Sin is the monarch that rules the heart of every man. It is the first lord of the soul, and its virus has contaminated every living being.”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

“What unworthy ideas and notions this world has of God! If you test your ideas of God by the teaching of the Scriptures you will see at a glance what I mean. We lack even a due sense of the greatness and the might and the majesty of God. Listen to men arguing about God, and notice how glibly they use the term.… It is indeed almost alarming to observe the way in which we all tend to use the name of God. We obviously do not realize that we are talking about the ever blessed, eternal, and absolute, almighty God. There is a sense in which we should take our shoes off our feet whenever we use the name.1”
― John MacArthur, Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer