Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer, and hath respect to both. The word feedeth meditation, and meditation feedeth prayer. These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer. To hear and not to meditate is unfruitful. We may hear and hear, but it is like putting a thing into a bag with holes… It is rashness to pray and not to meditate. What we take in the word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer. These three duties must be ordered that one may not jostle out the other. Men are barren, dry, and sapless in their prayers for want of exercising themselves in holy thoughts.
— Thomas Manton (1620–1677), Puritanischer Prediger
Topics: Prayer & Silence, The Bible & the Word of God
Occasions: For Reflection
Thomas Manton
Thomas Manton war ein englischer puritanischer Theologe und Prediger des 17. Jahrhunderts, der vor allem in London wirkte und nach der Uniformitätsakte von 1662 als Nonkonformist aus dem kirchlichen Staatsdienst entlassen wurde. Er ist vor allem für seine umfangreichen, systematischen Predigtreihen und Schriftauslegungen bekannt, in denen er reformierte Theologie mit seelsorgerlicher Praxis verband. Heutigen Bibellesern vermitteln seine Schriften eine detaillierte Auslegung biblischer Texte mit Fokus auf die alltägliche Glaubenspraxis.
All quotes by Thomas Manton (18)
When we pray, the circumstances often remain the same, but we become different.
Oswald Chambers
Prayer does not change God, but the one who prays.
Søren Kierkegaard
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
Corrie ten Boom
To pray is to draw breath from God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Prayer does not equip us for greater works – prayer is the greater work.
Oswald Chambers
God has his ear at your heart.
Augustine of Hippo
Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.
Eugene Peterson