How to Make Your Prayer Fervent?
How to make prayer warm?
He who has never been to sea has never prayed to God to his fill.
Russian proverb.
Make sure that when you pray, the prayer comes from the heart. Prayer is, in fact, the heart's sigh to God.
Saint Theophan the Recluse of Vyshensky (1815-1894).
When you pray, do not allow laziness: for the prayer of the lazy is idle words.
St. Anthony the Great (4th century).
When we strive to make prayer pure and fail, but become darkened, then, wetting our cheeks with tears, let us implore God to dispel the night of battle and let light shine in our souls.
Do not reject poverty and sorrow, this food for lightless prayer.
St. Nilus of Sinai (4th-5th centuries).
Nothing in the world helps prayer more than patience in sorrow and love for one's neighbor.
Venerable Anatoly of Optina (Zertsalov) (1824-1894).
Always pray with a fervent heart, and to achieve this, never overeat or become drunk.
A full stomach loses faith and the fear of God and becomes insensitive to prayer, thanksgiving, and praise. A full heart turns away from the Lord and becomes as hard and insensitive as stone.
Prayer must always come from the depths of the soul. And to do this, imagine that you are face to face with God, because in reality, the Lord God is with you and listens to you. Fear superficial prayer: it stems from lack of faith or even unbelief.
When we pray, to maintain the warmth of reverence and gratitude to God in our hearts, we must remember: "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
When you notice that your heart is cold and reluctant to pray, stop and warm it with some vivid image, for example, of your wretchedness, your spiritual poverty, misery, and blindness, or of God's great, moment-by-moment blessings to you and to humanity, especially Christians. Then pray slowly, with warmth. Even if you don't manage to read all the prayers in time, it doesn't matter, and you will receive incomparably more benefit from warm and unhurried prayer than if you had read all the prayers hastily, without compassion.
Don't spare your heart in prayer, don't indulge its laziness, compel it to sincere, contrite prayer (The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence) (Matthew 11:12); shake from it the burning consciousness of sin, shatter its insensitivity.
Make an effort, overcome yourself, remember to whom and why you have come, rise up, open the eyes of your heart, ignite yourself with a living vision of God's presence: and you will see how heaviness, relaxation, laziness, and boredom will flee from you.
Affectionately approach the Savior and the Mother of God like a sincere son or daughter. Affectionately, I say, heartily reading the canons and akathists to the Sweetest Jesus and the Mother of God. Affectionately approach the saints with fervent prayers and the prescribed canons and akathists, and you will not be put to shame. You will soon feel in your heart the heavenly affection of the Holy Spirit. But do not be discouraged if your heart is chilled by the dark influence of the incorporeal enemy. The Lord sees all, and no one departs empty from Him, and He quickly rewards each according to their deserts.
And since our prayer is primarily repentance and a request for the forgiveness of sins, it must always be sincere and completely free, not involuntary, forced by custom and habit.
Righteous John of Kronstadt (1829-1908).
To the extent, beloved, that the mind abandons concern for these visible things and becomes preoccupied with the hope of the future, corresponding to its elevation above care for the body and the thought of these concerns, to that same extent is it refined and enlightened in prayer.
St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century).
Strive, as best you can, to fulfill three conditions: have a clear conscience toward God, toward people, and toward things. Strive to fulfill the Gospel commandments toward God, to avoid judgment and hostility toward people, and to use things without partiality.
Do you want your heart to be warmed during the Jesus Prayer? The Holy Fathers said: if you churn milk, you will get butter. So too, in prayer, from quantity comes quality. If you repeat the prayer more often, then, by God's grace, your heart will also be warmed.
Schema-Abbot John (Alekseyev) (1873-1958).
Our prayer will only be as swift as an arrow if all the powers of our nature are strained like a bow. Why should we exert all our strength to the utmost during prayer?
Because at this time we are engaged in a decisive battle for our lives.
Save yourself, as from fire.
If you want to revive prayer in your heart, show mercy and love to your neighbor.
Hieromonk Peter (Seregin) (1895-1982).