True Prayer

The prayer that does not succeed
in modulating our wishes;
in changing the passionate desire
into still submission;
the anxious tumultuous expectation
into quiet surrender,
is not true prayer.

The life is most holy
in which there is least of petition and desire
and most of waiting on God,
that in which petition
often passes into thanksgiving.

Pray until prayer makes you forget your own wishes
and leaves or merges it into God's will.

The Divine wisdom has given us prayer,
not as a means to obtain the good things of the earth,
bust as a means whereby
we learn to do without them.

Not as a means to escape evil
but as a means whereby
we become strong to meet it.

- Found in EGW's Bible after her death.