Our Lord did not say it was wrong to pray in the corners of the street, but He did say it was wrong to have the motive to "be seen of men".

Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness.

Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him.

Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive.

See that you do not use the trick of prayer to cover up what you know you ought to do.

If we pray only because we want answers, we will become irritated and angry with God. We receive an answer every time we pray, but it does not always come in the way we expect, and our spiritual irritation shows our refusal to identify ourselves truly with our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove that God answers prayer, but to be living trophies of God’s grace.

If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul.