The whole life must pray. Prayer, at its best, is the expression of the total life. Certainly there have been and will continue to be instances when an isolated prayer may be answered, even when the one uttering it may not have been living an exemplary Christian life. However, we assume that most of those who read these pages are not satisfied to get a prayer through occasionally; on the contrary, they want to know a more satisfying prayer life, one that elevates and purifies every act of body and mind and integrates the entire personality into a single spiritual unit. Such prayer can only be the result of a life lived in the Spirit.
All things being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives. In the long haul we pray only as well as we live. Some prayers are like a fire escape, used only in times of critical emergency— never very enjoyable, but used by the terrified as a way of escape from disaster. They do not represent the regular life of the one who offers them; rather they are the unusual and uncommon acts of the spiritual amateur