May people’s notion is that prayer is urging our wishes on God, and that His answer is giving us what we desire. But true prayer is the meeting in harmony of God’s will and man’s, and its deepest expression is not, Do this, because I desire it, O Lord; but, I do this because Thou desirest it, O Lord.

FREE DOWNLOAD — Alexander Maclaren, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890), 357.