Impelled Prayer with God

Let a man define to his own mind an object of prayer, and then let him be moved by desires for that object which impel him to pray, because he cannot otherwise satisfy the irrepressible longings of his soul; let him have such desires as shall lead him to search out and dwell upon, and treasure in his heart, and return to again, and appropriate to himself anew, the encouragements to prayer, till his Bible opens of itself at the right places - and think you that such a man will have occasion to go to his closet, or come from it, with the sickly cry, "Why, oh! why is my intercourse with God so irksome to me?". Such a man must experience, at least, the joy of uttering hopefully emotions which become painful by repression.

Austin Phelps, "The Still Hour: Communion with God", 1859 (Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth Trust, reprint 1974): 38.