Faith & Spirit Quote by E. Stanley Jones

Jones frames prayer less as a hotline to heaven than as a form of joint labor, and that shift does quiet but consequential work. “Co-operation with God” pushes back against two common religious caricatures at once: prayer as vending machine (“I ask, God dispenses”) and prayer as mere self-soothing (“I vent, I feel better”). In his telling, prayer is not an escape from agency but a refinement of it. You don’t pray to stop acting; you pray to act in sync.

The line about “the purest exercise of the faculties God has given us” is a deliberate elevation of prayer into the realm of disciplined practice. “Faculties” reads almost clinical - mind, will, imagination, conscience - suggesting that prayer engages the whole human instrument. The subtext: if your prayer life is sentimental, passive, or purely private, you’re underusing what you were made for. Prayer becomes a kind of spiritual ergonomics, aligning human capability with divine purpose.

Context matters: Jones, a Methodist missionary and major voice in early 20th-century evangelical social engagement, wrote in an era when Christianity was wrestling with modernity’s stress on human autonomy and psychology. His formulation holds onto divine sovereignty while refusing fatalism. “Work out the intentions He had in mind” hints at vocation and moral responsibility: prayer is participation in a project already underway, not a negotiation to change God’s mind. It’s also a subtle critique of performative piety - prayer as cooperation implies results measured in character and action, not eloquence.