Daily Inspiration Quote by E. Stanley Jones

Prayer, for E. Stanley Jones, isn’t a spiritual wish list or a private coping mechanism; it’s a recalibration. “Aligning ourselves” quietly demotes the ego. The verb makes prayer less about persuading God to sign off on our plans and more about submitting our plans to a larger moral trajectory. In one move, Jones dodges the transactional piety that treats devotion like leverage: say the right words, get the right outcomes.

The line also carries the disciplined optimism of a twentieth-century Christian thinker shaped by global upheaval and interfaith contact. Jones spent decades in India and wrote in an era when modernity was pressuring religion to justify its usefulness. His answer is pragmatic without being utilitarian: prayer “works,” but not by changing God’s mind. It works by changing the pray-er’s posture - their will, attention, and readiness to act. The subtext is almost organizational: if you want clarity and courage, don’t ask for a tailored universe; ask to be fitted to what’s already true.

“Purposes of God” does strategic heavy lifting. It asserts there is a coherent moral direction to reality, not just a swirl of personal preferences baptized as faith. That claim is comforting, but it’s also a constraint. If prayer is alignment, then unanswered requests aren’t necessarily divine neglect; they may be resistance training for the self. Jones’s intent is pastoral and corrective: he’s rescuing prayer from superstition and rescuing believers from the exhausting project of trying to manage God.