Year’s ago while I was teaching conversational English in Djakarta, Indonesia Dr. Boyd Olson came through on an itinerary in the Far Eastern Division. At that time he gave a devotional based on this quotation. He said it was handwritten in the flyleaf of Ellen White’s Bible with no notation as to whether she or someone else wrote it. Obviously, she felt positive about its sentiments.

“The prayer that does not succeed in modulating our wishes, in changing our passionate desire into quiet surrender, is not true prayer. The life is most holy in which there is least of petition and desire and most of waiting upon God, that in which petition often passes into thanksgiving.
“Pray ‘till prayer makes you forget your own wishes and leaves or merges it into God’s will. The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer not as a means to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means to escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.”