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by
E.M. Bounds
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September 11 - December 1, 2019
Nothing distinguishes the children of God so clearly and strongly as prayer. It is the one infallible mark and test of being a Christian. Christian people are prayerful, the worldly-minded, prayerless. Christians call on God; worldlings ignore God, and call not on his name. Prayer is the expression of a relation to God, a yearning for divine communion. It is the outward and upward flow of the inward life toward its original fountain. It is an assertion of the soul’s paternity, a claiming of the sonship which links man to the eternal.
when faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.
A praying faith keeps the commandments of God and does those things which are well pleasing in his sight.
Faith deals with God, and is conscious of God. It deals with the Lord Jesus Christ and sees in him a savior; it deals with God’s Word, and lays hold of the truth; it deals with the Spirit of God, and is energized and inspired by its holy fire.
God is the great objective of faith; for faith rests its whole weight on his Word. Faith is not an aimless act of the soul, but a looking to God and a resting upon his promises. Just as love and hope have always an objective so, also, has faith. Faith is not believing just anything; it is believing God, resting in him, trusting his Word.
Today, as much as at any time, we need men of great faith and men who are great in prayer.
The spirit of a pilgrim greatly facilitates praying. An earthbound, earth-satisfied spirit cannot pray.
Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are sensible.
An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust.
Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer chamber.
To be much on our knees in private communion with God is the only surety that we shall have him with us either in our personal struggles, or in our efforts to convert sinners.
DESIRE is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep seated craving; an intense longing, for attainment. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important adjunct to prayer. So important is it, that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential of prayer.
The indispensable requisite for all true praying is a deeply seated desire which seeks after God himself, and remains unappeased, until the choicest gifts in heaven’s bestowal, have been richly and abundantly granted.
Fervorless prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life, must find place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.
God wants warmhearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire, to dwell in us; we are to be baptized, with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A phlegmatic temperament is abhorrent to vital experience. If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire.
man cannot possibly be called a Christian, who does not pray. By no possible pretext can he claim any right to the term, nor its implied significance. If he does not pray, he is a sinner, pure and simple, for prayer is the only way in which the soul of man can enter into fellowship and communion with the source of all Christlike spirit and energy. Hence, if he prays not, he is not of the household of faith.
The spirit of rebellion is the very essence of sin. It is repudiation of God’s authority, which God cannot tolerate.
Implicit and perfect obedience is the state to which the man of prayer is called.
Obedience can ask with boldness at the throne of grace, and those who exercise it are the only ones who can ask, after that fashion.
An obedient life helps prayer. It speeds prayer to the throne. God cannot help hearing the prayer of an obedient child.
An obedient life is not simply a reformed life. It is not the old life primed and painted anew nor a churchgoing life, nor a good veneering of activities. Neither is it an external conformation to the dictates of public morality. Far more than all this is combined in a truly obedient Christian, God-fearing life.
If you desire to pray to God, you must first have a consuming desire to obey him. If you would have free access to God in prayer, then every obstacle in the nature of sin or disobedience must be removed. God delights in the prayers of obedient children.
He who has never wept concerning his sins, has never really prayed over his sins.
The “lifting up of holy hands” is essential to Christlike praying. It is not, however, a holiness which only dedicates a closet to God, which sets apart merely an hour to him, but a consecration which takes hold of the entire man, which dedicates the whole life to God.
Loving obedience puts us where we can “ask anything in his name,” with the assurance, that “He will do it.” Loving obedience brings us into the prayer realm, and makes us beneficiaries of the wealth of Christ, and of the riches of his grace, through the coming of the Holy Spirit who will abide with us, and be in us. Cheerful obedience to God, qualifies us to pray effectually.
A righteous man is an obedient man, and he it is, who can pray effectually, who can accomplish great things when he betakes himself to his knees.
it is the constant doing of God’s will in daily life which gives prayer its potency,
If the will of God does not master the life, the praying will be nothing but sickly sentiment. If prayer does not inspire, sanctify and direct our work, then self-will enters, to ruin both work and worker.
Faith, in its highest form, is the attitude as well as the act of a soul surrendered to God, in whom his Word and his Spirit dwells.
Obedience to God helps faith as no other attribute possibly can.
The difficulty in prayer is not with faith, but with obedience, which is faith’s foundation.
The lack of obedience in our lives breaks down our praying.
No man can pray—really pray—who does not obey.
There can be no praying in its richest implication and truest sense, where the will is not wholly and fully surrendered to God.
The Christian soldier, if he fights to win, must pray much. By this means, only, is he enabled to defeat his inveterate enemy, the devil, together with the evil one’s manifold emissaries.
The Christian soldier is to pray at all seasons, and under all circumstances.
A reverence for God’s holy name is closely related to a high regard for his Word.
There is no limit to the provisions, included in the promises to prayer,
Prayer invariably begets a love for the Word of God,
Prayer leads people to obey the Word of God,
God speaks to man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer.
Bible-reading and praying are the distinguishing traits of those who strive to know and please God.
Prayer draws its very life from the Bible, and has no standing ground outside of the warrant of the Scriptures.
No man loves the Bible, who does not love to pray. No man loves to pray, who does not delight in the law of the Lord.
The inner chamber is a sacred place for personal worship.
No one having any knowledge of the existing facts, will deny the comparative lack of expository preaching in the pulpit effort of today.
a preacher needs must be a man of prayer. For every hour spent in his study-chair, he will have to spend two upon his knees. For every hour he devotes to wrestling with an obscure passage of Scripture, he must have two in which to be found wrestling with God. Prayer and preaching: preaching and prayer! They cannot be separated. The ancient cry was: “To your tents, O Israel!” The modern cry should be: “To your knees, O preachers, to your knees!”
No man with a divided allegiance to God, and the world and self, can do the praying that is needed.
Doubt, double-mindedness, division of the affections, are all foreign to the closet.
Character and conduct, undefiled, made whiter than snow, are mighty potencies, and are the most seemly beauties for the closet hour, and for the struggles of prayer.
