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by
E.M. Bounds
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September 11 - December 1, 2019
By every token, prayer, in taking hold of the entire man, does not leave out the mind.
It is man’s business to pray; and it takes manly men to do it.
Humility is born by looking at God, and his holiness, and then looking at self and man’s unholiness.
Devotion engages the heart in prayer. It is not an easy task for the lips to try to pray while the heart is absent from it.
There is much of the treadmill movement in our ceaseless round and routine of religious doings. We pray without praying. We sing without singing with the Spirit and the understanding. We have music without the praise of God being in it, or near it. We go to church by habit, and come home all too gladly when the benediction is pronounced. We read our accustomed chapter in the Bible, and feel quite relieved when the task is done. We say our prayers by rote, as a schoolboy recites his lesson, and are not sorry when the Amen is uttered.
Prayer must be aflame. Its ardor must consume.
A soul devoted to God is a fervent soul, and prayer is the creature of that flame. He only can truly pray who is all aglow for holiness, for God, and for heaven.
Activity is not strength. Work is not zeal. Moving about is not devotion. Activity often is the unrecognized symptom of spiritual weakness.
A feeble, lively, showy religious activity may spring from many causes. There is much running around, much stirring about, much going here and there, in present-day church life, but sad to say, the spirit of genuine, heartfelt devotion is strangely lacking.
Much of modern singing in our churches is entirely foreign to anything like hearty, sincere praise to God.
The angels and the glorified ones in heaven do not need artistic directors to lead them, nor do they care for paid choirs to chime in with their heavenly doxologies of praise and worship. They are not dependent on singing schools to teach them the notes and scale of singing. Their singing involuntarily breaks forth from the heart.
Trouble has no power in itself to interfere with the relations of a saint to God.
Prayer in the time of trouble tends to bring the spirit into perfect subjection to the will of God, to cause the will to be conformed to God’s will, and saves from all murmurings over our lot, and delivers from everything like a rebellious heart or a spirit critical of the Lord.
It takes faith of a high order and a Christian experience far above the average religion of this day, to count it joy when we are called to pass through tribulation.
There is a world where trouble never comes. But the path of tribulation leads to that world.
Man is a fallen creature, born with an evil nature, with an evil bent, unholy propensities, sinful desires, wicked inclinations. Man is unholy by nature, born so. “They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” God’s entire plan is to take hold of fallen man and to seek to change him and make him holy. God’s work is to make holy men out of unholy men. This is the very end of Christ coming into the world:
The present-day church has vast machinery. Her activities are great, and her material prosperity is unparalleled. The name of religion is widespread and well-known. Much money comes into the Lord’s treasury and is paid out. But here is the question: Does the work of holiness keep pace with all this? Is the burden of the prayers of church people to be made holy? Are our preachers really holy men? Or to go back a little further, are they hungering and thirsting after righteousness, desiring the sincere milk of the Word that they may grow thereby? Are they really seeking to be holy men? Of course
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if the church does not advance its members in holiness of heart and life—then all our show of activities and all our display of church work are a delusion and a snare.
Material prosperity is not the infallible sign of spiritual prosperity. The former may exist while the latter is significantly absent. Material prosperity may easily blind the eyes of church leaders, so much so that they will make it a substitute for spiritual prosperity. How great the need to watch at that point! Prosperity in money matters does not signify growth in holiness. The seasons of material prosperity are rarely seasons of spiritual advance, either to the individual or to the church. It is so easy to lose sight of God when goods increase. It so easy to lean on human agencies and
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For with the decline of the work of holiness there has come the decline of the business of praying. As praying and holiness go together, so the decline of one, means the decay of the other.
the work of God fails as a general rule, more for the lack of grace, than for the want of gifts. It is more than this. It is more than this, for a full supply of grace brings an increase of gifts. It may be repeated that small results, a low experience, a low religious life, and pointless, powerless preaching always flow from a lack of grace. And a lack of grace flows from a lack of praying. Great grace comes from great praying.
Men can do many good things and yet not be holy in heart and righteous in conduct. They can do many good things and lack that spiritual quality of heart called holiness. How great the need of hearing the words of Paul guarding us against self-deception in the great work of personal salvation:
Consecration is much more than a life of so-called service. It is a life of personal holiness, first of all. It is that which brings spiritual power into the heart and enlivens the entire inner man. It is a life which ever recognizes God, and a life given up to true prayer.
No prayerless man ever conceives the idea of a full consecration.
Praying makes consecrated people.
Much passes for consecration in the church which receives the praise and plaudits of superficial, formal professors, but which is wide of the mark.
People can do many excellent and commendable things in the church and be utter strangers to a life of consecration, just as they can do many things and be prayerless.
Unless prayer is preeminent, unless prayer is to the front, the consecration is faulty, deceptive, falsely named.
The Christian lives to Christ alone, To Christ alone he dies.
He who is truly and fully consecrated, lives a holy life.
The standard of biblical religion is the standard of prayer.
Whatever standard of religion which makes in it provision for the flesh, is unscriptural and hurtful.
Commonplace religion is pleasing to flesh and blood. There is no self-denial in it, no cross bearing, no self-crucifixion.
Compassion is moved at the sight of sin, sorrow and suffering.
He who has no eyes to see the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the wants and woes of humanity, will never have compassion for humanity.
The highest state of grace is known by the infallible mark of compassion for poor sinners. This sort of compassion belongs to grace, and sees not alone the bodies of men, but their immortal spirits, soiled by sin, unhappy in their condition without God, and in imminent peril of being forever lost.
church discipline, now a lost art in the modern church, must go hand in hand with prayer, and that the church which has no disposition to separate wrong-doers from the church, and which has no excommunication spirit for incorrigible offenders against law and order, will have no communication with God.
He who enters his closet to God, will also open his purse to God.
The ongoing of Christ’s kingdom is locked up in the closet of prayer by Christ himself, and not in the contribution box.
There ought to be no adjustment of life or spirit for closet hours. The closet spirit should sweetly rule and adjust all times and occasions. Our activities and work should be performed in the same spirit which makes our devotion and closet time sacred.
The praying saint has the right to put his hand upon the promise and claim it as his own, one made especially to him, and one intended to embrace all his needs, present and future.
What a breadth is given to prayer! What heights it reaches! It is the breathing of a soul inflamed for God, and inflamed for man. It goes as far as the gospel goes, and is as wide, compassionate, and prayerful as is that gospel.
Unbelief in the doctrine that prayer covers all things which have to do with the body and business affairs, breeds undue anxiety about earth’s affairs, causes unnecessary worry, and creates very unhappy states of mind. How much needless care we would save ourselves if we but believed in prayer as the means of relieving those cares, and would learn the happy art of casting all our cares in prayer upon God, “who careth for us!”
Unbelief in God as one who is concerned about even the smallest affairs which affect our happiness and comfort limits the holy one of Israel, and makes our lives altogether devoid of real happiness and sweet contentment.
Faith has never won a victory nor gained a crown where prayer was not the weapon of the victory, and where prayer did not jewel the crown. If “all things are possible to him that believeth,” then all things are possible to him that prays.
THE possibilities of prayer are gauged by faith in God’s ability to do. Faith is the one prime condition by which God works. Faith is the one prime condition by which man prays. Faith draws on God to its full extent. Faith gives character to prayer. A feeble faith has always brought forth feeble praying. Vigorous faith creates vigorous praying.
The conditions of time, place, nearness, ability, and all others which could possibly be named, upon which the actions of men hinge, have no bearing on God. If men will look to God and cry to him with true prayer, he will hear and can deliver, no matter how dire may be their state, how remediless their conditions may be.
Elijah had the promise that God would send the rain, but no promise that he would send the fire. But by faith and prayer he obtained the fire, as well as the rain, but the fire came first.
God has ruled the world by prayer; and God still rules the world by the same divinely ordained means.
Prayer reaches down to the least things of life and includes the greatest things which concern us.
