The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds on Prayer: Experience the Wonders of God through Prayer

by E.M. Bounds

Jesus Christ knew no higher law, no holier business, no diviner life, than to plead for men. In heaven he knows no more royal estate, no higher theme, than to intercede for men. On earth he lived and prayed and died for men. His life, his death and his exaltation in heaven all plead for men.

Is there any work, higher work for the disciple to do than his Lord did? Is there any loftier employment, more honorable, more divine, than to pray for men? To take their woes, their sins, and their perils before God; to be one with Christ? To break the slavery which binds them, the hell which holds them and lift them to immortality and eternal life?

We must ever keep in mind that the relation of Jesus Christ to God is the relation of asking and giving, the Son ever asking, the Father ever giving. We must never forget that God has put the conquering, inheriting and expanding forces of Christ’s cause in prayer.

The promises to prayer are Godlike in their magnificence, wideness, and universality.

Men must pray. Not to pray is not simply a privation, an omission, but a positive violation of law, of spiritual life, a crime, bringing disorder and ruin.

The sacrifice of prayer must be seasoned and perfumed with love, by love in the inward parts. The law of prayer, its creator and inspirer, is love.

Prayer mightily affects and molds the circle of our associates.

They failed in prayer before they failed in ability to do their work. They failed in faith because they had failed in prayer. That one thing which was necessary to do God’s work was prayer. The work which God sends us to do cannot be done without prayer.

It is not solving riddles, not revealing mysteries, not curious questionings. This is not our attitude, not our business under the dispensation of the Spirit, but to pray, and to pray largely. Much true praying increases man’s joy and God’s glory.

Prayer filled the life of our Lord while on earth. His life was a constant stream of incense sweet and perfumed by prayer. When we see how the life of Jesus was but one of prayer, then we must conclude that to be like Jesus is to pray like Jesus and is to live like Jesus. A serious life it is to pray as Jesus prayed.

The baptism of the cross, as well as the baptism of the Jordan, are sanctified by prayer.

The intercessions of Christ’s people must give currency and expedition to the work of Christ, carry the atoning blood to its beneficial ends, and help to strike off the chains of sin from every ransomed soul. We must be as praying, as tearful, and as compassionate as was Christ.

Jesus Christ was always a busy man with his work, but never too busy to pray.

The closet has much to do with making the character, while the character has much to do with making the closet.

The voice attesting his sonship came to Christ in prayer. The witness of our sonship, clear and indubitable, is secured only by praying. The constant witness of our sonship can only be retained by those who pray without ceasing. When the stream of prayer is shallow and arrested, the evidence of our sonship becomes faint and inaudible.

He who really hallows God’s name will hail the coming of the kingdom of God, and will labor and pray to bring that kingdom to pass and to establish it.

Simple submission to God’s will is not the highest attitude of the soul to God. Submission may be seeming, induced by conditions, nothing but an inforced surrender, not cheerful but grudging, only a temporary expedient, a fitful resolve. When the occasion or calamity which called it forth is removed, the will returns to its old ways and to its old self.

We often end praying just where we ought to begin. We quit praying when God waits and is waiting for us to really pray.

The gospel cannot be executed but by the Holy Spirit. He only has the regal authority to do this royal work. Intellect cannot execute it, neither can learning, nor eloquence, nor truth, not even the revealed truth can execute the gospel. The marvelous facts of Christ’s life told by hearts unanointed by the Holy Spirit will be dry and sterile, or “like a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Not even the precious blood can execute the gospel. Not any, nor all of these, though spoken with angelic wisdom, angelic eloquence, can execute the gospel with saving power. Only tongues set on fire by the Holy Spirit can witness the saving power of Christ with power to save others.

Our spirits are so fully indwelt by the Spirit of God, so responsive and obedient to his illumination and to his will, that we ask with holy boldness and freedom the things which the Spirit of God has shown us as the will of God, and faith is assured. Then we know that “we have the petitions that we have asked.”

The natural man prays, but prays according to his own will, fancy, and desire. If he has ardent desires and groanings, they are the fire and agony of nature simply, and not that of the Spirit. What a world of natural praying there is, which is selfish, self-centered, self-inspired! The Spirit, when he prays through us, or helps us to meet the mighty “oughtness” of right praying, trims our praying down to the will of God, and then we give heart and expression to his unutterable groanings. Then we have the mind of Christ, and pray as he would pray. His thoughts, purposes, and desires are our desires, purposes, and thoughts.

How burdened these intercessions of the Holy Spirit! How profoundly he feels the world’s sin, the world’s woe, and the world’s loss, and how deeply he sympathizes with the dire conditions, are seen in his groanings which are too deep for utterance and too sacred to be voiced by him. He inspires us to this most divine work of intercession, and his strength enables us to sigh unto God for the oppressed, the burdened and the distressed creation.

How intense will be the intercessions of the saints who supplicate in the spirit! How vain and delusive and how utterly fruitless and inefficient are prayers without the Spirit! Official prayers they may be, fitted for state occasions, beautiful and courtly, but worth less than nothing as God values prayer.

The habit of praying is a good habit, and should be early and strongly formed; but to pray by habit merely is to destroy the life of prayer and allow it to degenerate into a hollow and sham-producing form.

Habit may form the bank for the river of prayer, but there must be a strong, deep, pure current, crystal and life-giving, flowing between these two banks. Hannah multiplied her praying, “but she poured out her soul before the Lord.”

Apostolic men knew well the worth of prayer and were jealous of the most sacred offices which infringed on their time and strength and hindered them from “giving themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.” They put prayer first. The Word depends on prayer that it “may have free course and be glorified.” Praying apostles make preaching apostles.

Prayer gives edge, entrance, and weight to the Word. Sermons conceived by prayer and saturated with prayer are weighty sermons. Sermons may be ponderous with thought, sparkle with the gems of genius and of taste, pleasing and popular, but unless they have their birth and life in prayer, for God’s uses, they are trifles, dull and dead.

The Lord of the harvest sends out laborers, full in number and perfect in kind, in answer to prayer. It needs no prophetic ken to declare that if the church had used prayer force to its utmost the light...

God’s gospel has always waited more on prayer than on anything else for its successes. A praying church is strong though poor in all besides. A prayerless church is weak though rich in all besides. Only praying hearts will build God’s king...

Prayer is the only element in which the Holy Spirit can live and work.

Only importunate and invincible prayer can bring the Holy Spirit to us, and secure for us these ineffably gracious results.

How God needs, how the world needs, how the church needs the flow of this mighty river, more blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader, more overflowing than the Amazon’s broad and mighty current! And yet what mere rills we are and have!

There is certainly a great need in these days in the modern church, first, for Christians to see and seek and obtain the high privilege in the gospel of a heaven-born, clear cut, and happy religious experience, born of the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving an undoubted assurance of sins forgiven, and of adoption into the family of God.

First, this sort of biblical religion, heretofore described, comes directly through the office of the Holy Spirit dealing personally with each soul; and secondly, the Holy Spirit in all of his offices pertaining to spiritual life and religious experience is secured by earnest, definite, prevailing prayer.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God’s heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world. That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying.

A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past, the man of many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming generation. The prayers of God’s saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil. Woe to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich incense of prayer; whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their unhappy heritage. Fortunate are they whose fathers and mothers have left them a wealthy patrimony of prayer.

God conditions the very life and prosperity of his cause on prayer.

The strongest one in Christ’s kingdom is he who is the best knocker. The secret of success in Christ’s kingdom is the ability to pray. The one who can wield the power of prayer is the strong one, the holy one in Christ’s kingdom. The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray.

Prayer is the keynote of the most sanctified life, of the holiest ministry. He does the most for God who is the highest skilled in prayer. Jesus Christ exercised his ministry after this order.

Be sure you look to your secret duty; keep that up whatever you do. The soul cannot prosper in the neglect of it. Apostasy generally begins at the closet door. Be much in secret fellowship with God. It is secret trading that enriches the Christian. Pray alone. Let prayer be the key of the morning and the bolt at night. The best way to fight against sin is to fight it on our knees.—PHILIP HENRY

Prayer is no laggard’s work. When all the rich, spiced graces from the body of prayer have by labor and beating been blended and refined and intermixed, the fire is needed to unloose the incense and make its fragrance rise to the throne of God. The fire that consumes creates the spirit and life of the incense. Without fire prayer has no spirit; it is, like dead spices, for corruption and worms.

The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer.

It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.

We must prepare ourselves to pray; to be like Christ, to pray like Christ.

The life of the church is the highest life. Its office is to pray. Its prayer life is the highest life, the most odorous, the most conspicuous.

this is the way in which we all act about prayer. Conscious as we are of its importance, of its vital importance, we yet let the hours pass away as a blank and can only lament in death the irremediable loss.

When we calmly reflect upon the fact that the progress of our Lord’s kingdom is dependent upon prayer, it is sad to think that we give so little time to the holy exercise. Everything depends upon prayer, and yet we neglect it not only to our own spiritual hurt but also to the delay and injury of our Lord’s cause upon earth. The forces of good and evil are contending for the world. If we would, we could add to the conquering power of the army of righteousness, and yet our lips are sealed, our hands hang listlessly by our side, and we jeopardize the very cause in which we profess to be deeply interested by holding back from the prayer chamber.

Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays through his people. Had there been importunate, universal, and continuous prayer by God’s people, long ere this the earth had been possessed for Christ. The delay is not to be accounted for by the inveterate obstacles, but by the lack of the right asking. We do more of everything else than of praying. As poor as our giving is, our contributions of money exceed our offerings of prayer. Perhaps in the average congregation fifty aid in paying, where one saintly, ardent soul shuts itself up with God and wrestles for the deliveranc...

We are not praying after the order that moves God and brings all divine influences to help us. The world needs more true praying to save it from the reign and ruin of Satan.

Faith is only omnipotent when on its knees, and its outstretched hands take hold of God, then it draws to the utmost of God’s capacity; for only a praying faith can get God’s “all things whatsoever.”