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

by E.M. Bounds

To go through the motion of praying is a dull business, though not a hard one. To say prayers in a decent, delicate way is not heavy work. But to pray really, to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke, to pray till the iron gates of difficulty are opened, till the mountains of obstacles are removed, till the mists are exhaled and the clouds are lifted, and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightens—this is hard work, but it is God’s work and man’s best labor.

The joy of answered prayer is the joy of a travailing mother when a man child is born into the world, the joy of a slave whose chains have been burst asunder and to whom new life and liberty have just come.

A bird’s-eye view of what has been accomplished by prayer shows what we lost when the dispensation of real prayer was substituted by Pharisaical pretense and sham; it shows, too, how imperative is the need for holy men and women who will give themselves to earnest, Christlike praying.

The men who have done mighty things for God have always been mighty in prayer, have well understood the possibilities of prayer, and made most of these possibilities.

Prayer may be low-tongued, but it cannot be cold-tongued. Its words may be few, but they must be on fire. Its feelings may not be impetuous, but they must be white with heat. It is the effectual, fervent prayer that influences God.

When the prayer-chambers of saints are closed or are entered casually or coldly, then church rulers are secular, fleshly, materialized; spiritual character sinks to a low level, and the ministry becomes restrained and enfeebled.

When prayer fails, the world prevails. When prayer fails the church loses its divine characteristics, its divine power; the church is swallowed up by a proud ecclesiasticism, and the world scoffs at its obvious impotence.

He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life.

We cease to pray and cease to live spiritually.

There is no stay to the desolating floods of worldliness and business and cares, but prayer. Christ meant this when he charged us to watch and pray. There is no pioneering corps for the gospel but prayer.

The only way to preserve our praying from being hindered is to estimate prayer at its true and great value.

One of Satan’s wiliest tricks is to destroy the best by the good.

Our prayer-chamber should have our freshest strength, our calmest time, its hours unfettered, without obtrusion, without haste. Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer. “To kneel upon our knees three times a day and pray and give thanks before God as we did aforetime,” is the very heart and soul of religion, and makes men, like Daniel, of “an excellent spirit,” “greatly beloved in heaven.”

The greatness of prayer, involving as it does the whole man, in the intensest form, is not realized without spiritual discipline.

A holy life is the only preparation for prayer. It is just as difficult to pray, as it is to live a holy life. In this we find a wall of exclusion built around our closets; men do not love holy praying, because they do not love and will not do holy living.

Prayer is a rare gift, not a popular, ready gift. Prayer is not the fruit of natural talents; it is the product of faith, of holiness, of deeply spiritual character.

The spirit of prayer should rule our spirits and our conduct. The spirit of the prayer-chamber must control our lives or the closet hour will be dull and sapless.

It is what we are out of the closet which gives victory or brings defeat to the closet. If the spirit of the world prevails in our non-closet hours, the spirit of the world will prevail in our closet hours, and that will be a vain and idle farce.

We must live for God out of the closet if we would meet God in the closet.

If we would have God in the closet, God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God, but by living to God. The closet is not a confessional, simply, but the hour of holy communion and high and sweet communicating and of intense intercession.

Our closets are too much like the sign, “Closed for Repairs.”

Bad living makes bad praying.

We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly.

A repentance which does not produce a change in conduct is a sham.

Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion.

Prayerless praying by lips and hearts untrained to prayer, by lives out of harmony with Jesus Christ; prayerless praying, which has the form and motion of prayer but is without the true heart of prayer, never moves God to an answer. It is of such praying that James says: “Ye have not because ye ask not; ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.”

The two great evils—not asking, and asking in a wrong way. Perhaps the greater evil is wrong asking, for it has in it the show of duty done, of praying when there has been no praying—a deceit, a fraud, a sham.

Prayerless praying stakes nothing on the issue, for it has nothing to stake. It comes with empty hands, indeed, but they are listless hands as well as empty. They have never learned the lesson of empty hands clinging to the cross; this lesson to them has no form nor comeliness.

Prayerless praying is insincere. It has no honesty at heart. We name in words what we do not want in heart. Our prayers give formal utterance to the things for which our hearts are not only not hungry, but for which they really have no taste.

Nothing exceeds in gracious results true praying, but better not to pray at all than to pray prayerless prayers, for they are but sinning, and the worst of sinning is to sin on our knees.

The prayer habit is a good habit, but praying by dint of habit only is a very bad habit. This kind of praying is not conditioned after God’s order, nor generated by God’s power. It is not only a waste, a perversion, and a delusion, but it is a prolific source of unbelief. Prayerless praying gets no results. God is not reached, self is not helped. It is better not to pray at all than to secure no results from praying.

The man who truly prays gets from God many things denied to the prayerless man.

To the man or woman who is acquainted with God and who knows how to pray, there is nothing remarkable in the answers that come. They are sure of being heard, since they ask in accordance with what they know to be the mind and the will of God.

Christ prayed much and he taught much about prayer.

The pleading soul must be aroused to effort by God’s silence. Denial, instead of abating or abashing, must arouse its latent energies and kindle anew its highest ardor.

He declares: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” And to make assurance doubly sure, he adds: “For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

After Christ had put God’s willingness to answer prayer in a very clear and strong light, he then urges to importunity, and that every unanswered prayer, instead of abating our pressure should only increase intensity and energy. If asking does not get, let asking pass into the settled attitude and spirit of seeking. If seeking does not secure the answer, let seeking pass on to the more energetic and clamorous plea of knocking. We must persevere till we get it. No failure here if our faith does not break down.

Love is the supreme condition of prayer, a life inspired by love. The thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians is the law of prayer as well as the law of love. The law of love is the law of prayer, and to master this chapter from the epistle of Paul is to learn the first and fullest condition of prayer.

Without prayer the Christian life, robbed of its sweetness and its beauty, becomes cold and formal and dead; but rooted in the secret place where God meets and walks and talks with his own, it grows into such a testimony of divine power that all men will feel its influence and be touched by the warmth of its love. Thus, resembling our Lord and master, we shall be used for the glory of God and the salvation of our fellowmen.

Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life.

The real and obvious test of a genuine work of God is the prevalence of the spirit of prayer.

When the church is in the condition of prayer God’s cause always flourishes and his kingdom on earth always triumphs. When the church fails to pray, God’s cause decays and evil of every kind prevails.

“Too busy to pray” is not only the keynote to backsliding, but it mars even the work done.

The apostles were under the law of prayer, which law recognizes God as God, and depends upon him to do for them what he would not do without prayer.

The business of preaching is worth very little unless it is in direct partnership with the business of praying.

Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there is apostolic praying.

Today, too, we find in many places both laymen and ministers are so busily engaged in “serving tables,” that they are glaringly deficient in praying. In fact, in present-day church affairs men are looked upon as religious because they give largely of their money to the church, and men are chosen for official positions not because they are men of prayer, but because they have the financial ability to run church finances and to get money for the church.

And so we will discover, under close scrutiny of ourselves sometimes, that things legitimate, things right in themselves, things commendable, may so engross our attention, so preoccupy our minds and so draw on our feelings, that prayer may be omitted, or at least very little time may be given to prayer. How easy to slip away from the closet! Even the apostles had to guard themselves at that point. How much do we need to watch ourselves at the same place! Things legitimate and right may become wrong when they take the place of prayer. Things right in themselves may become wrong things when they are allowed to fasten themselves inordinately upon our hearts. It is not only the sinful things which hurt prayer. It is not alone questionable things which are to be guarded against. It is things which are right in their places, but which are allowed to sidetrack prayer and shut the closet door, often with the self-comforting plea that “we are too busy to pray.”

Praying men are a necessity in carrying out the divine plan for the salvation of men.

Not to pray is a denial of God, a denial of his existence, a denial of his nature, and a denial of his purposes toward mankind.