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

by E.M. Bounds

Failure to pray has been the baneful, inevitable cause of backsliding and estrangement from God.

As praying men are a help to God, so prayerless men are a hindrance to him.

The fires of prayer have burned low. Ashes and not flames are on its altars.

Prayer is the instrument, God is the efficient and active agent. So prayer in itself does not interfere in earth’s affairs, but prayer in the hands of men moves God to intervene and do things, which he would not otherwise do if prayer was not used as the instrument.

ONE of the crying things of our day is for men whose faith, prayers, and study of the Word of God have been vitalized, and a transcript of that Word is written on their hearts, and who will give it forth as the incorruptible seed that lives and abides forever. Nothing more is needed to clear up the haze by which a critical unfaith has eclipsed the Word of God than the fidelity of the pulpit in its unwavering allegiance to the Bible and the fearless proclamation of its truth. Without this the standard-bearer fails, and wavering and confusion all along the ranks follow. The pulpit has wrought its mightiest work in the days of its unswerving loyalty to the Word of God.

Men are demanded for the great work of soul saving, and men must go. It is no angelic or impersonal force which is needed. Human hearts baptized with the spirit of prayer, must bear the burden of this message, and human tongues on fire as the result of earnest, persistent prayer, must declare the Word of God to dying men.

The church today needs praying men to execute her solemn and pressing responsibility to meet the fearful crisis which is facing her. The crying need of the times is for men, in increased numbers—God-fearing men, praying men, Holy-Spirit men, men who can endure hardness, who will count not their lives dear unto themselves, but count all things but dross for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Savior. The men who are so greatly needed in this age of the church are those who have learned the business of praying—learned it on their knees, learned it in the need and agony of their own hearts.

The Holy Spirit never descends upon prayerless men. He never fills them, he never empowers them. There is nothing whatever in common between the Spirit of God and men who do not pray. The Spirit dwells only in a prayer atmosphere.

The Word was pointless and powerless unless they were freshly endued with power by continuous and mighty prayer.

The seed of God’s Word must be saturated in prayer to make it germinate. It grows readier and roots deeper when it is prayer-soaked.

Many great men have led and molded the church who have not been great in prayer, but they were great only in their plans, great for their opinions, great for their organization, great by natural gifts, by the force of genius or of character. However, they were not great for God.

This is the day of great wealth in the church and of wonderful material resources. But unfortunately the affluence of material resources is a great enemy and a severe hindrance to strong spiritual forces. It is an invariable law that the presence of attractive and potent material forces creates a trust in them, and by the same inevitable law, creates distrust in the spiritual forces of the gospel.

The days of great financial prosperity in the church have not been days of great religious prosperity. Moneyed men and praying men are not synonymous terms.

The church is not spiritual simply because it is concerned and deals in spiritual values. It may hold its confirmations by the thousand, it may multiply its baptisms, and administer its sacraments innumerable times, and yet be as far from fulfilling its true mission as human conditions can make it.

the prime need of the church is not men of money nor men of brains, but men of prayer.

Leaders in the realm of religious activity are to be judged by their praying habits, and not by their money or social position. Those who must be placed in the forefront of the church’s business, must be, first of all, men who know how to pray.

Men, great and influential in other things, but small in prayer, cannot do the work Almighty God has set out for his church to do in this, his world.

Heaven has all its good and all its help for men who pray.

God’s cause does not suffer through lack of divine ability, but by reason of the lack of prayer-ability in man.

While it may be true that many in the church say prayers, it is equally true that their praying is of the stereotyped order. Their prayers may be charged with sentiment, but they are tame, timid, and without fire or force.

Prayer is the genius and mainspring of life. We pray as we live; we live as we pray. Life will never be finer than the quality of the closet. The mercury of life will rise only by the warmth of the closet. Persistent nonpraying eventually will depress life below zero.

one reason why men do not pray. They are too worldly in heart and too secular in life to enter the closet; and even though they enter there, they cannot offer the “fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous man, which availeth much.”

Hands outstretched to God in prayer must be “holy hands,” unstained hands. The word holy here means undefiled, unspotted, untainted, and religiously observing every obligation. How far remote is all this from the character of the sin-loving, worldly minded, fleshly disposed men, soiled by fleshly lusts, spotted by worldly indulgence, unholy in heart and conduct!

Soiled men cannot make clean, pure supplication.

The man of prayer, whether layman or preacher, is God’s right-hand man. In the realm of spiritual affairs, he creates conditions, inaugurates movements, brings things to pass.

All failures in securing heaven are traceable to lack of prayer or misdirected petition.

Intercession for others is the hallmark of all true prayer. When prayer is confined to self and to the sphere of one’s personal needs, it dies by reason of its littleness, narrowness, and selfishness.

A single objective which absorbs the whole being and inflames the entire man, is the properly constraining force in prayer.

The dispensation of the Holy Spirit is a dispensation of prayer,

A breed of Christian is greatly needed who will seek tirelessly after God—who will give him no rest, day and night, until he hearkens to their cry.

The royal way to enlarge personal grace is to pray for others.

How difficult it appears to be for the church to understand that the whole scheme of redemption depends upon men of prayer!

Praying prophets have frequently been at a premium in the history of God’s people.

Praying preachers are the boldest, the truest, and the swiftest ministers of God. They mount up highest and are nearest to him who has called them. They advance more rapidly and in Christian living are most like God.

Men must do God’s work in God’s way, and to God’s glory, and prayer is a necessity to its successful accomplishment.

A prayerless preacher is a misnomer. He has either missed his calling, or has grievously failed God who called him into the ministry.

The one weak spot in our church institutions lies just here. Prayer is not regarded as being the primary factor in church life and activity, and other things, good in their places, are made primary.

All ability to talk to men is measured by the ability with which a preacher can talk to God for men. He “who plows not in his closet, will never reap in his pulpit.”

Christ is the Christian’s example, and every Christian must pattern after him. Every preacher must be like his lord and master, and must learn the trade of praying. He who learns well the trade of praying masters the secret of the Christian art, and becomes a skilled workman in God’s workshop, one who needeth not to be ashamed, a worker together with his lord and master.

If the preachers will get their thoughts clothed with the atmosphere of prayer, if they will prepare their sermons on their knees, a gracious outpouring of God’s Spirit will come upon the earth.

The highest form of religious life is attained by prayer. The richest revelations of God—Father, Son, and Spirit—are made, not to the learned, the great or the “noble” of earth, but men of prayer.

A nonpraying preacher and a nonpraying church may flourish outwardly and advance in many aspects of their life. Both preacher and church may become synonyms for success, but unless it rest on a praying basis, all success will eventually crumble into deadened life and ultimate decay.

“Ye have not because ye ask not,” is the solution of all spiritual weakness both in the personal life and in the pulpit.

To consecrate no place to prayer, is to make a beggarly showing, not only in praying, but in holy living, for secret prayer and holy living are so closely joined that they can never be severed.

How easily we become professional and mechanical in the most sacred undertakings!

This is no time to think of self, to consult with dignity, to confer with flesh and blood, to think of ease, or to shrink from hardship, grief, and loss. This is the time for toil, suffering, and self-denial. We must lose all for Christ in order to gain all for Christ. Men are needed in the pulpit, as well as in the pew, who are “bold to take up, firm to sustain, the consecrated cross.”

A blind leader of the blind will be the preacher who is a stranger to prayer. Prayer opens the preacher’s eyes, and keeps them open to the evil of sin, the peril of it, and the penalty it incurs. A blind leader leading the blind will be the vocation of him who is prayerless in his own life.

No gifts, no learning, no brain-force, can atone for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no amount of social service will supply its lack.

Not to pray is not only to declare there is nothing needed, but also to admit to a nonrealization of that need. This is what aggravates the sin of prayerlessness. It represents an attempt at instituting an independence of God, a self-sufficient ruling of God out of the life. It is a declaration made to God that we do not need him, and hence do not pray to him.

Herein lies the great danger menacing the pulpit of today. All around us we see a tendency to substitute human gifts and worldly attainments for that supernatural, inward power which comes from on high in answer to earnest prayer.