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

by E.M. Bounds

MUCH of the feebleness, barrenness and paucity of religion results from the failure to have a scriptural and reasonable standard in religion, by which to shape character and measure results; and this largely results from the omission of prayer or the failure to put prayer in the standard.

The Scriptures alone make the standard of life and experience. When we make our own standard, there is delusion and falsity for our desires, convenience and pleasure form the rule, and that is always a fleshly and a low rule.

Commonplace religion is pleasing to flesh and blood. There is no self-denial in it, no cross bearing, no self-crucifixion. It is good enough for our neighbors. Why should we be singular and straight-laced? Others are living on a low plane, on a compromising level, living as the world lives.

Prayer fashions the pattern of a religious life. Prayer is the measure. Prayer molds the life.

It is God’s standard at which we are to aim, not man’s. It is not the opinions of men, not what they say, but what the Scriptures say. Loose notions of religion grow out of low notions of prayer. Prayerlessness begets loose, cloudy and indefinite views of what religion is. Aimless living and prayerlessness go hand in hand.

The harvest will go to waste and perish without the laborers, while the laborers must be God-chosen, God-sent, and God-commissioned. But God does not send these laborers into his harvest without prayer. The failure of the laborers is owing to the failure of prayer.

PRAYER is far-reaching in its influence and worldwide in its effects. It affects all men, affects them everywhere, and affects them in all things. It touches man’s interest in time and eternity. It lays hold upon God and moves him to interfere in the affairs of earth.

Prayer is intended for all men, because all men need God and need what God has and what prayer only can secure.

Prayer has mighty potencies. It makes good rulers, and makes them better rulers. It restrains the lawless and the despotic. Rulers are to be prayed for. They are not out of the reach and the control of prayer, because they are not out of the reach and control of God. Wicked Nero was on the throne of Rome when Paul wrote these words to Timothy urging prayer for those in authority.

Christian lips are to breathe prayers for the cruel and infamous rulers in state as well as for the righteous and the benign governors and princes.

Prayer has in its hands a double blessing. It rewards him who prays, and blesses him who is prayed for.

Tranquility is the happy fruit of true praying. There is an inner calm which comes to him who prays, and an outer calm as well. Prayer creates “quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.”

Honesty, gravity, integrity, and weight in character are the natural and essential fruits of prayer.

Spiritual agencies and spiritual forces never come as a matter of course. Spiritual duties and spiritual factors, left to the “matter of course” law, will surely fall out and die. Only the things which are stressed live and rule in the spiritual realm.

They who truly pray will be moved to give. Praying creates the giving spirit. The praying ones will give liberally and self-denyingly. He who enters his closet to God, will also open his purse to God.

A person who can pray is the mightiest instrument Christ has in this world.

God the Father gives nothing to his Son except through prayer.

It is all right to send trained men to the foreign field, but first of all they must be God-sent.

Promises are God’s golden fruit to be plucked by the hand of prayer.

Promises are God’s incorruptible seed, to be sown and tilled by prayer.

Prayer and the promises are interdependent. The promise inspires and energizes prayer, but prayer locates the promise, and...

Miracle-making promises need miracle-making praying to realize them.

But prayer in its usual uniform and deep current is conscious conformity to God’s will, based upon the direct promise of God’s Word, and under the illumination and application of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer goes by faith into the great fruit orchard of God’s exceeding great and precious promises, and with hand and heart picks the ripest and richest fruit.

God never has put his Spirit into the realm of a human heart which had never invoked by ardent praying the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of his saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results.

Prayer secures blessings, and makes men better because it reaches the ear of God. Prayer is only for the betterment of men when it has affected God and moved him to do something for men. Prayer affects men by affecting God. Prayer moves men because it moves God to move men. Prayer influences men by influencing God to influence them. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.

Failure to pray entails losses far beyond the person who neglects it.

Prayer is not only the language of spiritual life, but also makes its very essence and forms its real character.

He who does not pray about temporal matters cannot pray with confidence about spiritual matters.

He who does not put God by prayer in his struggling toil for daily bread will never put him in his struggle for heaven. He who does not cover and supply the wants of the body by prayer will never cover and supply the wants of his soul. Both body and soul are dependent on God, and prayer is but the crying expression of that dependence.

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.

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

Great faith enables Christ to do great things.

The only condition which restrains God’s power, and which disables him to act, is unfaith. He is not limited in action nor restrained by the conditions which limit men.

Human thoughts, human words, human imaginations, human desires, and human needs cannot in any way measure God’s ability to do.

If men would pray as they ought to pray, the marvels of the past would be more than reproduced. The gospel would advance with a facility and power it has never known. Doors would be thrown open to the gospel, and the Word of God would have a conquering force rarely, if ever, known before.

“Cares” are the epidemic evil of mankind. They are universal in their reach. They belong to man in his fallen condition. The predisposition to undue anxiety is the natural result of sin. Care comes in all shapes, at all times, and from all sources. It comes to all of every age and station. There are the cares of the home circle, from which there is no escape save in prayer. There are the cares of business, the cares of poverty, and the cares of riches. Ours is an anxious world, and ours is an anxious race. The caution of Paul is well addressed, “In nothing be anxious.” This is the divine injunction, and that we might be able to live above anxiety and freed from undue care, “In everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God.” This is the divinely prescribed remedy for all anxious cares, for all worry, for all inward fretting.

The one place where the Lord’s presence and power will be more fully realized than any other place is the closet of prayer.

God, who cannot lie, is bound to answer. He has voluntarily placed himself under obligation to answer the prayer of him who truly prays.

The fullness of the Spirit always brings boldness. The cure for fear in the face of threatenings of the enemies of the Lord is being filled with the Spirit. This gives power to speak the word of the Lord with boldness. This gives courage and drives away fear.

The possibilities of prayer, then, lie in the great truth, illimitable in its broadness, fathomless in its depths, exhaustless in its fullness, that God answers every prayer from every true soul who truly prays.

It is not educated men who are needed for the times. It is not more money that is required. It is not more machinery, more organization, more ecclesiastical laws, but it is men and women who know how to pray, who can in prayer lay hold upon God and bring him down to earth, and move him to take hold of earth’s affairs mightily and put life and power into the church and into all of its machinery.

Prayer brings into the affairs of earth a supernatural element. Our gospel when truly presented is the power of God. Never was the church more in need of those who can and will test Almighty God. Never did the church need more than now those who can raise up everywhere memorials of God’s supernatural power, memorials of answers to prayer, memorials of promises fulfilled. These would do more to silence the enemy of souls, the foe of God and the adversary of the church than any modern scheme or present-day plan for the success of the gospel.

The absence of faith, however much of performance may be seen, restrains the exercise of God’s power, paralyzes the arm of Christ, and turns to death all signs of life.

Answered prayers are sometimes the most convincing and faith-creating forces. Unanswered prayers chill the atmosphere and freeze the soil of faith.

All down the line in Old Testament days we see these prayer miracles. God’s praying servants had not the least doubt that prayer would work marvelous results and bring the supernatural into the affairs of earth. Miracles and prayer went hand in hand. They were companions. The one was the cause, the other was the effect. The one brought the other into existence. The miracle was the proof that God heard and answered prayer. The miracle was the divine demonstration that God, who was in heaven, interfered in earth's affairs, intervened to help men, and worked supernaturally if need be to accomplish his purposes in answer to prayer.

All natural forces are under God’s control. He did not create the world and put it under law, and then retire from it, to work out its own destiny, irrespective of the welfare of his intelligent creatures. Natural laws are simply God’s laws, by which he governs and regulates all things in nature. Nature is nothing but God’s servant. God is above nature, God is not the slave of nature. This being true, God can and will suspend the working of nature’s laws, can hold them in abeyance by his almighty hand, can for the time being set them aside, to fulfill his higher purposes in redemption. It is no violation of nature’s laws when, in answer to prayer, he who is above nature makes nature his servant, and causes nature to carry out his plans and purposes.

He who works miracles by praying will first of all work the chief miracle on himself.

God still lives, and miracles still live while God lives and acts, for miracles are God’s ways of acting.