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

by E.M. Bounds

Asking is man’s part. Giving is God’s part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.

Man makes the plea and God makes the answer. The plea and the answer compose the prayer. God is more ready, more willing and more anxious to give the answer than man is to give the asking. The possibilities of prayer lie in the ability of man to ask large things and in the ability of God to give large things.

God’s only condition and limitation of prayer is found in the character...

Prayer has no talismanic influence. It is no mere fetish. It has no so-called powers of magic. It is simply making known our requests to God for things agreeable to his will in the name of Christ.

Prayer is infinite ignorance trusting to the wisdom of God.

God is everywhere, watching, superintending, overseeing, governing everything in the highest interest of man, and carrying forward his plans and executing his purposes in creation and redemption. He is not an absentee God. He did not make the world with all that is in it, and turn it over to so-called natural laws, and then retire into the secret places of the universe having no regard for it or for the working of his laws. His hand is on the throttle. The work is not beyond his control. Earth’s inhabitants and its affairs are not running independently of Almighty God.

God cannot be ruled out of the world. The doctrine of prayer brings him directly into the world, and moves him to a direct interference with all of this world’s affairs.

These evil things, unpleasant and afflictive, may come with divine permission, but God is on the spot, his hand is in all of them, and he sees to it that they are woven into his plans. He causes them to be overruled for the good of his people, and eternal good is brought out of them. These things, with hundreds of others, belong to the disciplinary processes of Almighty God in administering his government for the children of men.

God consents to some things in this world, many of them very painful and afflictive, without in the least being responsible for them, or in the least excusing him who originates them, but such events or things always become to the saint of God the providence of God to him. So the saint can say in each and all of these sad and distressing experiences, “It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.” Or with the psalmist, he may say, “I was dumb; I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.”

If I will give myself up to the inspiration of the Spirit of God, who commands me to pray, the details and the petitions of that praying will all fall into harmony with the will of him who wills that I should pray.

Prayer is the appointed condition of getting God’s aid. This aid is as manifold and illimitable as God’s ability, and as varied and exhaustless is this aid as man’s need. Prayer is the avenue through which God supplies man’s wants. Prayer is the channel through which all good flows from God to man, and all good from men to men. God is the Christian’s father. Asking and giving are in that relation.

Prayer is the school of wisdom as well as of piety.

Prayer fills man’s emptiness with God’s fullness. It fills man’s poverty with God’s riches. It puts away man’s weakness with God’s strength. It banishes man’s littleness with God’s greatness. Prayer is God’s plan to supply man’s great and continuous need with God’s great and continuous abundance.

The Holy Spirit is to be sought by intense supplication, and our supplications are to be charged by his vitalizing, illuminating, and ennobling energy. Watchfulness is to fit us for this intense praying and intense fighting. Perseverance is an essential element in successful praying, as in every other realm of conflict.

Prayer gives us eyes to see God. Prayer is seeing God.

Prayer turns the eye and the heart heavenward with a child’s longings, a child’s trust and a child’s expectancy.

Prayer is God’s necessary business, which men only can do, and that men must do. Men who belong to God are obliged to pray. They are not obliged to grow rich, nor to make money. They are not obliged to have large success in business. These are incidental, occasional, merely nominal, as far as integrity to heaven and loyalty to God are concerned. Material successes are immaterial to God. Men are neither better nor worse with those things or without them. They are not sources of reputation nor elements of character in the heavenly estimates. But to pray, to really pray, is the source of revenue, the basis of reputation, and the element of character in the estimation of God.

A life of prayer is the only life which heaven counts.

God’s promises lie like giant corpses without life, only for decay and dust unless men appropriate and vitalize these promises by earnest and prevailing prayer.

God has everything to do with prayer, as well as everything to do with the one who prays. To him who prays, and as he prays, the hour is sacred because it is God’s hour. The occasion is sacred because it is the occasion of the soul’s approach to God, and of dealing with God. No hour is more hallowed because it is the occasion of the soul’s mightiest approach to God, and of the fullest revelation from God.

In the multiplicity of saying prayers they had lost the art of praying.

Prayer must be a holy exercise, untainted by vanity or pride. It must be in secret. The disciple must live in secret. God lives there, is sought there and is found there. The command of Christ as to prayer is that pride and publicity should be shunned. Prayer is to be in private.

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.

The life of Christ flowing through us and the words of Christ living in us, these give potency to prayer. They breathe the spirit of prayer, and make the body, blood, and bones of prayer. Then it is Christ praying in me and through me, and “all things which I will” are the will of God. My will becomes the law and the answer, for it is written “Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

He filled the day with working for God; He employed the night with praying to God. The day-working made the night-praying a necessity. The night-praying sanctified and made successful the day-working. Too busy to pray gives religion Christian burial, it is true, but kills it nevertheless.

He must be alone in that moment with God. Temptation was in that hour. The multitude had feasted on the five loaves and the two fishes. Filled with food and excited beyond measure, they would fain make him king. He flees from the temptation to secret prayer, for here is the source of his strength to resist evil. What a refuge was secret prayer even to him! What a refuge to us from the world’s dazzling and delusive crowns! What safety there is to be alone with God when the world tempts us, allures us, attracts us!

We have seen how Christ had to flee from the multitude after the magnificent miracle of feeding the five thousand as they sought to make him king. Then prayer was his escape and his refuge from this strong worldly temptation. He returns from that night of prayer with strength and calmness, and with a power to perform that other remarkable miracle of great wonder of walking on the sea.

Present in all great praying, making and marking it, is the man. It is impossible to separate the praying from the man. The constituent elements of the man are the constituents of his praying. The man flows through his praying. Only the fiery Elijah could do Elijah’s fiery praying. We can get holy praying only from a holy man. Holy being can never exist without holy doing. Being is first, doing comes afterward. What we are gives being, force, and inspiration to what we do. Character, that which is graven deep, ineradicably, imperishably within us, colors all we do.

But it was as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment became white and glistering. There is nothing like prayer to change character and whiten conduct.

Prayer engages the highest interest and secures the highest glory of God. God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will are all in it. Without prayer his name is profaned, his kingdom fails, and his will is decried and opposed. God’s will can be done on earth as it is done in heaven. God’s will done on earth makes earth like heaven. Importunate praying is the mighty energy which establishes God’s will on earth as it is established in heaven.

As the scholar can never in all his after studies or learning dispense with his A B C, and as the alphabet gives form, color, and expression to all after learning, impregnating all, and grounding all, so the learner in Christ can never dispense with the Lord’s Prayer.

He prays that they might not only be fit and ready for heaven, but ready and fit for earth, for its sweetest privileges, its sternest duties, its deepest sorrows, and its richest joys; ready for all of its trials, consolations, and triumphs. “1 pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”

He devoted himself to death in order that they might be devoted in life to God.

Conformity means to be one with God, both in result and in processes. Submission may be one with God in the end. Conformity is one with God in the beginning, and the end.

We are ever ready to excuse our lack of earnest and toilsome praying by a fancied and delusive view of submission. We often end praying just where we ought to begin. We quit praying when God waits and is waiting for us to really pray. We are deterred by obstacles from praying, or we succumb to difficulties, and call it submission to God’s will. A world of beggarly faith, of spiritual laziness, and of halfheartedness in prayer, is covered under the high and pious name of submission. To have no plan but to seek God’s plan and carry it out, is of the essence and inspiration of Christlike praying.

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.

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of all grace and of each grace as well. Purity, power, holiness, faith, love, joy, and all grace are brought into being and perfected by him. Would we grow in grace in particular? Would we be perfect in all graces? We must seek the Holy Spirit by prayer.

We urge the seeking of the Holy Spirit. We need him, and we need to stir ourselves up to seek him. The measure we receive of him will be gauged by the fervor of faith and prayer with which we seek him. Our ability to work for God, and to pray to God, and live for God, and affect others for God will be dependent on the measure of the Holy Spirit received by us, dwelling in us, and working through us.

The truth is, if we cannot pray for the Holy Spirit we cannot pray for any good thing from God, for he is the sum of all good to us.

Paul’s praying was God’s proof to Ananias that Paul was in a state which conditioned him to receive the Holy Spirit.

All labor for Christ which does not spring from the Holy Spirit working in us, is inconsequential and vain. Our prayers and activities are so feeble and resultless, because he has not worked in us and cannot work in us his glorious work. Would you pray with mighty results? Seek the mighty workings of the Holy Spirit in your own spirit.

How simple and direct is our Lord’s direction—ASK! This is plain and direct. Ask with urgency, ask without fainting. Ask, seek, knock, till he comes. Your heavenly Father will surely send him if you ask for him. Wait in the Lord for the Holy Spirit. It is the child waiting, asking, urging, and praying perseveringly for the Father’s greatest gift and for the child’s greatest need, the Holy Spirit.

Our divine example in praying is the Son of God. Our divine helper in praying is the Holy Spirit. He quickens us to pray and helps us in praying. Acceptable prayer must be begun and carried on by his presence and inspiration.

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.

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 kingdom. Only praying hands will put the crown on the Savior’s head.

Prayer is the only element in which the Holy Spirit can live and work. Prayer is the golden chain which happily enslaves him to his happy work in us.

The more we pray the more he helps us to pray, and the larger the measure of himself he gives to us.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless.

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.

“You can do more than pray after you have prayed,” said the godly Dr. A. J. Gordon, “but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”