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

by E.M. Bounds

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.

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.”

Persevering prayer always wins; God yields to importunity and fidelity. He has no heart to say No to such praying as Moses did. Actually God’s purpose to destroy Israel is changed by the praying of this man of God. It is but an illustration of how much just one praying man is worth in this world, and how much depends upon him.

If prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules God out of the world’s affairs, and prevents him from working.

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

Praying men are the only men who have influence with God, the only kind of men to whom God commits himself and his gospel. Praying men are the only men in which the Holy Spirit dwells, for the Holy Spirit and prayer go hand-in-hand. 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.

In doing God’s work there is no substitute for praying. The men of prayer cannot be displaced with other kinds of men. Men of financial skill, men of education, men of worldly influence—none of these can possibly be put in substitution for the men of prayer. The life, the vigor, the motive-power of God’s work is formed by praying men.

God never has, and he never will, commit the weighty interests of his kingdom to prayerless men, who do not make prayer a conspicuous and controlling factor in their lives.

Piety flourishes nowhere so rapidly and so rankly as in the closet. The closet is the garden of faith.

Jesus Christ was the divinely appointed leader of God’s people, and no one thing in his life proves his eminent fitness for that office so fully as his habit of prayer.

All great leaders for God have fashioned their leadership in the wrestlings of their closets. 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.

But Jesus Christ was a great leader for God. His was the great leadership of great praying. God was in his leadership greatly because prayer was in it greatly.

Paul in the second chapter of his First Epistle to Timothy, emphasizes the need of men to pray. Church leaders in his estimation are to be conspicuous for their praying. Prayer ought and must of necessity shape their characters, and must be one of their distinguishing characteristics. Prayer ought to be one of their most powerful elements, so much so that it cannot be hid. Prayer ought to make church leaders notable. Character, official duty, reputation and life, all should be shaped by prayer.

It is neither words, nor thoughts nor ideas, nor feelings, which shape praying, but character and conduct. Men must walk in upright fashion in order to be able to pray well. Bad character and unrighteous living break down praying until it becomes a mere shibboleth. Praying takes its tone and vigor from the life of the man or the woman exercising it. When character and conduct are at a low ebb, praying can but barely live, much less thrive.

Every man can pray, and every man should pray. But when it comes to the affairs of the kingdom, let it be said, at once, that a prayerless man in the church of God is like a paralyzed organ of the physical body. He is out of place in the communion of saints, out of harmony with God, and out of accord with his purposes for mankind.

Nothing whatever can take the place of prayer. Nothing whatever can atone for the neglect of praying. This is uppermost, first in point of importance and first in point of time. No man is so high in position, or in grace, to be exempt from an obligation to pray. No man is too big to pray, no matter who he is, nor what office he fills. The king on his throne is as much obligated to pray as the peasant in his cottage.

Prayer is intended for God’s ear. It is not man, but God who hears and answers prayer. Prayer covers the whole range of man’s need. Hence, “in everything, by prayer and supplication,” are “requests to be made known unto God.” Prayer includes the entire range of God’s ability. Is anything too hard for God? Prayer belongs to no favored segment of man’s need, but reaches to and embraces the entire circle of his wants, simply because God is the God of the whole man. God has pledged himself to supply the needs of the whole man, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Prayer is the child of grace, and grace is for the whole man, and for every one of the children of men.

Laxity and indifference are great hindrances to prayer, both to the practice of praying and the process of receiving; it requires a brave, strong, fearless and insistent spirit to engage in successful prayer.

The royal way to enlarge personal grace is to pray for others. Intercessory prayer is a means of grace to those who exercise it. We enter the richest fields of spiritual growth and gather its priceless riches in the avenues of intercessory prayer. To pray for men is of divine nomination, and represents the highest form of Christian service.

Men must pray, and men must be prayed for. The Christian must pray for all things, of course, but prayers for men are infinitely more important, just as men are infinitely more important than things. So also prayers for men are far more important than prayers for things because men more deeply concern God’s will and the work of Jesus Christ than things.

God’s ministers shape the church’s character, and give tone and direction to its life.

Prayer belongs in a very high and important sense to the ministry. It takes vigor and elevation of character to administer the prayer office.

His concern has been for the character of the men who minister at his altars in holy things. They must be men who lean upon him, who look to him, and who continually seek him for wisdom, help and power effectively to do the work of the ministry. And so he has designed men of prayer for the holy office, and has relied upon them successively to perform the tasks he has assigned them.

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

All ability to talk to men is measured by the ability with which a preacher can talk to God for men.

“The Christian’s trade is praying,” declared Martin Luther. Every Jewish boy had to learn a trade. Jesus Christ learned two, the trade of a carpenter, and that of praying. The one trade served earthly uses; the other served his divine and higher purposes. Jewish custom committed Jesus when a boy to the trade of a carpenter; the law of God bound him to praying from his earliest years, and remained with him to the end.

The heart is the lexicon of prayer; the life the best commentary on prayer, and the outward bearing its fullest expression.

The character is made by prayer; the life is perfected by prayer.

Praying preachers have always brought the greater glory to God, have moved his gospel onward with its greatest, speediest rate, and power. 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.

The apostles put out their force in order that Christians should honor God by the purity and consistency of their outward lives. They were to reproduce the character of Jesus Christ. They were to perfect his image in themselves, imbibe his temper, and reflect his behavior in all their conduct. They were to be imitators of God as dear children, to be holy as he was holy. Thus even laymen were to preach by their conduct and character, just as the ministry preached with their mouths.

Christ could do nothing without prayer. Christ could do all things by prayer. The apostles were helpless without prayer—and were absolutely dependent upon it for success in defeating their spiritual foes. They could do all things by prayer.

None but soldiers and bond servants of Jesus Christ can possibly do this tremendous work. “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” cries the great apostle. 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.

Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need. It is the voice of the beggar, conscious of his poverty, asking of another the things he needs. It is not only the language of lack, but of felt lack, of lack consciously realized.

In the end, poor praying and prayerlessness amount to the same thing, for poor praying proceeds from a lack of the sense of need, while prayerlessness has its origin in the same soil.

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.

Unrighteous lives among the laity heavily weights down the Word of the Lord and hampers the work of the ministry. Yet prayer will remove this burden which seriously handicaps the preached word. It will tend to do this in a direct way, or in an indirect manner. For just as you set laymen to praying, for the preacher or even for themselves, it awakens conscience, stirs the heart, tends to correct evil ways, and to promote good living.

No man will pray long and continue in sin. Praying breaks up bad living, while bad living breaks down prayer.

Prayer helps the preacher, is an aid to the sermon, assists the hearer, and promotes right living in the pew.

How prayer disburdens us of care by bringing God in to relieve and possess and hold!

Christ Jesus is the only cure for undue care and over anxiety of soul, and we secure God, his presence and his peace by prayer. Care is so natural and so strong, that none but God can eject it. It takes God, the presence and personality of God himself, to oust the care and to enthrone quietness and peace. When Christ comes in with his peace, all tormenting fears are gone, trepidation and harrowing anxieties capitulate to the reign of peace, and all disturbing elements depart. Anxious thought and care assault the soul, and feebleness, faintness, and cowardice are within. Prayer reinforces with God’s peace, and the heart is kept by him.

Let it be remembered that the source of decline in religion and the proof of decline in a Christian life is found just here, in “short and superficial praying.”

Short prayers make shallow lives.

God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.

The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwasted flow.

As the life-giving milk from the mother’s bosom is but the mother’s life, so all the preacher says is tinctured, impregnated by what the preacher is.

Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because the man is full of the divine unction.

Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men be who take hold of and shape a generation for God.

The preacher’s sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.