Power Through Prayer

by E.M. Bounds

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it.

The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.

Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a 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.

The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher.

Jonathan Edwards said: “I went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness and conformity to Christ. The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness.”

The preacher must impersonate the gospel.

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.

Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint.

The preaching man is to be the praying man.

Prayer is the preacher’s mightiest weapon. An almighty force in itself, it gives life and force to all.

The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer.

The sun gives life, but sunstrokes are death. Preaching is to give life; it may kill. The preacher holds the keys; he may lock as well as unlock.

true ministry is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made. The Spirit of God is on the preacher in anointing power, the fruit of the Spirit is in his heart, the Spirit of God has vitalized the man and the word; his preaching gives life, gives life as the spring gives life; gives life as the resurrection gives life; gives ardent life as the summer gives ardent life; gives fruitful life as the autumn gives fruitful life.

The preaching that kills is non-spiritual preaching.

The preaching that kills is the letter; shapely and orderly it may be, but it is the letter still, the dry, husky letter, the empty, bald shell.

letter-preaching has the truth. But even divine truth has no life-giving energy alone; it must be energized by the Spirit, with all God’s forces at its back.

Life-giving preaching costs the preacher much — death to self, crucifixion to the world, the travail of his own soul. Crucified preaching only can give life. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.

Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces.

A plea for short praying, live praying, real heart praying, praying by the Holy Spirit — direct, specific, ardent, simple, unctuous in the pulpit — is in order.

A school to teach preachers how to pray, as God counts praying, would be more beneficial to true piety, true worship, and true preaching than all theological schools.

Prayer freshens the heart of the preacher, keeps it in tune with God and in sympathy with the people, lifts his ministry out of the chilly air of a profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility and power of a divine unction.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.

The preacher’s study ought to be a closet, a Bethel, an altar, a vision, and a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went manward; that every part of the sermon might be scented by the air of heaven and made serious, because God was in the study.

The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men.

Colleges, learning, books, theology, preaching cannot make a preacher, but praying does.

Luther said: “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.”

Bishop Asbury said: “I propose to rise at four o’clock as often as I can and spend two hours in prayer and meditation.”

Begin the day by rising after midnight and devoting some time amid the silence and darkness of the night to this sacred work.

Adoniram Judson

No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.

If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.

We need a generation of preachers who seek God and seek him early, who give the freshness and dew of effort to God, and secure in return the freshness and fullness of his power that he may be as the dew to them, full of gladness and strength, through all the heat and labor of the day.

The preacher must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have him glorified, no toil but for him.

God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.

while the channel of preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may broaden and deepen the channel, but if you do not look well to the purity and depth of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted channel.

almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so.

he who has struggled with his own heart and conquered it; who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy, courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences of his hearers — suc...

THE heart is the Saviour of the world. Heads do not save. Genius, brains, brilliancy, strength, natural gifts do not save.

It is he who goes forth weeping (not preaching great sermons), bearing precious seed, who shall come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Praying gives sense, brings wisdom, broadens and strengthens the mind.

Unction in the preacher puts God in the gospel.

Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching unction; prayer, much prayer, is the one, sole condition of keeping this unction.

Apostolic praying makes apostolic saints and keeps apostolic times of purity and power in the Church.

The preacher is to lay himself out in prayer for his people; not that they might be saved, simply, but that they be mightily saved.

A Church rarely revolts against or rises above the religion of its leaders.

Times of spiritual leadership are times of great spiritual prosperity to the Church.

A prayerless Christian will never learn God’s truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to teach God’s truth.

“If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers — had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent and incessant prayers for them — they would have been much more in the way of success.” — Jonathan Edwards

It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for.