E.M. Bounds on Prayer Quotes

“To pray is the greatest thing we can do: and to do it well there must be calmness, time, and deliberation; otherwise it is degraded into the littlest and meanest of things. True praying has the largest results for good; and poor praying, the least. We cannot do too much of real praying; we cannot do too little of the sham. We must learn anew the worth of prayer, enter anew the school of prayer. There is nothing which it takes more time to learn. —The Power of Prayer”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“I ought to spend the best hours in communion with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful employment, and is not to be thrust into a corner. The morning hours, from six to eight, are the most uninterrupted, and should be thus employed. After tea is my best hour, and that should be solemnly dedicated to God. I ought not to give up the good old habit of prayer before going to bed; but guard must be kept against sleep. When I awake in the night, I ought to rise and pray. A little time after breakfast might be given to intercession.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Mr. Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer. He began at four in the morning. Of him, one who knew him well wrote: “he thought prayer to be more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“A prayerful ministry is the only ministry that brings the preacher into sympathy with the people. Prayer as essentially unites [the preacher] to the human as it does [unite him] to the divine.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Not infrequently the preacher’s only praying is by his bedside in his nightdress, ready for bed and soon in it, with, perchance the addition of a few hasty snatches of prayer ere he is dressed in the morning. How feeble, vain, and little is such praying compared with the time and energy devoted to praying by holy men in and out of the Bible! How”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salvo for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The preacher must have had audience and ready access to God before he can have access to the people.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“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.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Even sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The preacher may lose God in his sermon.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“What the preacher is in prayer to God, for himself, for his people—so is his power for real good to men, so is his true fruitfulness, his true fidelity to God, to man, for time, for eternity.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The other tendency is to thoroughly popularize the ministry. He [the pastor] is no longer God’s man, but a man of affairs, of the people. He prays not, because his mission is to the people. If he can move the people, create an interest, a sensation in favor of religion, an interest in church work—he is satisfied.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The great hindrance is in the preacher himself. He has not in himself the mighty life-creating forces. There may be no discount on his orthodoxy, honesty, cleanness, or earnestness; but somehow the man, the inner man, in its secret places, has never broken down and surrendered to God, his inner life is not a great highway for the transmission of God’s message, God’s power. Somehow self and not God rules in the holy of holiest.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry, is weak as a factor in God’s work, and is powerless to project God’s cause in this world.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The real sermon is made in the closet. The man—God’s man—is made in the closet. His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret communion with God. The burdened and tearful agony of his spirit, his weightiest and sweetest messages were got when alone with God. Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The preaching man is to be the praying man.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Preaching with them meant self-denying, self-crucifying, serious, toilsome, martyr business.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God—men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The Holy Ghost 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.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“And the prime mission of these praying missionaries is to convert prayerless heathen men into praying men.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“It is truly wonderful how great a part money plays in the modern religious movements, and how little prayer plays in them. In striking contrast with that statement, it is marvelous how little part money played in primitive Christianity as a factor in spreading the Gospel, and how wonderful [a] part prayer played in it.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“The king and the beggar are both affected by it. It touches Heaven and moves earth. Prayer holds earth to Heaven and brings Heaven in close contact with earth.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“While we are to pray everywhere, it unquestionably means that we are not to frequent places where we cannot pray. To pray everywhere is to pray in all legitimate places, and to attend especially those places where prayer is welcome, and is given a gracious hospitality.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Consecrated men are the agents through whom prayer works. Prayer helps the consecrated man in maintaining his attitude of consecration, keeps him alive to God, and aids him in doing the work to which he is called and to which he has given himself. Consecration helps to effectual praying. Consecration enables one to get the most out of his praying.”
― Hendrickson Publishers, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“But the cause of this sad state of things may be traced further back. It is largely due to the decay of prayer. For with the decline of the work of holiness, there has come the decline of the business of praying.”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Why is it that the pastor is not sufficiently spiritual, holy and in communion with God, that he cannot hold his own revival services, and have large outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the church, the community and upon himself? There can be but one solution for all this state of things. We have cultivated other things to the neglect of the work of holiness. We have permitted our minds to be preoccupied with material things in the church. Unfortunately, whether designedly or not, we have substituted the external for the internal. We have put that which is seen to the front and shut out that which is unseen. It is all too true as to the church, that we are much further advanced in material matters than in matters spiritual.”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Gratitude and thanksgiving forever stand opposed to all murmurings at God’s dealings with us, and all complainings at our lot. Gratitude and murmuring never abide in the same heart at the same time. An unappreciative spirit has no standing beside gratitude and praise. And true prayer corrects complaining and promotes gratitude and thanksgiving. Dissatisfaction at one’s lot, and a disposition to be discontented with things which come to us in the providence of God, are foes to gratitude and enemies to thanksgiving.”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Gratitude and thanksgiving always looks back at the past, though they may also take in the present. But prayer always looks to the future. Thanksgiving deals with things already received. Prayer deals with things desired, asked for, and expected. Prayer turns to gratitude and praise when the things asked for have been granted by God.”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer

“Love is the child of gratitude. Love grows as gratitude is felt, and then breaks out into praise and thanksgiving to God: “I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplication.” Answered prayers cause gratitude, and gratitude brings forth a love that declares it will not cease praying: “Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” Gratitude and love move to larger and increased praying.”
― E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer