E.M.Bounds Quotes

We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer. It surmounts or removes all obstacles overcomes every resisting force and gains its ends in the face of invincible hindrances.

We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God.

Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.

It (prayer) dispels frivolity and drives away all skin-deep forms of worship, and makes worship a serious and deep-seated service, impregnating body, soul, and spirit with its heavenly infusion.

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.

Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire spiritual calamity.

Preaching never edifies a prayerless soul.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use -- men of prayer, men mighty in 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.

We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him by brief repetitions that are requests for personal favors and nothing more.

A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. The age may be a better age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer.

Non-praying is lawlessness discord anarchy.

I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell and then running away as fast as he can go.

Men and women are needed whose prayers will give to the world the utmost power of God; who will make His promises to blossom with rich and full results. God is waiting to hear us and challenges us to bring Him to do this thing by our praying. He is asking us, to-day, as He did His ancient Israel, to prove Him now herewith." Behind God's Word is God Himself, and we read: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, his Maker: Ask of me of things to come and concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me." As though God places Himself in the hands and at the disposal of His people who pray - as indeed He does. The dominant element of all praying is faith, that is conspicuous, cardinal and emphatic. Without such faith it is impossible to please God, and equally impossible to pray.

Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God's footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.

Prayer like faith obtains promises enlarges their operation and adds to the measure of their results.

Prayer puts God's work in His hands-and keeps it there.

Long, discursive, dry, and inane are the prayers in many pulpits. Without unction or heart, they fall like a killing frost on all the graces of worship. Death-dealing prayers they are. Every vestige of devotion has perished under their breath. The deader they are the longer they grow.

Obedience is love, fulfilling every command, love expressing itself. Obedience, therefore, is not a hard demand made upon us, any more than is the service a husband renders his wife, or a wife renders her husband. Love delights to obey, and please whom it loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be exactions, but no irk. There are no impossible tasks for love.With what simplicity and in what a matter-of-fact way does the apostle John say: 'And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in his sight.

There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires listless efforts lazy attitudes all must be strenuous urgent ardent. Flamed desires impassioned unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.

If we would have God in the closet God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God but by living to God.

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.

Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails.

Pray for "all men." We usually pray more for things than we do for men. Our prayers should be thrown across their pathway as they rush in their downward course to a lost eternity.

Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things the simplest and the sublim-est the weakest and the most powerful its results lie outside the range of human possibilities-they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.

The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.

Our praying to be strong must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.

I feel it is far better to begin with God to see His face first to get my soul near Him before it is near another. In general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else.

The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.

Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit praying or quit bad conduct.

The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put in as we put flavor to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must be in the body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty, put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments of time which have been snatched from business and other engagements of life; but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and strength must be given.

Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us and lead us to lament its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our praying, henceforth, should be an expression of the soul's sincere desire.

Prayer is our most formidable weapon the thing which makes all else we do efficient.

It is hard to wait and press and pray and hear no voice but stay till God answers.

To say prayers in a decent delicate way is not heavy work. But to pray really to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke to pray till the iron gates of difficulty are opened till the mountains of obstacles are removed till the mists are exhaled and the clouds are lifted and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightens-this is hard work but it is God's work and man's best labor.

What a study in importunity, in earnestness, in persistence, promoted and propelled under conditions which would have disheartened any but a heroic, constant soul. [Jesus] teaches that an answer to prayer is conditional upon the amount of faith that goes to the petition. To test this, He delays the answer. the superficial pray-er subsides into silence, when thteanswer is delayed. But eh man of prayer hangs on, and on. The Lord recognizes and honors his faith, and gives him a rich and abundant answer to His faith evidencing, importunate prayer.

The ministry of prayer, if it be anything worthy of the name, is a ministry of ardor, a ministry of unwearied and intense longing after God and after his holiness.

The possibilities of prayer are found in its allying itself with the purposes of God for God's purposes and man's praying are the combination of all potent and omnipotent forces.

Trouble and prayer are closely related. . . . Trouble often drives men to God in prayer while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.

Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer.

Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter of prayer but a capacity for faith the power of a thorough consecration the ability of self-littleness an absolute losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still. He will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men.

Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it. Painstaking care much thought practice and labour are required to be a skillful tradesman in praying. Practice in this as well as in all other trades makes perfect.

Faith and hope and patience and all the strong beautiful vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer his personal salvation and personal Christian graces have their being bloom and fruitage in prayer.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. They outlive the lives of those who uttered them.

It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.

God's willingness to answer our prayers exceeds our willingness to give good and necessary things to our children just as far as God's ability goodness and perfection exceed our infirmities and evil.

By prayer the ability is secured to feel the law of love to speak according to the law of love and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.

Prayer honors God acknowledges His being exalts His power adores His providence secures His aid.

Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of the essence. The ability to wait, and stay, and press belongs essentially to our intercourse with God.

Public prayers of are of little value unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.

Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.

To him who prays, and as he prays, the hour is sacred because it is God's hour

The goal of prayer is the ear of God a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and continuous waiting upon Him pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and find that presence a constant and ever-increasing delight.

Importunity is a condition of prayer. We are to press the matter not with vain repetitions but with urgent repetitions. We repeat not to count the times but to gain the prayer. We cannot quit praying because heart and soul are in it. We pray "with all perseverance." We hang to our prayers because by them we live. We press our pleas because we must have them or die.

Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh and blood do not relish.