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BouPur
06-2-21 PURPOSE IN PRAYER
E. M. Bounds |
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E. M. Bounds (1835-1913) practiced law before he entered the ministry. His books on prayer have become spiritual classics. “God shapes the world by prayer.” (9) “Prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.” (9) “The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock in heaven by which Christ carries on His great work upon earth.” (10) “Ask of me is the one condition God puts in the very advance and triumph of His cause.” (11) “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance....” (Ps 2) “The secret of success in Christ’s Kingdom is the ability to pray.” “The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray.” (12) “The prayer of faith is the only power in the universe to which the Great Jehovah yields. Prayer is the sovereign remedy. – Robert Hall.” (13) “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” (20, quoting Dr. A. J. Gordon) “The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer.” (20) “The forces of good and evil are contending for the world.” “Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays through His people.” (29) “We do more of everything else than of praying.” (29) “Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:2,3) “That is the whole truth in a nutshell.” (31) Of C. H. Spurgeon, “He lived in constant fellowship with his Father in Heaven. He was ever in touch with God, and thus it was as natural for him to pray as it was for him to breathe.” (33) Written of Martin Luther’s praying, “I cannot enough admire the extraordinary, cheerfulness, constancy, faith and hope of the man in these trying and vexatious times.” (37) “I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God.” (40) “Walking with God down the avenues of prayer we acquire something of His likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His beauty and His grace.” (42) “I purpose to take occasion of praying upon the sight of any church which I may pass, that God may be worshipped there in spirit, and that souls may be saved there....” (43) “Prayer with so many of us is simply a form of selfishness; it means asking for something for ourselves—that and nothing more.” (44) “This is not a praying age; it is an age of great activity, of great movements, but one in which the tendency is very strong to stress the seen and the material and to neglect and discount the unseen and the spiritual.” (47) Prayer is the greatest of all forces, because it honours God and brings Him into active aid.” (48) “We cannot run our spiritual operations on the prayers of the past generation.” (47) “Prayer is our most formidable weapon, but the one in which we are the least skilled, the most averse to its use.” (48) “The first and last stages of holy living are crowned with praying. It is a life trade.” (48) “We are in danger of substituting churchly work and a ceaseless round of showy activities for prayer and holy living. A holy life does not live in the [prayer] closet, but it cannot live without the closet.” (49) “None but praying leaders can have praying followers.” “The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles, who can set the Church to praying.” (51) “Prayer is not the foe to work, it does not paralyze activity. It works mightily; prayer itself is the greatest work.” (52) “The [prayer] closet...is the battlefield of the Church; its citadel; the scene of heroic and unearthly conflicts.” (52) “Men ought to pray much and apply themselves to it with energy and perseverance.” “The deep things of God are learned nowhere else.” (53) “Christ puts importunity as a distinguishing characteristic of true praying. We must not only pray, but we must pray with great urgency, with intentness and with repetition.” (55) [referring to the importunate widow] “The secret of prayer and its success lie in its urgency. We must press our prayers upon God.” (55) “We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer.” (57) “Prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude of a wrestler with God.” (58) “God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts.” (59) [referring to Jacob] “Pray and never faint, is the motto Christ gives us for praying.” (60) “Asking is the rule of the Kingdom.” (quoting Spurgeon) “Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer.” (62) “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” (Jesus) “The always speaks for itself.” “Intimacy requires development.” (65) “Always is never out of conscious touch with the Father.” (66) “The Gospel cannot live, fight, conquer without prayer—prayer unceasing, instant and ardent.” (72) “Secret praying is the test, the gauge, the conserver of man’s relation to God.” (74) “If there be anything I do, if there be anything I leave undone, let me be perfect in prayer. After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing.” Henry Martyn (76) “The great business of praying is a hurried, petty, starved, beggarly business with most men.” “Put the men to praying, then politics will be cleansed, business will be thriftier, the Church will be holier, the home will be sweeter.” (77) “Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God’s work.” “Prayer succeeds when all else fails.” (79) “Praying men are the safety of the Church from the materialism that is affecting all its plans and polity, and which is hardening its life-blood. The insinuation circulates as a secret, deadly poison that the Church is not so dependent on purely spiritual forces as it used to be—that changed times and changed conditions have brought it out of its spiritual straits and dependencies and put it where other forces can bear it to its climax. A fatal snare of this kind has allured the Church into worldly embraces, dazzled her leaders, weakened her foundations, and shorn her of much of her beauty and strength. Praying men are the saviours of the Church from this material tendency. (81) “We can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord unless we follow His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.” (93) “The possibilities of prayer run parallel with the promises of God.” “God’s purposes and man’s praying are the combination of all potent and omnipotent forces.” (97) “Prayer puts God in the matter with commanding force.” “We are charged in God’s Word ‘always to pray,’ ‘in everything by prayer,’ ‘continuing instant in prayer,’ to ‘pray everywhere,’ ‘praying always.’” (100) “The men who have done mighty things of God have always been mighty in prayer, have well understood the possibilities of prayer, and made most of these possibilities.” (102) “When prayer fails, the world prevails.” (103) “He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life.” (105) “A holy life is the only preparation for prayer.” (108) “We pray feebly because we live feebly.” (113) “The conditions of prayer are well ordered and clear—abiding in Christ; in His name.” (116) “The deepest need of the Church today is not for any material or external thing, but the deepest need is spiritual. Prayerless work will never bring in the kingdom.” (A. J. Gordon) “Prayer is the helpless and needy child crying to the compassion of the Father’s heart and the bounty and power of a Father’s hand.” (123) “As workers together with God we must regard the conditions which prevail around us today.” “Part of the blame lies at our door. If we do our part, God will do His. Around us is a world lost in sin, above us is a God willing and able to save; it is ours to build the bridge that links heaven and earth, and prayer is the mighty instrument that does the work.” (155) * * * * * |
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