Edward M. Bounds

“ It takes prayer to minister. It takes life, the highest form of life, to minister. Prayer is the highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious, the most powerful of all vocations. It is life, radiant, transporting, eternal life. Away with dry forms, with dead, cold habits of prayer! Away with sterile routine, with senseless performances and petty playthings in prayer! Let us get at the serious work, the chief business of men, that of prayer. Let us work at it skillfully. Let us seek to be adepts in this great work of praying. ”

“ Prayer is the child’s request, not to the winds nor to the world, but to the Father. Prayer is the outstretched arms of the child for the Father’s help. Prayer is the child’s cry calling to the Father’s ear, the Father’s heart, and to the Father’s ability, which the Father is to hear, the Father is to feel, and which the Father is to relieve. Prayer is the seeking of God’s great and greatest good, which will not come if we do not pray.
Prayer is an ardent and believing cry to God for some specific thing. God’s rule is to answer by giving the specific thing asked for. ”

“ Let us be master-workmen, in this high art of praying. Let us be so in the habit of prayer, so devoted to prayer, so filled with its rich spices, so ardent by its holy flame, that all Heaven and earth will be perfumed by its aroma, and nations yet in the womb will be blest by our prayers. Heaven will be fuller and brighter in glorious inhabitants, earth will be better prepared for its bridal day, and hell robbed of many of its victims, because we have lived to pray. ”

“ All that God has lies open to Christ through prayer. All that Christ has lies open to us through prayer.
If we have the two Christs covering the whole realm of goodness, power, purity and glory, in Heaven and on earth—if we have the better Christ with us here in this world—why is it that we sigh to know the Christ after the flesh as the disciples knew Him? Why is it that the mighty work of these two Almighty Intercessors finds us so barren of Heavenly fruit, so feeble in all Christly principles, so low in the Christly life, and so marred in the Christly image? ”

“ He taught Paul how to pray by the revelation of Himself, which is the first call to prayer, and the first lesson in praying. Prayer, like love, is too ethereal and too heavenly to be held in the gross arms of chilly definitions. It belongs to Heaven, and to the heart, and not to words and ideas only.
Prayer is no petty invention of man, a fancied relief for fancied ills. Prayer is no dreary performance, dead and death-dealing, but is God’s enabling act for man, living and life-giving, joy and joy-giving. Prayer is the contact of a living soul with God. ”

“ The possibilities of prayer are found in the illimitable promise, the willingness and the power of God to answer prayer, to answer all prayer, to answer every prayer, and to supply fully the illimitable need of man. None are so needy as man, none are so able and anxious to supply every need and any need as God.
Preaching should no more fully declare and fulfill the will of God for the salvation of all men, than should the prayers of God’s saints declare the same great truth, as they wrestle in their closet for this sublime end. God’s heart is set on the salvation of all men. ”

“ PRAYER AND THE HOLY GHOST DISPENSATION How God needs, how the world needs, how the Church needs the flow of the mighty river, more blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader and more overflowing than the Amazon’s mighty current! and yet what mere rills we are! We need, the age needs, the Church needs, memorials of God’s mighty power, which will silence the enemy and the avenger, dumbfound God’s foes, strengthen weak saints, and fill strong ones with triumphant raptures. ”

“ GOD HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH PRAYER Christ is all. We are complete in Him. He is the answer to every need, the perfect Savior. He needs no decoration to heighten His beauty, no prop to increase His stability, no girding to perfect His strength. Who can gild refined gold, whiten the snow, perfume the rose or heighten the colors of the summer sunset? Who will prop the mountains or help the great deep? ”

“ Through many an hour of darkness and of hell’s power, through many a sore conflict with the prince of this world, by drinking many a bitter cup, we are to be made perfect. To cry out against the terrific and searching flame of the crucible of a Father’s painful processes is natural and is no sin, if there be perfect acquiescence in the answer to our prayer, perfect submission to God’s will, and perfect devotion to His glory. ”

“ Happy Peter, to have such an one as the Son of God to pray for him! Unhappy Peter, to be so in the toils of Satan as to demand so much of Christ’s solicitude! How intense are the demands upon our prayers for some specific cases! Prayer must be personal in order to be to the fullest extent beneficial. Peter drew on Christ’s praying more than any other disciple because of his exposure to greater perils. Pray for the most impulsive, the most imperilled ones by name. Our love and their danger give frequency, inspiration, intensity and personality to praying. ”

“ By prayer God’s kingdom comes. By prayer is His kingdom established in power and made to move with conquering force swifter than the light. By prayer God’s will is done till earth rivals Heaven in harmony and beauty. By prayer daily toil is sanctified and enriched, and pardon is secured, and Satan is defeated. Prayer concerns God, and concerns man in every way.
God has nothing too good to give in answer to prayer. There is no vengeance pronounced by God so dire which does not yield to prayer. There is no justice so flaming that is not quenched by prayer. ”

“ Men are to always pray for it. Its strength, beauty and aggression lie in their prayers. Its power lies simply in its power to pray. No power is found elsewhere but in its ability to pray. “For my house shall be called the house of prayer for all people.” It is based on prayer, and carried on by the same means.
Prayer is a privilege, a sacred, princely privilege. Prayer is a duty, an obligation most binding, and most imperative, which should hold us to it. But prayer is more than a privilege, more than a duty. ”

“ It is serious, difficult work, the manliest, the mightiest work, the divinest work which man can do. Prayer lifts men out of the earthliness and links them with the heavenly. Men are never nearer Heaven, nearer God, never more God-like, never in deeper sympathy and truer partnership with Jesus Christ, than when praying. Love, philanthropy, holy affiances,—all of them helpful and tender for men—are born and perfected by prayer. ”

“ If no man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Spirit’s help; for the much greater reason can no man pray save by the aid of God’s Spirit. Our mother’s lips, now sealed by death, taught us many sweet lessons of prayer; prayers which have bound and held our hearts like golden threads; but these prayers, flowing through the natural channel of a mother’s love, can not serve the purposes of our manhood’s warring, stormy life. These maternal lessons are but the A B C of praying. For the higher and graduating lessons in prayer we must have the Holy Spirit. ”

“ Promise is like the unsown seed, the germ of life in it, but the soil and culture of prayer are necessary to germinate and culture the seed. Prayer is God’s life-giving breath. God’s purposes move along the pathway made by prayer to their glorious designs. God’s purposes are always moving to their high and benignant ends, but the movement is along the way marked by unceasing prayer. The breath of prayer in man is from God. ”

“ We often end praying just where we ought to begin. We quit praying when God waits and is waiting for us to really pray. We are deterred by obstacles from praying, or we succumb to difficulties, and call it submission to God’s will. A world of beggarly faith, of spiritual laziness, and of half-heartedness in prayer, are covered under the high and pious name of submission. To have no plan but to seek God’s plan and carry it out, is of the essence and inspiration of Christly praying. ”

“ How He takes it out of the sphere of a mere performance, and makes its virtue to consist, not in the mere act of praying, but in the spirit which actuates us toward men. Our spirit toward folks is of the life of prayer. We must be at peace with men, and, if possible, have them at peace with us, before we can be at peace with God. Reconciliation with men is the forerunner of reconciliation with God. Our spirit and words must embrace men before they can embrace God. Unity with the brotherhood goes before unity with God. ”

“ Intelligence of the highest order approves prayer. He is the wisest man who prays the most and the best. Prayer is the school of wisdom as well as of piety.
Prayer is not a picture to handle, to admire, to look at. It is not beauty, coloring, shape, attitude, imagination, or genius. These things do not pertain to its character or conduct. It is not poetry nor music. Its inspiration and melody come from Heaven. Prayer belongs to the spirit, and at times it possesses the spirit and stirs the spirit with high and holy purposes and resolves. ”

“ Praying is the best school in which to learn to pray, prayer the best dictionary to define the art and nature of praying.
We repeat and reiterate. Prayer is not a mere habit, riveted by custom and memory, something which must be gone through with, its value depending upon the decency and perfection of the performance. Prayer is not a duty which must be performed, to ease obligation and to quiet conscience. Prayer is not mere privilege, a sacred indulgence to be taken advantage of, at leisure, at pleasure, at will, and no serious loss attending its omission. ”

“ To pray in conformity with God’s will was the life and law of Christ. The same was law of His praying. Conformity, to live one with God, is a far higher and diviner life than to live simply in submission to God. To pray in conformity—together with God—is a far higher and diviner way to pray than mere submission. At its best state, submission is non-rebellion, an acquiescence, which is good, but not the highest. The most powerful form of praying is positive, aggressive, mightily outgoing and creative. It molds things, changes things and brings things to pass. ”

“ A glance at some more of the Divine promises concerning this vital question would show us how they need to be projected into the experimental and the actual. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself.” How we do need a conscious religion, personal and vital, unspeakable in its joy, and full of glory! The need is for a conscious religion, made so by the Spirit bearing witness that we are the children of God. A religion of “I know” is the only powerful, vital and aggressive religion. ”

“ Solemnity and gravity become the hour of prayer. It has been well said: “The worshipper who invokes God under the name of Father and realises the gracious and beneficent love of God, must at the same time remember and recognise God’s glorious majesty, which is neither annulled nor impaired, but rather supremely intensified through His fatherly love. An appeal to God as Father, if not associated with reverence and homage before the Divine Majesty, would betray a want of understanding of the character of God.” ”

“ A synopsis of His teaching and practice of prayer was that “Men ought always to pray and not to faint.”
As the Jews prayed in the name of their patriarchs and invoked the privileges granted to them by covenant with God; as we have a new Name and a new covenant, more privileged and more powerful and more all-comprehensive, more authoritative and more Divine; and as far as the Son of God is lifted above the patriarchs in divinity, glory and power, by so much should our praying exceed theirs in range of largeness, glory and power of results. ”

“ One of the great purposes of God in His book is to impress upon us indelibly the great importance, the priceless value, and the absolute necessity of asking God for the things which we need for time and eternity. He urges us by every consideration, and presses and warns us by every interest. He points us to His own Son, turned over to us for our good, as His pledge that prayer will be answered, teaching us that God is our Father, able to do all things for us and to give all things to us, much more than earthly parents are able or willing to do for their children. ”

“ Living always the life of prayer, breathing always the spirit of prayer, being always in the fact of prayer, praying always in the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Christ would become ours by a clearer vision, a deeper love, and a more intimate fellowship than He was to His disciples in the days of His flesh. ”

“ The Holy Spirit is not only the bright lamp of the Christian Dispensation, its Teacher and Guide, but is the Divine Helper.
He is the enabling agent in God’s new dispensation of doing. As the pilot takes his stand at the wheel to guide the vessel, so the Holy Ghost takes up His abode in the heart to guide and empower all its efforts. The Holy Ghost executes the whole gospel through the man by His presence and control of the spirit of the man. ”

“ God gave us all things in prayer by promise because He had given us all things in His Son. Amazing gift—His Son! Prayer is as illimitable as His own Blessed Son. There is nothing on earth nor in Heaven, for time or eternity, that God’s Son did not secure for us. By prayer God gives us the vast and matchless inheritance which is ours by virtue of His Son. God charges us to “come boldly to the throne of grace.” God is glorified and Christ is honoured by large asking. ”

“ Christ was the greatest of pray-ers because He was the holiest of men. His character is the praying character. His spirit is the life and power of prayer. He is not the best pray-er who has the greatest fluency, the most brilliant imagination, the richest gifts, and the most fiery ardour, but he who has imbibed most of the spirit of Christ. ”