E. M. Bounds Quotes & Sayings

Prayer gives us eyes to see God. Prayer is seeing God. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

To him who prays, and as he prays, the hour is sacred because it is God's hour — E. M. Bounds

Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by supplication and prayer, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. That is the Divine cure for all fear, anxiety, and undue concern of soul, all of which are closely akin to doubt and unbelief. — E. M. Bounds

Prayers are deathless. They outlive the lives of those who uttered them. — E. M. Bounds

It is neither words, nor thoughts nor ideas, nor feelings, which shape praying, but character and conduct. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

To men who think prayer their main business and devote time to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit the keys of His kingdom, and by them does He work His spiritual wonders in this world — E. M. Bounds

Nothing is well done without prayer for the simple reason that it leaves God out of the account. — E. M. Bounds

When thou feelest thyself most indisposed to prayer yield not to it, but strive and endeavor to pray even when thou thinkest thou canst not pray. - Hildersam — E. M. Bounds

Prayer can do anything that God can do. The pity is that we do not believe this as we ought, and we do not put it to the test. — E. M. Bounds

Another scheme of Satan is to eliminate from the church all the humble, self-denying ordinances that are offensive to unsanctified tastes and unregenerate hearts. He seeks to reduce the church to a mere human institution - popular, natural, fleshly, and pleasing. — E. M. Bounds

Luther's maxim, To have prayed well is to have studied well. — E. M. Bounds

A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

WE are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. 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. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. — E. M. Bounds

He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life. Other — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

True prayers are born of present trials and present needs. Bread for today is bread enough. Bread given for today is the strongest sort of pledge that there will be bread tomorrow. Victory today is the assurance of victory tomorrow. Our prayers need to be focused upon the present. We must trust God today, and leave the morrow entirely with Him. The present is ours; the future belongs to God. Prayer is the task and duty of each recurring day
daily prayer for daily needs. — E. M. Bounds

Preaching never edifies a prayerless soul. — E. M. Bounds

The preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as essential as food is to life. — E. M. Bounds

The Word of God is the fulcrum upon which the lever of prayer is placed, and by which things are mightily moved. — E. M. Bounds

Let all the present day praying be measured by these standards "Pouring out the soul before God," and "Seeking with all the heart, — E. M. Bounds

When faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live. — E. M. Bounds

It is not by the obvious works of evil that Satan perverts the church, but by quiet displacement and unnoticed substitution. — E. M. Bounds

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

The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. 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. — E. M. Bounds

Praying men are a necessity in carrying out the divine plan for the salvation of men. — E. M. Bounds

Thanksgiving is oral, positive, active. It is the giving out of something to God. Thanksgiving comes out into the open. Gratitude is secret, silent, negative, passive, not showing its being till expressed in praise and thanksgiving. Gratitude is felt in the heart. Thanksgiving is the expression of that inward feeling. — E. M. Bounds

according to the Revised Version, that petition of conflict, peril, warning, and safety is, "Deliver us from the Evil One." Evil is comparatively harmless, feeble and inert without the presence of its mighty inspirer. Deliverance from the devil is deliverance from the many evils of which he is the source and inspiration. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

Prayer is the greatest of all forces, because it honors God and brings Him into active aid. — E. M. Bounds

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all! — E. M. Bounds

Short devotions are the bane of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry. — E. M. Bounds

Prayer is the condition by which all foes are to be overcome and all the inheritance is to be possessed. — E. M. Bounds

The great power and malignity of Satan is seen in that among the most distressing cases were those who were not noted for great sins, but the young and comparative innocent ones were the victims of his dread power. — E. M. Bounds

God shapes the world by prayer. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

No more fatal or deadly symptom can be seen in a church than this transference of its strength from spiritual to material forces, from the Holy Ghost to the world. The power of God in the Church is the measure of its strength and is the estimate which God puts on it, and not the estimate the world puts on it. — E. M. Bounds

Prayer has to do with the entire man. Prayer takes in man in his whole being, mind, soul and body. — E. M. Bounds

Our ability to stay with God in our closet measures our ability to stay with God out of the closet. — E. M. Bounds

While Jesus Christ practiced praying Himself, being personally under the law of prayer, and while His parables and miracles were but exponents of prayer, He laboured directly to teach His disciples the specific art of praying. He said little or nothing about how to preach or what to preach. But He spent His strength and time in teaching men how to speak to God, how to commune with Him, and how to be with Him. — E. M. Bounds

God can even affect the mind of a heathen ruler, and this he can do in answer to prayer without in the least overturning his free agency or forcing his will. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

Prayer is the outstretched arms of the child for the Father's help. — E. M. Bounds

Washington, Ga, July 1, 1912: Pray more and more; keep at the four a.m. hour. God will be for it; the devil against it. Press on, you can't pray too much, you may pray too little. The devil will compromise with you to pray as the common standard, on going to bed, and a little prayer in the monring. Hell will be full if we don't do better for God than that. Pray, pray, pray, pray always, rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. — E. M. Bounds

The preacher must have, bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, independent bearing, with the simplicity and sweetness of a child. — E. M. Bounds

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. — E. M. Bounds

Whatever affects the intensity of our praying affects the value of our work. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

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. — E. M. Bounds

Our praying needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage that never fails. — E. M. Bounds

The law of prayer, the right to pray, rests on sonship. — E. M. Bounds

The preaching of the Word to a prayerless congregation falls at the very feet of the preacher. — E. M. Bounds

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