Prayer 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

God's cause is committed to men; God commits Himself to men. Praying men are the vice-regents of God; they do His work and carry out His plans. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him "the mind of Christ," the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Every mighty move of the Spirit of God has had its source in the prayer chamber. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Enthusiasm is more active than faith, though enthusiasm cannot remove mountains nor call into action any of the omnipotent forces which faith can command. Activity is often at the expense of more solid, useful elements, and generally to the total neglect of prayer. To be too busy with God's work to commune with God, to be busy with doing church work without taking time to talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The sanctity of prayer is needed to impregnate business. We need the spirit of Sunday carried over to Monday and continued until Saturday. But this cannot be done by prayerless men, but by men of prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God's saints have been held. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Four things let us ever keep in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom and fruitage in prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

A holy life does not live in the closet, but it cannot live without the closet. — Edward McKendree Bounds

God shapes the world by prayer. The prayers of God's saints are the capitol stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work upon the earth. — Edward McKendree 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

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Importunate praying is the earnest inward movement of the heart toward God. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer. Prayer is an appeal from the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency of heaven. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed to death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; they outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

While the pulpit must hold to its unswerving loyalty to the Word of God, it must, at the same time, be loyal to the doctrine of prayer which that same Word illustrates and enforces upon mankind. — Edward McKendree Bounds

It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. Had there been importunate, universal, and continuous prayer by God's people, long ere this the earth had been possessed for Christ. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer is no fitful, short-lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things. — Edward McKendree Bounds

No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The men to whom Jesus Christ committed the fortunes and destiny of His Church were men of prayer. To no other kind of men has God ever committed Himself in this world. — Edward McKendree 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

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

Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion. — Edward McKendree Bounds

We can learn more in an hour praying, when praying indeed, than from many hours of rigorous study. — Edward McKendree 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

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

We can do nothing without prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Praying gives sense, brings wisdom, and broadens and strengthens the mind. The prayer closet is a perfect schoolteacher and schoolhouse for the preacher. Thought is not only brightened and clarified in prayer, but thought is born in prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. — Edward McKendree Bounds

When trust is perfect and there is no doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand ready to receive. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long. — Edward McKendree Bounds

They are not leaders because of brilliancy ... but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God. — Edward McKendree Bounds

God is waiting to be put to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put to the test on His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to prove the reliability of His promises. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

God shapes the world by prayer. The more prayer there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces of against evil — Edward McKendree Bounds

The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional - the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations. — Geoffrey Wood

Prayer is the highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious, the most powerful of all vocations. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic prayer. Men of God, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth. — Edward McKendree Bounds

If prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules God out of the world's affairs and prevents Him from working. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil. — Edward McKendree Bounds

That man cannot possibly be called a Christian, who does not pray. — Edward McKendree Bounds

To give prayer the secondary place is to make God seconday in life's affairs. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer honors God, acknowledges His being, exalts His power, adores His providence, secures His aid. — Edward McKendree Bounds

A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds. — Saint Teresa Of Avila

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

No insistence in the Scripture is more pressing than that we must pray ... How clear it is, when the Bible is consulted, that the almighty God is brought directly into the things of this world by the prayers of His people. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Holy living is essential preparation for prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it. — 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 God's plan to supply man's great and continuous need with God's great and continuous abundance. — Edward McKendree Bounds

That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying. They are God heroes, God's saints, God's servants, God's vicegerents. — Edward McKendree Bounds

When we say that prayer puts God to work, it is simply to say that man has it in his power by prayer to move God to work in His own way among men, in which way He would not work if prayer was not made. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray. Prayers do not die, prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them. — Edward McKendree Bounds

We are feeble, weak and impoverished because of our failure to pray. God is restrained in doing because we are restrained by reason of our non-praying. All failures in securing heaven are traceable to lack of prayer or misdirected petition. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree 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

Woe to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich incense of prayer, whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their unhappy heritage. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Love is kindled in a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything rather than a feeble flame; but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals. True prayer must be aflame. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer-leadership preserves the spirituality of the Church, just as prayerless leaders make for unspiritual conditions. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Prayer should not be regarded as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

Prayer is a specific divine appointment, an ordinance of Heaven, whereby God purposes to carry out His gracious designs on earth and to execute and make efficient the plan of salvation. — Edward McKendree 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