Edward McKendree Bounds

Edward McKendree Bounds
Edward McKendree Boundsprominently known as E.M. Bounds, was an American author, attorney, and member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South clergy. He is known for writing 11 books, nine of which focused on the subject of prayer. Only two of Bounds' books were published before he died. After his death, Rev. ClaudiusLysias Chilton, Jr., grandson of William Parish Chilton and admirer of Bounds, worked on preserving and preparing Bounds' collection of manuscripts for publication. By 1921, more editorial work was...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth15 August 1835
CountryUnited States of America
To give prayer the secondary place is to make God seconday in life's affairs.
No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.
Crucified preaching only can give life. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.
The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.
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.
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.
Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses...what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.
The strong argument for Heaven as a place centers in and clusters about Jesus. The man Jesus, bearing a man's form, the body He wore on earth, has a place assigned Him - a high place.
Prayer must be broad in its scope - it must plead for others. Intercession for others is the hallmark of all true prayer. When prayer is confined to self and to the sphere of one's personal needs, it dies by reason of its littleness, narrowness and selfishness.
Prayer lays hold upon God and influences Him to work. This is the meaning of prayer as it concerns God. This is the doctrine of prayer, or else there is nothing whatever in prayer.
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.
The preachers who gain mighty results for God are the men who have prevailed in their pleadings with God ere venturing to plead with men.
The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.
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.