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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter of prayer; but a capacity for faith, the power of a thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God.
Prayer in Jesus' name puts the crowning crown on God, because it glorifies Him through the Son and it pledges the Son to give to men 'whatsoever and anything' they shall ask.
Prayer succeeds when all else fails
Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer.
Prayer is the greatest of all forces, because it honors God and brings him into active aid.
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.
Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.
Prayer is the highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious, the most powerful of all vocations.
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.