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
Preaching is God's great institution for the planting and maturing of spiritual life. When properly executed, its benefits are untold. When wrongly executed, no evil can exceed its damaging results.
We can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord unless we follow His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.
Prayer is the lungs through which holiness breathes. Prayer is not only the language of spiritual life, but also makes its very essence and forms its real character. O for a faith that will not shrink though pressed by every foe; That will not tremble on the brink of any earthly woe. Lord, give us such a faith as this... whatever may come...
Every mighty move of the Spirit of God has had its source in the prayer chamber.
Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual calamity.
The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified, and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.
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.
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.