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E.M. Bounds

E.M. Bounds

E.M. Bounds (1835 - 1913)

Methodist minister and devotional writer, was born in Shelby County, Missouri. He spent the last 17 years of his life with his family in Washington, Georgia, writing his Spiritual Life Books. His burden was the neglect of prayer in the church and especially by ministers therefore his first book published was power through prayer which was originally published with the title: "The Pastor and Prayer."

Practiced law for three years until he was called to preach the gospel. While serving as chaplain during the Civil War, he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, Tennessee. After his release, he held several pastorates. His books on prayer have been continual best-sellers for over fifty years. Possibilities of Prayer.


Edward McKendree Bounds was a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and author of eleven books, nine of which focused on the subject of prayer.

Although apprenticed as an attorney, Bounds felt called to Christian ministry in his early twenties during the Third Great Awakening. Following a brush arbor revival meeting led by Evangelist Smith Thomas, he closed his law office and moved to Palmyra, Missouri to enroll in the Centenary Seminary. Two years later, in 1859 at the age of 24, he was ordained by his denomination and was named pastor of the nearby Monticello, Missouri Methodist Church.

He became a chaplain in the Confederate States Army (3rd Missouri Infantry CSA) During the First Battle of Franklin, Bounds suffered a severe forehead injury from a Union saber, and he was taken prisoner. On June 28, 1865, Bounds was among Confederate prisoners who were released upon the taking of an oath of loyalty to the United States.

According to people who were constantly with him, in prayer and preaching, for eight years "Not a foolish word did we ever hear him utter. He was one of the most intense eagles of God that ever penetrated the spiritual ether."

      "As breathing is a physical reality to us, so prayer was a reality for Bounds. He took the command, 'Pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17) almost as literally as nature takes the law that controls our breathing. He did not merely pray well that he might write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world were upon him. He prayed for long years, upon subjects that the easy going Christian rarely gives a thought, and for objects that men of less thought and faith are always ready to call impossible. From his solitary prayer vigils, year by year, there arose teaching equaled to few men in modern Christian history. He wrote transcendently about prayer, because he was himself transcendent in its practice." - Reverend Claude L. Chilton, minister and friend.

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Private place and plenty of time are the life of prayer.
topics: Prayer  
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Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.
topics: Prayer  
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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.
topics: Prayer , Sin  
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Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.
topics: Prayer , Holiness , Faith  
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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.
topics: Prayer , Holiness  
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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.
topics: Prayer , Faithful  
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Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.
topics: Prayer , Obedience , Men  
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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.
topics: Prayer  
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There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous, urgent, ardent. Flamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.
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It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.
topics: Prayer , Fire , The Heart  
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To say prayers in a decent, delicate way is not heavy work. But to pray really, to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke, to pray till the iron gates of difficulty are opened, till the mountains of obstacles are removed, till the mists are exhaled and the clouds are lifted, and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightens-this is hard work, but it is God's work, and man's best labor.
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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.
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Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God's footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.
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The possibilities of prayer are found in its allying itself with the purposes of God, for God's purposes and man's praying are the combination of all potent and omnipotent forces.
topics: Prayer  
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Prayer puts God's work in his hands-and keeps it there.
topics: Prayer  
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I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go.
topics: Prayer , Patience  
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It is hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God answers.
topics: Prayer , Patience  
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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.
topics: Prayer  
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Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities-they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.
topics: Prayer  
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Prayer, like faith, obtains promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their results.
topics: Prayer  
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