THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER By E. M. Bounds

 

 

• Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God

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• Prayer is absolutely dependent upon faith. Faith makes prayer effectual, and in a certain important sense, must precede it.

 

• Faith makes prayer strong and gives it patience to wait on God. Faith believes that God is a rewarder.

• Faith rests its case on diligence in prayer and gives assurance and encouragement to diligent seekers after God, for it is they, alone, who are richly rewarded when they pray.

• faith is the final, the one indispensable condition of true praying. 

 

• Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire.

• Prayer comes out into the open. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire, unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words.

• True prayer must be aflame. Christian life and character need to be all on fire. Lack of spiritual heat creates more infidelity than lack of faith.

• This flame is not mental vehemence nor fleshly energy It is a divine fire in the soul, intense, dross consuming-the very essence of the Spirit of God.

• Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

• Ardent desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination, but a strong yearning, an unquenchable ardor, which impregnates, glows, burns, and fixes the heart. it is the flame of a present and active principle mounting up to God. It is ardor propelled by desire, that burns its way to the throne of mercy, and gains its plea. It is the pertinacity of desire that gives triumph to the conflict, in a great struggle of prayer.

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• Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.

• Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that prevaileth.

• By flame prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, nor noise.

 

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• God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire. To be absorbed in God's will is to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire, as the qualifying condition of the man who would engage in effectual prayer.

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• Fervency in prayer is the precursor of what God will do by way of answer. God stands pledged to give us the desire of our hearts in proportion to the fervency of spirit we exhibit, when seeking his face in prayer.

• Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in the intellectual faculties of the mind.

• Importunate prayer is a mighty movement of the soul toward God. It is a stirring of the deepest forces of the soul, toward the throne of heavenly grace. It is the ability to hold on, press on, and wait. Restless desire, restful patience, and strength of grasp are all embraced in it. It is not an incident or a performance, but a passion of the soul. It is not a want, half-needed, but a sheer necessity.

 

• The wrestling quality in importunate prayer is an inwrought force, a faculty implanted and aroused by the Holy Spirit. Virtually, it is the intercession of the Spirit of God, in us.

 

• Prayer is the expression of a relation to God, a yearning for divine communion. it is the outward and upward flow of the inward life toward its original fountain. It is an assertion of the soul's paternity, a claiming of the sonship, which links man to the eternal.

• prayer is the only way in which the soul of man can enter into fellowship and communion with the source of all Christlike spirit and energy.

 

• God finds faith in his praying child-the faith which stays and cries-and he honors it by permitting its further exercise, to the end that it is strengthened and enriched. Then he rewards it by granting the burden of its plea, in plenitude and finality.

 

 

• He teaches, moreover, 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 prayer subsides into silence when the answer is delayed. But the 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.

•  prevailing prayer must have in it the quality which waits and perseveres, the courage that never surrenders, the patience which never grows tired, the resolution that never wavers.

• Importunity is made up of intensity, perseverance, patience, and persistence.

• PRAYER governs conduct, and conduct makes character. Conduct is what we do; character is what we are. Conduct is the outward life. Character is the life unseen, hidden within, yet evidenced by that which is seen. Conduct is external, seen from without; character is internal operating within. In the economy of grace conduct is the offspring of character. Character is the state of the heart, conduct its outward expression. Character is the root of the tree, conduct, the fruit it bears.

• . Prayer and sinning cannot keep company with each other. One or the other must of necessity stop. Get men to pray, and they will quit sinning, because prayer creates a distaste for sinning, and so works upon the heart, that evildoing becomes repugnant, and the entire nature is lifted to a reverent contemplation of high and holy things.

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• Obedience, moreover, is faith in action and is the outflow as it is the very test of love.

• Obedience opens the gates of the holy city and gives access to the tree of life.

• What is obedience? It is doing God's will: it is keeping his commandments. 

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•  Obedience to God is the same quality as obedience to earthly parents. It implies, in general effect, the giving up of one's own way, and following that of another; the surrendering of the will to the will of another; the submission of oneself to the authority and requirements of a parent. 

• Love delights to obey, and please whom it loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be exactions but no irk. There are no impossible tasks for love.

• Far be it from our heavenly Father, to demand impossibilities of his children. It is possible to please him in all things, for he is not hard to please.

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  Obedience follows love, and prayer follows obedience.

• Cheerful obedience to God, qualifies us to pray effectually.

• Behind the praying must be the doing, and it is the constant doing of God's will in daily life which gives prayer its potency, as our Lord plainly taught:

• If prayer does not inspire, sanctify and direct our work, then self-will enters, to ruin both work and worker.

• Faith, in its highest form, is the attitude, as well as the act of a soul, surrendered to God, in whom his Word and his Spirit dwells.

• Faith is the fruit of prayer.

• Prayer and faith, work, act and react, one upon the other.

The difficulty in prayer is not with faith, but with obedience, which is faith's foundation.

 

The life, power, and glory of the church is prayer. The life of its members is dependent on prayer and the presence of God is secured and retained by prayer. The very place is made sacred by its ministry. Without it, the church is lifeless and powerless.

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