Faith, and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God’s work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God’s work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. They outlive the lives of those who uttered them.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer, like faith, obtains promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their results.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Straight praying is never born of crooked conduct.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
I feel it is far better to begin with God, to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another. In general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer is our most formidable weapon; the thing which makes all else we do efficient.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
By prayer, the ability is secured to feel the law of love, to speak according to the law of love, and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Trouble and prayer are closely related … Trouble often drives men to God in prayer, while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be; the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
The goal of prayer is the ear of God, a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him, and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and find that presence a constant and ever-increasing delight.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer puts God’s work in His hands—and keeps it there.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer. It surmounts or removes all obstacles, overcomes every resisting force and gains its ends in the face of invincible hindrances.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
It is hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God answers.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Character
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.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Prayer honors God, acknowledges His being, exalts His power, adores His providence, secures His aid.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer, God
Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well pleasing to God.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.
—Edward McKendree Bounds
Topics: Prayer
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- E. Stanley Jones American Methodist Priest
- Charles L. Allen American Methodist Minister
- Adam Clarke British Methodist Scholar
- John Lancaster Spalding American Catholic Clergyman
- Thomas Merton American Trappist Monk
- William Sloane Coffin American Clergyman
- John Wesley British Methodist Religious Leader
- Frederick Buechner American Writer, Theologian
- William Laurence Sullivan American Unitarian Clergyman
- Phillips Brooks American Episcopal Clergyman
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