Edward McKendree Bounds Prayer Quotations

Prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying.

While the pulpit must hold to its unswerving loyalty to the Word of God, it must, at the same time, be loyal to the doctrine of prayer which that same Word illustrates and enforces upon mankind.

Prayer is a specific divine appointment, an ordinance of Heaven, whereby God purposes to carry out His gracious designs on earth and to execute and make efficient the plan of salvation.

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.

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 men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.

The ministry of prayer, if it be anything worthy of the name, is a ministry of ardor, a ministry of unwearied and intense longing after God and after his holiness.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer.

God is waiting to be put to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put to the test on His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to prove the reliability of His promises.

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.

Trust perfected is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless or that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So, what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.

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.

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.

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.

Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.

The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest.

If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.

Praying men must be strong in hope, and faith, and prayer.

It is hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God answers.

Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls.

Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God's saints have been held.

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.

The word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong.

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.

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.

When trust is perfect and there is no doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand ready to receive.

Praying gives sense, brings wisdom, and broadens and strengthens the mind. The prayer closet is a perfect schoolteacher and schoolhouse for the preacher. Thought is not only brightened and clarified in prayer, but thought is born in prayer.

The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray. Prayers do not die, prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them.

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.

Trouble and prayer are closely related. Trouble often drives men to God in prayer, while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.

Prayer honors God, acknowledges His being, exalts His power, adores His providence, secures His aid.

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.

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.

He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life. Satan had rather we let the grass grow on the path to our prayer chamber than anything else.

Prayer should not be regarded as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.

They are not leaders because of brilliancy. ...but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God.

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.

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.

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

Every mighty move of the Spirit of God has had its source in the prayer chamber.

The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need.

Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element in prayer.

We can learn more in an hour praying, when praying indeed, than from many hours of rigorous study.

Pray for 'all men.' We usually pray more for things than we do for men. Our prayers should be thrown across their pathway as they rush in their downward course to a lost eternity.

Four things let us ever keep in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer.

Importunate praying is the earnest inward movement of the heart toward God.

Public prayers are of little worth unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.

Prayer thrives in the atmosphere of true devotion.

The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy.

True praying has the largest results for good. Poor praying the least. We cannot do too much of real praying. We cannot do too little of the sham. If we would learn the wondrous power of prayer, we must not give a fragment here and there - A little talk with Jesus, as the tiny saintlets sing - but we must demand and hold with an iron grasp the best hours of the day for God and prayer, or there will be no praying worth the name.

A holy life does not live in the closet, but it cannot live without the closet.

The stream of praying cannot rise higher than the fountain of living.

Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.

It is true that Bible prayers in word and print are short, but the praying men of the Bible were with God through many a sweet and holy wrestling hour. They won by few words but long waiting.

Prayer is God's plan to supply man's great and continuous need with God's great and continuous abundance.

Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer. Prayer is an appeal from the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency of heaven.

That man cannot possibly be called a Christian, who does not pray.

The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.

Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer can move God

God shapes the world by prayer. The prayers of God's saints are the capitol stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work upon the earth.

Praying that does not result in right thinking and right living is a farce. We have missed the whole office of prayer if it fails to purge our character and correct conduct. We have failed entirely to understand the virtue of prayer, if it does not bring about the revolutionizing of life. In the very nature of tings, we must either quit praying or quit our bad conduct.

Mans access in prayer to God opens everything and makes his impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer.

Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.

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.

The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. They outlive the lives of those who uttered them.

In doing God's work, there is no substitute for praying. The men of prayer cannot be displaced with other kinds of men.

No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.

Enthusiasm is more active than faith, though enthusiasm cannot remove mountains nor call into action any of the omnipotent forces which faith can command. Activity is often at the expense of more solid, useful elements, and generally to the total neglect of prayer. To be too busy with God's work to commune with God, to be busy with doing church work without taking time to talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls.

Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him "the mind of Christ," the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying.

Prayer is far-reaching in its influence and worldwide in its effects. It affects all men, affects them everywhere, and affects them in all things. It touches man's interest in time and eternity. It lays hold upon God and moves Him to interfere in the affairs of earth. It moves the angels to minister to men in this life. It restrains and defeats the devil in his schemes to ruin man. Prayer goes everywhere and lays its hand upon everything.

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...

if the devil can get the church to withdraw from prayer by believing reasonable excuses, the church is under his dominion.

Prayer is not learned in a classroom but in the closet.

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.

Holy living is essential preparation for prayer.

We can do nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer. That is the teaching of Jesus Christ

God shapes the world by prayer. The more prayer there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces of against evil

The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer.

Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither can survive alone. The absence of the one is the absence of the other.

To give prayer the secondary place is to make God seconday in life's affairs.

No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.

No insistence in the Scripture is more pressing than that we must pray...How clear it is, when the Bible is consulted, that the almighty God is brought directly into the things of this world by the prayers of His people.

Walking with God down the avenue of prayer we acquire something of His likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His beauty and His grace.

Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.

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.

Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays through His people. Had there been importunate, universal, and continuous prayer by God's people, long ere this the earth had been possessed for Christ.

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.

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.

The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer.

Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.

Prayer puts God's work in his hands-and keeps it there.

It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing.

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.

A life growing in its purity and devotion will be a more prayerful life.

Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing.

There is power through prayer. For many Christians, prayer is nothing special, just something we're supposed to do - go to church, tithe, read the Bible, pray. But prayer should be so much more than an item on our "to do" lists.

The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil.

Prayer, like faith, obtains promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their results.