45 Quotes on Prayer – E.M. Bounds

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835–1913) is prominently known as E.M. Bounds. He was an author, attorney, and member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South clergy. 

Bounds wrote 14 books, and 9 of them are specifically focused on the subject of prayer. They include The Necessity of Prayer, The Possibilities of Prayer, The Reality of Prayer, The Weapon of Prayer, and The Essentials of Prayer. Only two of Bounds’ books were published before he passed away. 

Claude Chilton Jr. admired Bounds and worked on preserving and preparing Bounds’ collection of writings for publication. By 1921, Homer W. Hodge completed additional editorial work.

These books are filled with inspiration to pray and revelation of the power of prayer. Check out some of my favorite quotes about prayer.

E.M. Bounds Prayer Quotes

“Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life. It is failure of duty, service, and spiritual progress.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer must come first.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Praying women, whose prayers like those of Hannah, can give to the cause of God men like Samuel, do more for the Church and the world than all the politicians on earth.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Man must pray to God if love for God is to exist. Faith and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying. The days of God’s splendour and renown have always been the great days of prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer always carries us back to God.”
– E.M. Bounds

“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.”
– E.M. Bounds

“God’s movement to bring Israel from Egyptian bondage had its inception in prayer. Thus early did God and the human race put the fact of prayer as one of the granite forces upon which His world movements were to be based.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Whatever affects the intensity of our praying affects the value of our work.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Men born of prayer are the saviours of the state, and men saturated with prayer give life and impetus to the Church.”
– E.M. Bounds

“God works through the prayers of His people, and when they fail Him at this point, decline and deadness ensue.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Praying saints are God’s agents for carrying on His saving and providential work on earth.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh and blood do not relish.”
– E.M. Bounds

“The estimate and place of prayer is the estimate and place of God. To give prayer the secondary place is to make God secondary in life’s affairs. To substitute other forces for prayer, retires God and materializes the whole movement.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Satan has effectively disarmed us when he can keep us too busy doing things to stop and pray.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“If prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules God out of the world’s affairs, and prevents Him from working. And if prayer moves God to work in this world’s affairs, then prayerlessness excludes God from everything concerning men, and leaves man on earth the mere creature of circumstances, at the mercy of blind fate or without help of any kind from God.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Things legitimate and right may become wrong when they take the place of prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“In reality the denial of prayer is a denial of God Himself, for God and prayer are so inseparable that they can never be divorced.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Persevering prayer always wins.”
– E.M. Bounds

“He has ordained prayer as a means whereby He will do things through men as they pray, which He would not otherwise do.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer affects three different spheres of existence—the divine, the angelic and the human. It puts God to work, it puts angels to work, and it puts man to work.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer is but faith resting in, acting with, and leaning on and obeying God.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Not to pray is a denial of God, a denial of His existence, a denial of His nature, and a denial of His purposes toward mankind.”
– E.M. Bounds

“As praying men are a help to God, so prayerless men are a hindrance to Him.”
– E.M. Bounds

“No insistence in the Scriptures is more pressing than prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Having everything else and lacking prayer, they must fall. Having prayer and lacking all else, they can succeed.”
– E.M. Bounds

“In doing God’s work there is no substitute for praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Nothing is well done without prayer for the simple reason that it leaves God out of the account.”
– E.M. Bounds

“We are feeble, weak and impoverished because of our failure to pray.”
– E.M. Bounds

“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 must be broad and unselfish or it will perish.”
– E.M. Bounds

“No man is so high in position, or in grace, to be exempt from an obligation to pray. No man is too big to pray, no matter who he is, nor what office he fills. The king on his throne is as much obligated to pray as the peasant in his cottage. None is so high and exalted in this world or so lowly and obscure as to be excused from praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“These days of ours have sore need of a generation of praying men, a band of men and women through whom God can bring His great and His greatest movements more fully into the world.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Men of prayer are the only men who do or can represent God in this world.”
– E.M. Bounds

“The Church cannot be what God wants it to be until those of its members who are leaders in business, politics, law, and society, are leaders in prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“The best and the greatest offering which the Church and the ministry can make to God is an offering of prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“As every day demands its bread, so every day demands its prayer. No amount of praying, done today, will suffice for tomorrow’s praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer is absolutely dependent upon faith. Virtually, it has no existence apart from it, and accomplishes nothing unless it be its inseparable companion. Faith makes prayer effectual, and in a certain important sense, must precede it.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Public prayers of are of little value unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“The trust which inspires our prayer must be not only trust in the Person of God, and of Christ, but in their ability and willingness to grant the thing prayed for.”
– E.M. Bounds

“We ought to pray. The “ought” comes in, in order that both desire and expression be cultivated. God’s Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray — to pray whether we feel like it or not — and not to allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Prayer is not learned in a classroom but in the closet.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Fervourless prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life, must find place in all real praying.”
– E.M. Bounds

“Part of the blame lies at our door. If we do our part, God will do His. Around us is a world lost in sin, above us is a God willing and able to save; it is ours to build the bridge that links heaven and earth, and prayer is the mighty instrument that does the work.”
– E.M. Bounds