The Possibility of Prayer

Book excerpt: Pray, Pray and Pray some more! God loves it and the Devil hates it. E. M. Bounds offered perhaps a more profound understanding of prayer than any other contemporary Christian thinker. His classic books on the personal communication with God explore how prayer must come from the whole being and strengthens faith in Christian lives. It is through prayer that we share our thoughts and desires our father God. Doing good works, communion, church activities and the like, do not and should not replace prayer. Prayer must be a priority in our lives. "Prayer should be the breath of our breathing, the thought of our thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living, the sound of our hearing, the growth of our growing. Prayer in its magnitude is length without end, width without bounds, height without top, and depth without bottom. Illimitable in its breadth, exhaustless in height, fathomless in depths and infinite in extension." In The Possibilities of Prayer E. M. Bounds addresses; The Ministry of Prayer, Prayer and the Promises, Its Possibilities, Answered Prayer, Divine Providence and much more. 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. Bounds was a practicing lawyer at age nineteen and after three years, began preaching for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. At the time of his pastorate in Brunswick, Missouri, war was declared. Bounds became a prisoner of war after refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Federal Government. Upon release he served as chaplain of the Fifth Missouri regiment until the close of the war.