E. M. Bounds was an attorney who sensed God calling him to ministry after only three years in the legal practice. Consequently, he served as a Confederate chaplain during the American Civil War and a pastor at churches across the South before settling in Washington, Georgia, for a fruitful writing ministry. His works on prayer have become legendary for their spiritual insight.
This passage is drawn from his 1906 book Power through Prayer. It explains that a holy Church and an effective ministry depend on prayer.
A holy life would not be so rare or so difficult a thing if our devotions were not so short and hurried. A Christly temper in its sweet and passionless fragrance would not be so alien and hopeless a heritage if our closet [prayer room]1 stay were lengthened and intensified. We live shabbily because we pray meanly. Plenty of time to feast in our closets will bring marrow and fatness to our lives. Our ability to stay with God in our closet measures our ability to stay with God out of the closet …
There are plenty of preachers who will preach and deliver great and eloquent addresses on the need of revival and the spread of the kingdom of God, but not many there are who will do that without which all preaching and organizing are worse than vain—pray. It is out of date, almost a lost art, and the greatest benefactor this age could have is the man who will bring the preachers and the Church back to prayer.2
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Endnotes
1 Matthew 6:6
2 E. M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (1906), available at Christian Classics Ethereal Library Website, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XIX.html (accessed December 11, 2014).
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