E. M. Bounds

It (prayer) dispels frivolity and drives away all skin-deep forms of worship, and makes worship a serious and deep-seated service, impregnating body, soul, and spirit with its heavenly infusion.

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

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

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

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.

Prayer is our most formidable weapon the thing which makes all else we do efficient.

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.

Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things the simplest and the sublim-est the weakest and the most powerful its results lie outside the range of human possibilities-they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.

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.

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

Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God's footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Private place and plenty of time are the life of 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.