This time we dive back into the article archives and still find fresh the prayer insights from E.M.Bounds. He explores the central role of prayer in the Christian life, emphasizing that prayer has been the peculiar distinction of all of God’s saints. This has been the secret of their power. The energy and the soul their work has been the closet.

Christians Need God’s Help

The need of help being so great, our natural inability to always judge kindly, justly, and truly, and to act the Golden Rule, so prayer is needed to enable us to act in all these things according to the Lord’s will. By prayer, we are able 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.

God can help us. God is a Father. We need God’s good things to help us to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. We need Divine aid to act brotherly, wisely, and nobly, and to judge truly and charitably.

God’s help to do all these things in God’s way is secured by prayer. Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.

In other words, Bounds is saying we need help, God is our helper, and we need to continually ask him for his help. This is why we pray. Prayer enables believers to act according to the will and word of God, particularly in following the law of love and treating others with grace and kindness.

Continue In Prayer

In Romans 12, Paul writes “of Christian graces and duties, in the middle which we writes be constant in prayer, as if these rich and rare graces and unselfish duties had for their center and source the ability to pray.”

In Colossians, Paul uses the word again, Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving. The word means: strong, to stay, hold fast, persevere and give constant attention to.

In Acts, chapter six, it is translated Give ourselves continually to prayer. It means giving marked attention to and deep concern to a thing.

Prayer, says Bounds, “is to be incessant, without intermission, with the spirit and the life always in the attitude of prayer. The knees may not be bended, the lips may not always be vocal, but the spirit is always in the act of prayer.”

Without intermission, and incessantly, describe “an opulence,” and “energy, and unabated and ceaseless strength and fullness of effort” on our part. This is a continual spiritual attitude even when not physically praying.

Christ The Intercessor

Jesus is the all powerful Intercessor, he is “the Christ of prayer, offering prayers and supplications, seeking silence and solitude and darkness that He might pray unheard and unwitnessd, save by heaven, in His wrestling agony, for man with God.”

Says Bounds, Jesus ever lives, “enthroned above at the Father’s right hand, there to pray for us!”

Then how truly does the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, represent Jesus as the Christ of Prayer! The Divine Comforter puts into human hearts the burden of earth’s almighty need, and makes the human lips give voice to its mute and unutterable groanings.

God’s Holy Spirit works within believers to align our prayers with God’s will, creating a divine partnership in prayer ministry. He quiets all the self-will, until “in will, in brain, and in heart and by mouth, we pray only what he prays: Making intercession for the saints, according to the will of God.”

This is the divine ministry of prayer.

It is our privilege to be partnered with Christ, joined with Him and serving in such a way. This prayer-partnership is the secret of the power of God’s people; is it the essential means by which believers receive divine help to live righteously, access God's power, and partner with Christ in interceding for others according to God's will.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

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