Empowered Christians: Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913)

The Priority of Prayer

E.M. Bounds was born in Shelby County, Missouri where he later practiced law for a few years before responding to the call to preach the gospel. After attending a brush arbor revival meeting, he closed his law office and moved to Palmyra, Missouri to enroll in seminary. Two years later, he was ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church South. 

Bounds did not support slavery, but because he was a pastor in the M.E.C. South, his name was included in a list of people who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the federal government. As a result, he was held as a non-combatant in a Federal prison in St. Louis for a year and a half before being transferred to Memphis. He later secured his release and after the war pastored churches in Tennessee and Alabama. In 1875 he became pastor of St. Paul Methodist Church in St. Louis, where he served for four years. 

Bounds was a deep thinker and successful writer. He spent the last 17 years of his life in Georgia with his family, reading, writing, and praying for countless hours each day. 

Prayer was a central focus of his writing and he believed it should be the central focus of the Christian Church,

“What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use - men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men - men of prayer.” 

He taught that the spiritual life of the pastor was critical,

“The pulpit of this day is weak in praying. The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer. Prayer is with the pulpit too often only official--a performance for the routine of service. Prayer is not to the modern pulpit the mighty force it was in Paul's life or Paul's ministry. Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.” 

If the pulpit was weak spiritually when he wrote these words in the late 1800s, imagine what he might say about the pulpits in today’s world. 

Bounds goes on to talk about the dual responsibility of preachers to both pray and be prayed for, 

“It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for. These two propositions are wedded into a union which ought never to know any divorce: the preacher must pray; the preacher must be prayed for. It will take all the praying he can do, and all the praying he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities and gain the largest, truest success in his great work. The true preacher, next to the cultivation of the spirit and fact of prayer in himself, in their intensest form, covets with a great covetousness the prayers of God's people.” 

A wise pastor once taught me that the sermons you hear are always better when you pray for the pastor and their message prior to hearing them. I found that to be true. When I was first learning to walk in deeper faith, I began to pray for the pastor who taught me this lesson before Sunday worship. It never failed that I would hear some powerful point that spoke to me. This happened more often when I prayed than when I neglected prayer. 

For those who wonder what scriptural basis there is for this, Bounds reminds his readers of Romans 15:30, where the Apostle Paul writes, “ I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.” He also shares Ephesians 6:19, “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.”

We will not see the full measure of God moving in our personal lives or the Church without prayer. The great and fiery preacher, Leonard Ravenhill firmly believed that the health of the prayer meeting represented the true health of the church. He wrote, “Sunday morning shows how popular the church is; Sunday night shows how popular the preacher is; prayer meeting shows how popular God is.”

We would do well to follow Ravenhill’s advice, 

“How do you learn to pray? (Well), how do you learn to swim? Do you sit in a chair with your feet up drinking coke learning to swim? (No), you get down and you struggle. That's how you learn to pray. Prayer is our strength; Prayer generates strength; it generates vision; it generates power; and the devil wilI drive you away from the prayer closet more than anything."