E. M. Bounds’s central message in Power Through Prayer is that prayer must be the foundation of Christian life and ministry, not an afterthought to preaching, study, work, or service. For Bounds, effective ministry flows from a heart that seeks God deeply and consistently, because “the real sermon is made in the closet” and “a prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon.”
The book is directed especially toward preachers, pastors, and other Christian leaders, but its challenge extends to every believer. It urges Christians to give God their best hours, cultivate a disciplined life of prayer, and understand prayer as communion with God, preparation for service, and the source of spiritual strength.
Who Was E. M. Bounds?
Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913) was born in Missouri. Receiving his law degree at age nineteen, Edward became the youngest practicing lawyer in the state of Missouri. Bounds practiced law for three years until he was called to preach the gospel.
Bounds felt a call to Christian ministry in his early twenties, and two years later was ordained as a pastor. At the age of 24, he felt called to be a preacher and became a Methodist Pastor around the time of the American Civil War. He studied deeply in the Scriptures and was greatly inspired by the writings of John Wesley.
His life was filled with suffering and loss-trials and tribulations. In 1861, Bounds was arrested by Union troops and spent a year-and-a-half in federal prison. He later became a chaplain in the Confederate army and was injured during a battle and taken prisoner for a second time.
While serving as chaplain during the Civil War, he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, Tennessee. After his release, Bounds returned to Franklin, Tennessee, to pastor a local church. After his release, he held several pastorates.
His primary ministry method was establishing weekly prayer sessions where he would lead the people in prayers for spiritual revival and healing of the war-torn country. Bounds was a wise and passionate pastor who was convinced of the transformative power of prayer.
Not only was this man committed to a life of prayer, but he was also committed to sound doctrine and Christian service. Rev. Edward M. Bounds was passionately devoted to his beloved Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Bounds’s Personal Discipline of Prayer
Bounds dedicated the hours of 4 am to 7 am each morning to prayer, and it’s been said that no man could have made more melting appeals for lost souls and backslidden Christians than him. It is said that he prayed daily, from 4 A.M. to 7 A.M., before he would begin work on his writings.
At the age of 58, and for the next nineteen years (until he went home to be with the Lord at age 77), he began to write books. Bounds did not consider his time in prayer as idle time, but a time that was effective in changing the world through the power and grace of God.
His first wife died in 1886, a few months before their tenth wedding anniversary. His firstborn son died at the age of six, and his son, Charles, died eight days after his first birthday. His devotion was extraordinary in that he was praying and writing about Him all the time.
God gave Bounds an enlargedness of heart and an insatiable desire to do service for Him. Bounds was a wise and passionate nineteenth-century pastor who was convinced of the transformative power of prayer.
What Power Through Prayer Teaches
Power Through Prayer admonishes readers, preachers, and Christians to adopt a lifestyle of prayer. E. M. Bounds, in the book, established the importance of spending quality in prayer, particularly, for preachers who have the mandate to propagate the gospel and win souls for Christ.
The 20-short-chapters’ book challenges ministers of the gospel to spend long and quality time with God and see how that translates to the congregation. Bounds provided examples of past preachers who spent quality time with God and how that affected their ministries.
In twenty provocative and inspiring chapters, each prefaced with quotations from spiritual giants, Edward M. Bounds stresses the imperative of vital prayer in the life of a pastor. Power Through Prayer has been called one of the truly great masterpieces on the theme of prayer.
The term classic can appropriately be applied to this outstanding book. Written specifically to preachers, Bounds urges them to be men of prayer. The book encourages pastors to spend long hours praying, and not to neglect prayer as an essential part of their ministry.
Prayer Before Preaching
Bounds was convinced that prayer was to be a pillar of the pastoral life. When he taught on the subject of prayer and the pulpit, he declared, “Prayer is the preacher’s mightiest weapon. The real sermon is made in the closet. 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.”
“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.”
“The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwashed flow.”
“A pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing.” “Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still. He will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men.”
Bounds therefore treats preaching as more than public performance or intellectual communication. The sermon should be the outflow of a life dedicated to prayer, holiness, obedience, and communion with God.
“A Prepared Heart Is Much Better Than a Prepared Sermon”
One of the best-known statements associated with the book is: “A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.”
Bounds criticized the tendency to spend more time researching sermons and less time praying while preparing to preach. He did not present prayer as a substitute for faithful study, but he insisted that study cannot replace spiritual preparation.
“We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important thing to be prepared-the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.”
“All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared with our closets.” “The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give our dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher.”
“Study universal holiness of life. Your usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all the week.”
God Uses People of Prayer
Bounds argues that Christian ministry is not ultimately empowered by plans, systems, money, education, or methods. “The true ministry is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made.” He goes on to say, “Prayer lies at the root of all personal godliness.”
“What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use-men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.”
“The Holy Spirit 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.”
“No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration-this is the secret of power.”
The practical implication is that ministry effectiveness cannot be separated from the character of the minister. The best-laid plans cannot withstand the devastating consequence of poor moral character. If you want to have an effective ministry, you must commit to the process of becoming an effective minister.
Prayer as the Priority of Time
Bounds insists that the heart of one’s time-the best and freshest part of the day-must be given to prayer. Prayer is not to be an afterthought. It is not to be used only “in case of emergency.” It is to be the priority of our lives.
As Bounds says, “the closet first, the study and activities second, both study and activities freshened and made efficient by the closet.” Prayer is serious work and must be given a regular spot in our calendar.
“The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we give to it.” “No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.”
“A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing and will do little good for God. It is not simply getting up which brings men to the front and makes them leaders in God’s house. It is the overwhelming desire which stirs and breaks all self-indulgent chains that does so.”
“Our laziness after God is our crying sin. The children of this world are far wiser than we. They are at it early and late. We do not seek God with ardor and diligence. No man receives God who does not follow hard after Him. And, no soul follows hard after God who is not after Him in early morn.”
Bounds’s emphasis on long prayer has encouraged many readers to reconsider how little time they devote to communion with God. At the same time, some readers question whether his examples of people who prayed for eight hours or more every day should be treated as a universal standard.
Prayer and the Power of Ministry
Bounds teaches that no earthly ministry will have eternal impact without much prayer. Prayer is the power source of the Christian life. When we fail to pray, we fail to invite the power of God into our life and ministry.
Every facet of Christian ministry should be the outflowing of prayer. We may disagree on theology, but we must be unified in prayer. The same principle can be applied to preaching, pastoral care, Christian teaching, evangelism, online ministry, parenting, and personal relationships.
“Christ knows nothing of prayerless Christians.” “The Church is looking for better methods and God is looking for better men.” “What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery of better, not new organisations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use-men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.”
“We need men who can set the Church ablaze for God-not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat which melts everything for God.”
Endurance, Fruitfulness, and Perseverance
Bounds connects endurance and fruitfulness in ministry with faithful prayer. “No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.”
If God is not our first thought in the morning, He will be an afterthought the rest of the day. In the same way that Christ found strength in communion with God, so must we! Begin the day with prayer, and don’t stop praying until your work is complete.
Learning to pray is one of the most powerful and practical pursuits of the Christian life. When our prayers are full of wisdom and in-step with God’s commands, we begin to see God as the source of peace and purpose in every circumstance.
One reader summarized the book’s effect this way: “When you are done this book you will want to pray more. Actually, when you are reading this book, you will want to put it down and begin to pray.”
Bounds’s Definition of Prayer
Bounds presents prayer as faith actively reaching toward God and receiving from the inheritance available in Christ. “Prayer is simply…faith taking possession of its illimitable inheritance.”
“Faith in Christ’s ability to do and do greatly is the faith which prays greatly.” “Faith gives birth to prayer, and grows stronger, strikes deeper, rises higher, in the struggles and wrestlings of mighty petitioning.”
“We ought to pray for the desire to pray; for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born.” “This holy and fervid flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the exhaustless riches of Divine grace.”
“To be absorbed in God’s will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire, is the qualifying condition of the man who would engage in effectual prayer.”
“Prayer has everything to do with moulding the soul into the image of God…for prayer is the only way in which the soul of man can enter into fellowship and communion with the Source of all Christlike spirit and energy.”
Prayer, Obedience, and Holiness
For Bounds, prayer cannot be detached from obedience. “In order to have full access to God in prayer, there must be a total abandonment of conscious and premeditated sin.”
“The business of real observance of God’s commands inseparably accompanies the business of real praying.” “If you have an earnest desire to pray well, you must learn how to obey well.”
Prayer as a mere habit, a routine performance, or a professional activity is not enough. “It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing.”
Bounds’s understanding of prayer therefore includes desire, faith, submission to God’s will, moral seriousness, obedience, and a willingness to be changed. Prayer is not merely a technique for obtaining desired outcomes; it forms the person who prays.
Five Major Lessons from Power Through Prayer
1. Preaching Should Flow from Prayer
Preaching is not a performance; it is the outflow of a life dedicated to prayer. Bounds was convinced that prayer was to be a pillar of the pastoral life.
Authenticity and humility are key attributes of the prayer-filled life. If we want to make a difference during our time on earth, we must learn to invest ourselves in the practice of prayer.
2. God Uses People, Not Merely Plans
God doesn’t anoint plans; He anoints people-people of prayer! “The true ministry is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made.” “Prayer lies at the root of all personal godliness.”
The best-laid plans cannot withstand the devastating consequence of poor moral character. If you want to have an effective ministry, you must commit to the process of becoming an effective minister.
3. Prayer Should Receive the Best Part of the Day
The heart of our time-the best of our time-must be given to prayer. Prayer is not to be an afterthought. It is not to be used only “in case of emergency.” It is to be the priority of our lives.
If you don’t prioritize time in prayer, don’t expect to have the power you need to live a fruitful life. Prayer is serious work and must be given a regular spot in our calendar.
4. Christian Ministry Depends on Prayer
No earthly ministry will have eternal impact without much prayer. Prayer is the power source of the Christian life. When we fail to pray, we fail to invite the power of God into our life and ministry.
Every facet of Christian ministry should be the outflowing of prayer. We may disagree on theology, but we must be unified in prayer.
5. Endurance Is Rooted in Faithful Prayer
Endurance and fruitfulness in ministry are rooted in faithful prayer. “No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.”
In the same way that Christ found strength in communion with God, so must we! Begin the day with prayer, and don’t stop praying until your work is complete.
How Readers Respond to the Book
Many readers find Power Through Prayer inspirational, convicting, and relevant despite its age. One reader wrote, “I appreciate E. M. Bounds' well placed passion for prayer. His writings can certainly be both inspirational and convicting: I certainly haven't arrived when it comes to my prayer life.”
Another reader described the book as “a great read for someone who needs a kick in the butt or for someone who has become complacent in their prayer life.” A different reader called it “very clear, simple, straightforward thoughts about prayer.”
Several readers who are not pastors have found the book applicable to their own callings. “This book was written for Christian clergymen but I found it very interesting to read though I'll never be a pastor.” Another reader noted that the book was directed toward preachers, pastors, elders, and ministers, but that most of it could be applicable and beneficial for anyone.
The book has also been applied to online ministry, parenting, personal relationships, and lay Christian service. “This book is directed towards preachers, but there's much to glean for the layperson in terms of ministry and even parenting and personal relationships.”
Readers often describe the book as short but intense. One reader wrote, “One of his shorter works, but very compelling and convicting.” Another called it “maybe the most convicting book on prayer and its necessity for holiness, effectual preaching, and revival.”
Criticisms and Limitations
Not every reader accepts Bounds’s claims without reservation. Some readers believe that his emphasis on lengthy prayer can become excessive, legalistic, or mystical. One criticism was that Bounds gets into “dangerous territory here with something of a one track mind when it comes to prayer.”
Another reader objected to the idea that a person must pray for many hours in order to be godly: “Not everyone can spend hours in prayer every day.” The same reader appreciated the book’s encouragement but felt that it did not provide a detailed method for prayer and instead offered motivation to pray deeply and at length.
Some readers also questioned Bounds’s emphasis on “divine unction,” meaning anointing. One reviewer summarized his concern: “He greatly emphasizes lengthy prayers as if they have more power or influence on God.” Another wrote that Bounds “speaks a bit ambiguous and mystical about prayer.”
There are also concerns about the relationship between prayer and God’s sovereignty. One reader noted that Bounds “believes that God is dependent on us” and “talks of prayer a bit legalistically at times.” Another challenged the statement associated with John Wesley, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer,” by responding, “I'm pretty sure God can do whatever He pleases.”
Some readers felt that Bounds’s teaching could unintentionally diminish grace and the gospel by making God’s work appear dependent on the strength of human piety. One reviewer wrote that “this piety seems to downplay grace and the gospel.”
Others observed that Bounds gives little attention to listening in prayer or to reading Scripture as part of communion with God. “If we are speaking speaking speaking to God and not listening back to what he has to say, I can only imagine what your sermon would look like!”
These criticisms do not erase the book’s central challenge, but they show why readers may need to distinguish between Bounds’s passionate exhortation and a universal rule that every Christian must pray for a particular number of hours.
Prayer and Quality Rather Than Mere Duration
The book’s emphasis on time has led some readers to ask whether duration is more important than quality. A Christian broadcast mentioned in the material defined prayer as talking to God and knowing you are talking to Him. In other words, our mind should be fixed on the activity that we are indulging in.
The broadcast emphasized that duration should not be as important as quality and that, when Christians genuinely pray to God, they become conduits for the manifestation of miracles and the power of God. Hints of E. M. Bounds’s Power Through Prayer could be detected in that message.
One reader similarly concluded that “it is more important how our heart is when we approach the Father.” This perspective provides a useful qualification to Bounds’s repeated calls for long prayer: the book strongly urges persistence and depth, while readers may differ on how much time should be required and how prayer should be practiced.
Prayer and Scripture
Bounds’s teaching on prayer can be read alongside a disciplined approach to Scripture. Read slowly the passage listed. The passages are relatively short, so take time to consider each phrase.
Ponder the brief interpretation in light of the passage. What is the biblical writer trying to say? What is the main point? Using the thought-provoking questions, seek the Spirit's guidance regarding your own response to the passage.
How does the biblical teaching apply to your life? Where do you need to grow or change? How has Christ already changed you? Pray for a genuinely transformed life enabled to live as Christ lived. You might use this time to pray for other issues as well. Praise Christ for his goodness.
Reading God's word and praying belong together. Meditation without reading is wrong and bound to err; reading without meditation is barren and fruitless. It means to stir the affections, to be warmed by the fire of meditation.
Guidelines for Prayerful Bible Reading
- Remove hindrances.
- Remove the love of every sin.
- Remove the distracting concerns of this world, especially covetousness Matt. 13:22.
- Don't make jokes with and out of Scripture.
- Prepare your heart.
- Collect your thoughts.
- Purge unclean affections and desires.
- Not coming to it rashly or carelessly.
- Read it with reverence, considering that each line is God speaking directly to you.
- Read the Bible faithfully each day.
- Get a true understanding of Scripture.
- Read with seriousness.
- Persevere in remembering what you read.
- Meditate on what you read.
- Read with a humble heart.
- Believe it all to be God's Holy Word.
- Prize the Bible highly.
- Love the Bible ardently.
- Come to read it with an honest heart.
- Apply to yourself everything that you read, take every word as spoken to yourself.
- Pay close attention to the commands of the Word as much as the promises.
- Don't get carried away with the minor details, rather make sure to pay closest attention to the great things Hosea 8:12.
- Compare yourself with the Word.
- Pay special attention to those passages that speak to your individual, particular and present situation.
- Let it not only inform you but also inflame you Jer 23:29, Luke 24:32.
- Put into practice what you read Ps 119:66, Ps 119:105, Deut 17:19.
- Pray that you will profit from reading Isaiah 48:17, Ps 119:18, Nehemiah 9:20.
Prayer in the Face of Natural Obstacles
You may still be able to profit from reading even though you don't seem to profit as much as others do. Remember the different yields Matt 13:8 though the yield isn't as much as others it is still a true and fruitful yield.
You may feel slow of understanding Luke 9:45, Heb 5:11. Your memory may be bad, but remember you are still able to have a good heart despite this and you may still remember the most important things even if you cannot remember everything, be encouraged by John 14:26.
These observations also apply to prayer. Different Christians have different responsibilities, limitations, capacities, and seasons of life. Bounds’s call to seriousness and perseverance can be received without assuming that every believer must reproduce his exact schedule.
Prayer as Fellowship with God
Prayer is not only a ministry instrument; it is fellowship and communion with God. “Prayer has everything to do with moulding the soul into the image of God…for prayer is the only way in which the soul of man can enter into fellowship and communion with the Source of all Christlike spirit and energy.”
One reader connected prayer with relationship: “How can we have a relationship with God if we never communicate with Him or spend time with Him?” Another wrote that Christians can approach the Father because they love Him, trust Him, and recognize Him as their Father.
When our prayers are full of wisdom and in-step with God’s commands, we begin to see God as the source of peace and purpose in every circumstance. Learning to pray is one of the most powerful and practical pursuits of the Christian life.
Selected Statements from Power Through Prayer
- “The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwashed flow.”
- “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.”
- “A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon.”
- “The Church is looking for better methods and God is looking for better men.”
- “Christ knows nothing of prayerless Christians.”
- “A pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing.”
- “Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.”
- “The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give our dead sermons, and dead sermons kill.”
- “It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing.”
- “No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God.”
- “No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.”
Other Books by E. M. Bounds on Prayer
Bounds is author of many books, including Purpose in Prayer, The Weapon of Prayer, and The Reality of Prayer. His books on prayer have been continual best-sellers for over fifty years.
- The Necessity of Prayer
- The Essentials of Prayer
- Power Through Prayer
- Purpose in Prayer
- The Reality of Prayer
- The Weapon of Prayer
- Prayer and Praying Men
The Necessity of Prayer emphasizes faith that realizes, appropriates, and takes hold of the promises of God. “Believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Here is described a faith which realizes, which appropriates, which takes.
Purpose in Prayer presents prayer as effective work rather than inactivity. “Still there is a great feeling that when a man is praying he is doing nothing, and this feeling makes us give undue importance to work, sometimes even to the hurrying over or even to the neglect of prayer.”
The Reality of Prayer portrays prayer as Bounds’s pathway to the throne of grace. “Prayer was the great weapon in his arsenal, his pathway to the Throne of Grace.” “None who read what he has written can fail of realizing that Edward M. Bounds talked with God, as a man talked to his friend.”
Prayer and Praying Men describes Bounds as a man who lived continually on prayer ground. “There is no man that has lived since the days of the apostles that has surpassed him in the depths of his marvelous research into the Life of Prayer.”
The Continuing Relevance of Bounds’s Message
The book’s central message remains relevant because churches and Christian ministries can easily prioritize programs, methods, research, organization, technology, and public performance while neglecting personal communion with God.
Readers have described the book as “convicting and important reading for our generation” and said that, although it was written many years ago, “its message is timely and relevant for our generation.”
The challenge is especially direct for preachers and ministry leaders, but it also applies to anyone who serves others in Christ’s name. Christian bloggers are not an exemption. We can’t do away with quality prayer and expect to flourish in our various callings.
Although much of his writing was aimed at preachers, all Christians can learn from his enthusiastic instruction on prayer. This book challenged readers to put time with God first and to give Him their best hours.
Bounds’s work is best read as a forceful summons to recover prayer as the center of Christian existence and service. Its strongest contribution is not a technical prayer method, but a sustained insistence that spiritual work must be rooted in a living relationship with God.
