If you have ever finished a book on prayer feeling instructed but not changed, E. M. Bounds is a different kind of teacher. The Essentials of Prayer does not ask what technique makes prayer work; it asks what kind of person prayer requires. Its subtitle says as much — What Prayer Requires of the One Who Prays. This guide walks through the book’s argument, its structure, and its central themes, and offers a few questions to pray with. Ochorus hosts the full text free, so you can read every chapter alongside what follows here.
What the book is, and Bounds’s thesis
The Essentials of Prayer is one of eight short books on prayer that E. M. Bounds wrote in the pre-dawn hours of his last years, and like the rest it was published only after his death in 1913. Bounds was a Methodist pastor and former attorney who, having no pulpit to fill and no salary for it, rose at four in the morning and prayed until seven. He wrote as a man describing something he did every day, not something he had read about, and that is why these little books have outlasted almost everything printed beside them.
His thesis is stated in the very first chapter and never wavers: prayer is not an activity of the lips but of the whole person. God will not be met with a divided heart. Bounds puts it bluntly:
Because it requires the whole man to pray, praying is no easy task. Praying is far more than simply bending the knee and saying a few words by rote.
E. M. Bounds
That single conviction explains the shape of the whole book. If prayer draws on the entire person, then the “essentials” of prayer will not be methods at all. They will be graces of character — humility, devotion, thanksgiving, consecration — and the settings, such as trouble and compassion, in which those graces are forged. Bounds is answering a question most prayer books skip: not how do I pray, but who must I become for my praying to be real. He grounds the pattern in Christ, whose own praying, he notes from Hebrews 5:7, laid hold on every power of His being.
How the book is organized: the essentials, one by one
Rather than a system, Bounds offers thirteen short chapters, each pairing prayer with one requirement of the praying life. Read together they form a portrait of the person God can use.
- Prayer takes in the whole man. The foundation: mind, heart, and body are all brought under tribute to prayer. The psalmist’s vow in Psalm 119:10, “With my whole heart have I sought thee,” is Bounds’s text.
- Prayer and humility. The gate through which prayer passes. Bounds sets the publican of Luke 18:13 against the self-satisfied Pharisee to show that lowliness, not eloquence, opens heaven.
- Prayer and devotion. Prayer belongs to a life devoted, set apart to a sacred use, warmed by love rather than duty.
- Prayer, praise and thanksgiving. These three travel in company; Bounds shows how gratitude keeps prayer from becoming mere petition, echoing Philippians 4:6.
- Prayer and trouble (two chapters). Affliction drives the soul to God; prayer is, he says, the voice of a person in trouble. He reminds the reader that our Lord promised tribulation in John 16:33.
- Prayer and God’s work, consecration, and a definite religious standard. Prayer aligns us with what God is doing, surrenders us wholly to Him, and gives our discipleship a pattern to aim at.
- Prayer born of compassion, concerted prayer, the universality of prayer, and prayer and missions. The book widens outward — from the closet to the gathered church to the ends of the earth, resting on 1 Timothy 2:4 and 1 Timothy 2:8.
The chapters can be read in any order, but the progression is deliberate: it moves from the inner person, through the fires that test it, out to the whole world for which the praying person intercedes.
Central themes
Humility is the first thing and the last
For Bounds, no grace matters more to prayer than humility, and none is more easily counterfeited. The Pharisee prayed with himself; the publican, unable even to lift his eyes, went home justified. Bounds draws the lesson without softening it:
Humility is the first and last attribute of Christly religion, and the first and last attribute of Christly praying. There is no Christ without humility. There is no praying without humility. If thou wouldst learn well the art of praying, then learn well the lesson of humility.
E. M. Bounds
This is why he treats humility as an essential and not a virtue among others. Ephesians 4:2 calls Christians to walk “with all lowliness and meekness,” and James 4:10 promises that the one who humbles himself before the Lord will be lifted up. Prayer, Bounds insists, is where that lowliness is either practised or exposed as absent.
Prayer aims at a consecrated life
A second theme runs beneath the whole book: prayer is not an end in itself but a means to a life wholly given to God. Bounds will not let prayer be a religious hobby detached from holiness.
Consecration is much more than a life of so-called service. It is a life of personal holiness, first of all. It is that which brings spiritual power into the heart and enlivens the entire inner man. It is a life which ever recognises God, and a life given up to true prayer.
E. M. Bounds
Real praying, he argues, cannot help but produce this. It “makes consecrated people” because it drives the soul, again and again, back to surrender. Leviticus 20:7 holds both sides he loves to keep in view — we are told to sanctify ourselves, and told in the same breath that it is the Lord who sanctifies.
Prayer reaches everywhere
Finally, Bounds insists that prayer is universal in its scope and its effects. It is not the privilege of the spiritually advanced but the birthright and duty of every person, in every place, in every circumstance.
Prayer is far-reaching in its influence and world-wide in its effects. It affects all men, affects them everywhere, and affects them in all things. Prayer goes everywhere and lays its hand upon everything.
E. M. Bounds
Paul’s charge in 1 Timothy 2:8, that “men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting,” is Bounds’s warrant for a prayer life that overflows the church walls into the office, the home, and the mission field. Nothing lies outside its reach, and no one is too far from God to be prayed for.
Who should read it
This is a book for the ordinary Christian who wants to pray more truly and suspects the problem is not method. It rewards the discouraged pray-er — the one who has tried techniques and formulas and found them hollow — because it relocates the whole question from skill to character. It is also a searching read for pastors and leaders, who will recognise Bounds’s warning against substituting machinery for praying men.
Because each chapter is short and self-contained, it suits a reader with only a few minutes a day. And because it is saturated with Scripture, it makes a fine companion for anyone who wants their prayer life shaped by the Bible rather than by the latest advice. Readers already gripped by Bounds’s Power Through Prayer will find here the same voice turned from the preacher’s study to the believer’s heart.
How to read it today
Take it slowly. Bounds repeats himself on purpose; he is hammering one nail, and the repetition is meant to lodge the truth rather than merely inform you of it. Reading a chapter a day over two weeks lets each essential settle before the next arrives.
Read it with your Bible open. Nearly every claim rests on a text, and following his references — Matthew 6:6 on secret prayer, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 on praying without ceasing, Colossians 4:2 on watchful, thankful prayer — turns the book from reading into devotion. Bounds would rather you pray his chapters than admire them.
Finally, read it as a mirror, not a manual. When he writes on humility, pause and ask where pride has crept into your praying. When he writes on trouble, bring your present trouble to the page. The book is designed to expose and then to form, and it works best when you let it do both. Its natural companion is Bounds’s Purpose in Prayer, which presses the same convictions toward persistence and importunity.
For reflection
Use these questions alone or with a group, ideally with the relevant chapter and Scripture near at hand:
- Bounds says prayer requires the whole person, and that God “cannot tolerate a divided heart.” Where is your own heart divided when you pray? Read Psalm 119:10 and ask for a whole heart.
- Set the publican of Luke 18:13 beside the Pharisee. Which prayer sounds more like yours this week, and why?
- Bounds ties prayer to consecration. Is there an area of your life you have not yet, in his phrase, given up to true prayer? What would surrender there look like?
- He insists prayer “goes everywhere.” Name one place — a workplace, a relationship, a nation — you rarely bring to God, and begin praying for it in light of 1 Timothy 2:4.
- When trouble last drove you to prayer, did it change you, or only your circumstances? Read John 16:33 and consider what Bounds means by prayer as the voice of one in trouble.
Bounds never meant these books to be studied so much as obeyed. Read a chapter, close the book, and pray it. The full text of The Essentials of Prayer is available free on Ochorus, ready whenever you are.
