The Hand That Moves the World

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. JEREMIAH 33:3

The Possibilities of Prayer is Bounds’s boldest book. Its argument is that prayer is not a pious exercise that makes us feel better, but a real force in the world, because it moves God to act. “Prayer moves the hand that moves the world,” he wrote. This chapter gathers his teaching on what God does in answer to prayer, and it is the chapter where his boldness most needs to be weighed.

Prayer affects God

Bounds had no patience with the idea that prayer only changes the one who prays. The notion that we are to answer our own prayers he dismissed as a half-infidel declaration, and he called the whisper that prayer does not affect God a specious scepticism. Prayer, he insisted, is addressed to God and aims at God. It changes us, certainly, but it does so by first moving God to act for us. “It lays its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not otherwise do if prayer was not offered.”

He found this everywhere in the Old Testament. Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and God healed his household. Moses prayed for forty days after the golden calf, and God turned from His anger. Nineveh repented and cried to God, and He spared the city. Hezekiah was told to set his house in order, because he would die; he turned his face to the wall and wept and prayed, and God added fifteen years to his life.

I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: 2 KINGS 20:5

And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. EXODUS 32:14

A chapter of Purpose in Prayer even carries the title Prayer Changes the Purpose of God. Bounds meant that God has chosen to make His actions depend in real ways on the prayers of His people. We are not spectators of a closed plan. We are invited to take part.

No limit but God

From there Bounds moved to the breadth of the promises. Jesus said whatsoever, and anything, and all things. What, Bounds asked, is left out of whatsoever? The only limits to prayer, he wrote, are the promises of God and His ability to fulfil them — and His ability has no limit.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, EPHESIANS 3:20

He was insistent that this includes ordinary life. Prayer, he said, takes in food and clothing, business and health, as well as the soul. To leave daily needs out of prayer is to leave God out of most of our lives. Give us this day our daily bread belongs in the same prayer as Hallowed be thy name.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHILIPPIANS 4:6

And he gathered stories to prove it: Wesley praying on a becalmed ship and the wind changing, George Müller trusting God for a chair for his wife’s voyage, Hudson Taylor and three others praying for a breeze as their ship drifted towards a reef. Some of these stories were gathered by his editors, and they vary in weight, but together they make his point: God answers prayer, and not only in spiritual things.

Real answers

Bounds refused to let the idea of answered prayer dissolve into vagueness. The child who asks for bread, he said, gets bread, not a stone, and not something vaguely like bread. Jesus promised that the very door we knock at will be opened. He was impatient with the comfortable notion that God always answers, but usually by giving us something else or by making us better in some invisible way.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? LUKE 11:13

There is a rebuke here that many modern Christians need. We can become so skilled at explaining why prayers are not answered that we stop expecting them to be. Bounds wanted his readers to ask for real things and look for real answers.

Where this must be read with care

This is the teaching that most needs balance, and Bounds himself provides some of it.

First, on unanswered prayer he sometimes went too far. He wrote that unanswered prayers are training schools for unbelief, and that “The millions of unanswered prayers are not to be solved by the mystery of God’s will.” The whole explanation, he said, is wrong praying. Yet in the same book he admitted that Scripture records prayers that God did not grant: David’s for his dying child, Paul’s for the removal of his thorn, and Christ’s own in Gethsemane. He called them exceptions. They are more than that. They are windows onto a God who sometimes says no out of a love and wisdom we cannot yet see. A believer whose prayer for healing or rescue has not been answered should not conclude from Bounds that the fault must be theirs.

For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:8

Second, the language of prayer changing God’s purpose must be held alongside Scripture’s teaching that God does not change and that His counsel stands for ever. Bounds was not a careful systematic theologian, and he did not try to reconcile the two. One of the voices gathered into Purpose in Prayer, the Bible teacher S. D. Gordon, offered a wiser way of putting it: that prayer does not so much change God’s purpose as give Him the opportunity to work it out. God has ordained not only the ends but the means, and our prayers are among the means He has chosen.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 1 JOHN 5:14

Third, the stories of dramatic answers, however encouraging, can create expectations that God has not promised. For every becalmed ship that caught the wind, there were faithful believers whose ships were lost. God is not less loving to them.

The lasting gift of this teaching is its expectancy. Bounds wants us to believe that prayer matters, that it reaches God, and that God acts. Keep that. Hold it together with humility about how and when He will act, and trust in His goodness when He does not do what we ask.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself whether you really expect God to act when you pray. If not, confess it and ask Him to renew your expectancy.

2. Bring one ordinary, practical need to God this week — money, work, health, a household matter — and watch for His answer.

3. Keep a simple record of prayers and answers for a month. Note what God does, including answers that differ from what you asked.

4. If you carry a prayer that God has not granted, read 2 Corinthians 12:7–10 and ask for the grace Paul received.

5. Pray one large prayer this week for something beyond your own life — a nation, a church, a lost friend — and ask God to do exceeding abundantly above all you can think.

A PRAYER

Almighty God, You have invited me to call upon You, and promised to show me great and mighty things. Forgive me for asking so little and expecting less.

Teach me that my prayers reach You, that You hear them, and that You act. Give me the faith to ask for real things and to look for real answers.

Where You say no, keep me from bitterness and from blaming myself without cause. Let Your grace be sufficient for me.

And do among us, through the prayers of Your people, exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, to the glory of Your name. Amen.