Men Are God’s Method

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. JOHN 1:6

Power Through Prayer opens with a complaint and a correction. The complaint is that the Church of Bounds’s day was always straining to devise new plans, new organisations and new methods for advancing the gospel. The correction is one of the most quoted sentences he ever wrote: “Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.”

It is the foundation of all his teaching, and it is worth understanding exactly what he meant by it, and what he did not.

The man behind the message

Bounds noticed how often Scripture moves from a message to a man. The way for Christ was prepared, not by a campaign, but by a man sent from God whose name was John. The salvation of the world came through a Son who was born and laid in a cradle. When Paul defended his ministry, he pointed not to his techniques but to the character of the men who had brought the gospel.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. 2 CHRONICLES 16:9

For Bounds, this verse settled the matter. God is looking for people. He is not looking for talent, or money, or organisation, but for hearts wholly His, through which He can show Himself strong. In a passage that has become famous, he wrote that what the Church needs “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.” And he went on: “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.”

And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. EZEKIEL 22:30

Why methods are not enough

It would be easy to read this as a kind of anti-intellectual suspicion of all planning. It is not. Bounds was an editor and a church administrator for years; he knew that the Church needed order and organisation. His point was about where power comes from. A plan can be good, but a plan cannot pray. Machinery can carry power, but it cannot generate it. The danger he saw was that the Church, pleased with its structures, would forget that the structures were empty until God filled them, and that God fills them through people who ask.

In Purpose in Prayer he pressed the same point more sharply. An age of organisation, he warned, is rarely an age of strong personal holiness, because machinery looks for engineers to run it rather than for saints. Numbers, money and activity can become substitutes for the one thing God is looking for.

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. ZECHARIAH 4:6

This is a warning that has only grown more urgent. We have far more tools than Bounds’s generation had. Most of them are good. None of them can do what only God can do, and none of them can take the place of a person who has been alone with Him.

Prayer makes the man

If men are God’s method, what makes the man? For Bounds the answer was always the same. The man God uses is made in secret. He is shaped by long hours of communion, by honest confession, by pleading for others, by waiting on God. Character is not a by-product of ministry; it is the ministry. The preacher, he wrote, is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows, and the pipe must be not only golden but open and flawless.

That is why he was so insistent that God cares about the person more than the product. In Purpose in Prayer he quoted God’s word through Isaiah, turning away from costly sacrifices to look instead at the one who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at His word.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. 1 SAMUEL 16:7

Where this must be read with care

Two cautions belong here.

The first concerns the word men. In most places Bounds uses it as his century did, to mean human beings, and the reader loses nothing by hearing it that way. But in one chapter of Purpose in Prayer, commenting on Paul’s instruction that men should pray everywhere, he insists that men as distinguished from women have a particular duty, and writes: “The first of beings, man, should also be first in prayer.” The concern behind it is real; he feared that men had handed prayer over to their wives and mothers. But the principle as stated goes beyond Scripture, and Bounds himself undercuts it whenever he tells the story of Hannah, whose prayers gave Israel a prophet. The Bible is full of praying women, and the Church has always depended on them.

Pray without ceasing. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17

The second caution concerns the weight this teaching can lay on a person. If God is looking for better men, it is a short step to thinking that God is disappointed with me, and that His whole work waits on my improvement. That is not what Bounds meant, and it is not the gospel. God’s search for faithful people is not the search of a hard employer but of a Father. He does not wait for us to become strong before He uses us; He makes us strong by drawing us to Himself. Paul, whom Bounds admired above all men, called himself the chief of sinners and said that he was what he was by the grace of God.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

That, in the end, is the heart of this teaching. God works through people because He chooses to, not because He needs us. The treasure is in earthen vessels precisely so that everyone can see the power belongs to Him. What He asks is not that we be impressive, but that we be available — open pipes, not golden ones only, through which His life can flow. And the way to become that kind of person is the way Bounds walked every morning: to pray.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List the plans, programmes or tools you are relying on in your work, your family or your church. Ask honestly which of them you have prayed over, and which you have simply trusted.

2. Read 2 Chronicles 16:9 slowly and ask God to show you whether your heart is wholly His.

3. Think of one person whose life has shaped you more than any method or programme. Thank God for them, and pray for them by name today.

4. If you lead anything, spend as much time this week praying for the people as planning for the work.

5. If Bounds’s language about men has troubled you, read the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 and give thanks for the praying women God has placed in your life.

A PRAYER

Lord God, Your eyes run to and fro through the whole earth, looking for hearts that are wholly Yours. Let mine be one of them.

Forgive me for trusting in plans and methods more than in You, and for being busy about Your work while neglecting Your presence.

Make me an open vessel, however ordinary, through which Your power can flow. I do not ask to be impressive; I ask to be available.

And raise up in Your Church, among men and women, old and young, a generation of people mighty in prayer. Amen.