Early on Their Knees

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. PSALM 5:3

No sentence Bounds wrote has been quoted more often than the one that opens the ninth chapter of Power Through Prayer: “The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees.” It is a sentence he lived. For the last two decades of his life he rose at four in the morning and gave the first hours of the day to prayer. This chapter is about the early hour, and about the larger truth behind it: that prayer needs time, and the best of our time.

Seeking God first

Bounds’s argument for the morning was not superstition about a particular hour. It was about priority. “If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning,” he wrote, “he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.” The first hours set the course. Whoever gives them away to other things will find God crowded to the edges.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. MARK 1:35

He pointed to Jesus, who rose a great while before day to pray, and to David, who sought God early. He noticed that the disciples, waking late and ashamed, knew where to find their Master. And he went through a long line of Christians who had done the same. Charles Simeon gave the hours from four to eight to God; Wesley rose at four for two hours of prayer; Samuel Rutherford rose at three; Joseph Alleine prayed from four until eight. Bounds did not offer these as rules to copy mechanically, but as a witness that those whom God used most had taken the matter seriously.

Desire that breaks the chains of sleep

What lay behind the early rising, Bounds said, was desire. The saints did not get up early because a rule told them to. They got up because they wanted God more than sleep. “Morning listlessness,” he wrote, “is the index to a listless heart.” A desire for God that cannot get out of bed, he said, will do little good once it is up.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; PSALM 63:1

He also saw that the practice feeds the desire. Getting up gives desire room to grow; staying in bed smothers it. Habits are not the opposite of love. They are one of the ways love is kept alive.

He quoted at length the resolution of Robert Murray McCheyne, who confessed that when he slept long or met others early it was often late in the morning before he began secret prayer, and called this a wretched and unscriptural system. It is far better, McCheyne wrote, to begin with God and see His face first, before seeing anyone else.

Much time with God

The morning hour was part of a larger conviction: that real prayer takes time. “Much time spent with God is the secret of all successful praying,” Bounds wrote. He allowed that many prayers must be short, and that public prayers should be brief. But he insisted that our short prayers draw their power from long ones. “Our short prayers owe their point and efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them.”

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. LUKE 6:12

His best-known phrase on this subject is also his most homely: “God’s acquaintance is not made by pop calls.” Friendship grows through time spent together. We cannot know God deeply by brief and hurried visits. Much time alone with Him, Bounds said, is the secret of knowing Him and of having influence with Him.

He was careful to add that the value of prayer is not measured by the clock. His point was not that God counts minutes, but that a faith which never takes time to be alone with God is shallow.

Morning, noon and night

Bounds did not think prayer should be confined to the morning. He admired Daniel, who knelt three times a day, and David, who prayed evening, morning and noon. In Purpose in Prayer he wrote warmly of Christians who learned to turn their thoughts to God throughout the day, so that the heart returns to Him whenever the mind is free, as naturally as a bird returns to its nest.

Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. PSALM 55:17

The morning hour is the root; prayer through the day is the branches. One without the other withers.

Where this must be read with care

This teaching has helped countless people. It has also burdened many, and some care is needed.

First, circumstances differ. Bounds rose at four in his later years, when he had no congregation to serve and had made prayer his principal work. A mother with a newborn, a shift worker, someone with chronic illness, or a person whose mind is clearest at night may not be able to follow his pattern, and should not feel condemned. The principle is to give God the first and best of our attention, not necessarily the first hour on the clock. For some, the best time will be late at night or in the middle of the day.

Second, Scripture itself warns against turning early rising into a badge of merit.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. PSALM 127:2

God is not impressed by exhaustion. He gives His beloved sleep. Bounds’s long hours were the overflow of love, not a way of earning it, and they are not the measure of anyone else’s devotion.

Third, the lists of saints who prayed for hours can discourage the ordinary believer who struggles to pray for ten minutes. Begin where you are. Ten minutes given to God before anything else is a real offering, and He is glad to receive it. Faithfulness in little grows into more.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look honestly at how your day begins. What do you give your first attention to? Decide on one change that would put God first.

2. Try for one week to pray before you look at your phone or read any messages.

3. Set aside one longer time of prayer this week — thirty minutes or an hour — and spend it unhurriedly with God.

4. Choose three moments in the day — morning, midday and evening — and pause briefly at each to turn your heart to God.

5. If your circumstances make early rising impossible, identify the best hour you do have and offer it to God without guilt.

A PRAYER

Lord, You rose a great while before day to pray to Your Father. I confess how often I give my first hours to lesser things and leave You the scraps.

Give me a desire for You that is stronger than my desire for sleep, comfort or news. Draw me to seek You early.

Teach me that Your acquaintance is not made by hurried visits. Make me willing to spend time with You, and to return to You throughout the day.

And where my circumstances are hard, let me offer You what I can, trusting that You receive it gladly. Amen.