The Necessity of Prayer

It is E. M. Bounds's argument that prayer cannot be separated from the graces that make it real. He sets prayer beside the things it cannot live without — faith, trust, desire, fervency, importunity, obedience, vigilance, and the Word of God — giving a chapter or two to each, and contends that prayer divorced from any of them is not prayer at all but an empty form.

Where some of his books press the duty of prayer or tell of men who prayed, this one anatomizes the inner conditions that make prayer genuine. Its distinctive angle is that prayer never stands alone: it is bound up with faith, obedience, fervency, and the rest, so that to neglect those is to lose prayer itself. It examines prayer by examining what it must be joined to.

Because he holds that faith is the very life of prayer — that prayer without faith is words without power, since it is faith that lays hold of God's promises and expects an answer. Bounds argues that the measure of real prayer is the measure of its faith, and that a prayerless life is at bottom a faithless one; the two rise and fall together.

He means a holy persistence — the refusal to be put off, the pressing of one's case with God until the answer comes, as the widow wearied the unjust judge and Jacob would not let go until he was blessed. Bounds treats importunity not as irreverence but as a mark of earnestness and faith, and he presses believers to a praying that will not easily take no for an answer.

A vital one — Bounds joins prayer and the Scriptures as inseparable companions. The Word feeds prayer with its promises and directs it according to God's will, while prayer opens the heart to receive the Word. He warns that prayer cut off from Scripture drifts, and that Scripture unaccompanied by prayer stays cold; the two are meant to work together.

Edward McKendree Bounds was an American Methodist minister who, in his later years, rose before dawn to pray for hours and poured his life into writing about prayer. Most of his prayer books, including this one, were published after his death; together they form a sustained and passionate call to the ministry of intercession.

For any Christian dissatisfied with a shallow prayer life and wanting to know why their praying seems to lack power. By showing what prayer must be joined to, Bounds helps the reader diagnose what is missing — faith, fervency, obedience, or persistence — and calls them to the wholehearted praying that God answers.

At the beginning and through the graces in order, since each chapter takes up one of prayer's indispensable companions. The chapters are short and pointed, meant to search the reader's own praying, and are best read a little at a time and turned into prayer rather than merely studied.