Book · 13 chapters · 2 hr 56 min read · Accessible

Purpose in Prayer

On Importunity and the Prayer That Persists

E. M. Bounds · 1835–1913

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About this book

Thirteen unnamed chapters, each opening with the words of a praying man — Gilmour of Mongolia, Brother Lawrence, Fletcher of Madeley — and then Bounds pressing one point: that prayer is work, and the feeling that a man at prayer is doing nothing is the lie that empties the closet. He argues from Scripture and from the lives of men who prayed long, for a praying that keeps asking. The most quotable of his books, and the least systematic.

My Creed leads me to think that prayer is efficacious, and surely a day’s asking God to overrule all events for good is not lost. Still there is a great feeling that when a man is praying he’s doing nothing, and this feeling makes us give undue importance to work, sometimes even to the hurrying over or even to the neglect of prayer.
From God Shapes the World by Prayer

Contents

  1. 1 God Shapes the World by Prayer 5 min
  2. 2 Prayer Changes the Purpose of God 10 min
  3. 3 We Have Not Because We Ask Not 12 min
  4. 4 Men Who Prayed with a Purpose 17 min
  5. 5 Prayer Is a Trade to Be Learned 8 min
  6. 6 Pray and Never Faint 12 min
  7. 7 Men Ought Always to Pray 14 min
  8. 8 Put the Men to Praying 21 min
  9. 9 Reaching the Ear of God 12 min
  10. 10 Prayerless Praying 20 min
  11. 11 The Prayer of Faith Never Fails 26 min
  12. 12 Revivals Are Born in Prayer 14 min
  13. 13 Christ Our Example in Prayer 6 min

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Salomon van Ruysdael, “A Country Road” (1648). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access.