The Reality of Prayer

It is E. M. Bounds's meditations on prayer as the reality at the heart of the Christian life — not a form to be observed but a living transaction with God. He moves from prayer as a princely privilege, through the praying of Jesus Christ — his example, his model prayer, his high-priestly prayer, and Gethsemane — to the Holy Spirit's part in prayer, pressing throughout that prayer is real and mighty.

He means that prayer is a genuine and effectual thing — an actual dealing with a living God who hears and answers — as opposed to a mere ritual, sentiment, or spiritual exercise. Bounds writes to recover prayer from formality, insisting that when a believer truly prays, something real happens between the soul and God.

He makes Christ's own praying the centre of the book — pointing to Jesus' habit of prayer as his example, to the Lord's Prayer as his model, and to the high-priestly prayer of John 17 and the agony of Gethsemane as the depths of his intercession. If the Son of God lived a life steeped in prayer, Bounds argues, how much more must his followers; Christ's praying is both pattern and rebuke.

Bounds treats Gethsemane as the supreme instance of real prayer — Christ in agony, praying more earnestly, submitting his will to the Father's. He draws from it the reality, the cost, and the submission of true prayer: that the deepest praying is wrung from the heart in extremity, and that even the Son prayed 'not my will, but thine,' the pattern for all who would truly pray.

A central one — Bounds teaches that real prayer is prayer in the Spirit, who helps our weakness and intercedes within us. Left to ourselves we do not know how to pray as we ought; it is the Spirit who quickens, guides, and empowers true prayer. Bounds ties the reality of prayer to this inward help, without which praying remains merely human effort.

The two are companion volumes, both gathered from Bounds's papers after his death. The Reality of Prayer dwells on prayer as a living transaction and on the praying of Christ and the Spirit's part, while The Essentials of Prayer dwells on the dispositions the one praying must bring. Read together they treat both the reality of prayer and the heart it requires.

For the believer whose prayer has grown formal or doubtful, and who needs to be persuaded again that prayer is real and worth everything. By setting Christ's own praying at the centre, Bounds both instructs and shames the reader into earnestness, and calls them to a praying as real as the Lord's.

At the beginning, moving from the privilege of prayer into the praying of Jesus and the Spirit's help. Because the heart of the book is Christ's own example, it rewards being read slowly and prayerfully, with the Gospel prayers open alongside, so that the reader is drawn into the reality Bounds describes.