E.M. Bounds

The preaching is but a voice. The voice in silence dies, the text is forgotten, the sermon fades from memory; the preacher lives.

The man makes the preacher. God must make the man. The messenger is, if possible, more than the message. The preacher is more than the sermon.

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.

Men of God, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth.

Should Sorrow lay her hand upon thy shoulder,
And walk with thee in silence on life’s way,
While joy, thy bright companion once, grows colder,
Becomes more distant day by day;
Shrink not from the companionship of Sorrow,…

To men who think prayer their main business and devote time to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit the keys of His kingdom, and by them does He work His spiritual wonders in this world

Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us and lead us to lament its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our praying, henceforth, should be an expression of the soul's sincere desire.

The ministry of prayer, if it be anything worthy of the name, is a ministry of ardor, a ministry of unwearied and intense longing after God and after his holiness.

Pray for all men. We usually pray more for things than we do for men. Our prayers should be thrown across their pathway as they rush in their downward course to a lost eternity.

Neglect of the inner chamber is the solution of most spiritual failure.

The preacher is not sent to merely induce men to join the church, nor merely to get them to do better. It is to get them to pray, to trust God, and to keep God ever before their eyes, that they may not sin against him.

The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy.

A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.

Invested with such gracious prerogatives, exposed to so great evils, involving so many grave responsibilities, it would be a parody on the shrewdness of the devil and a libel on his character and reputation if he did not…

Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in the intellectual faculties of the mind.

The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.

We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to…

It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the mini…

Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer;

your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all the week.

The preaching man is to be the praying man. Prayer is the preacher's mightiest weapon.

The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world hav…

Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them.

No man gets God who does not follow hard after him, and no soul follows hard after God who is not after him in early morn.

In the ultimate issue, prayer is simply faith, claiming its natural yet marvelous prerogatives-faith taking possession of its illimitable inheritance.

Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God.

Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh and blood do not relish. Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they…

The requisites of true prayer are the requisites of scriptural, vital, personal religion. They are the requisites of real religious service in this life. Primary among these requisites is that in serving, we serve. So in…

Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.

Christ made disciples and kept them disciples by praying.

Then it was He urged upon His disciples the injunction, ' Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth labourers into his harvest,' dearly teaching them that it belonged to God to call into the ministry men w…

It is not by positive, conspicuous evil that Satan perverts the Church, but by quiet displacement and by unnoticed substitution. The higher is being retired, the spiritual gives place to the social, and the divine is eli…

The great power and malignity of Satan is seen in that among the most distressing cases were those who were not noted for great sins, but the young and comparative innocent ones were the victims of his dread power.

Nothing advances Satan's work with more skilful and readier hands than to be ignorant of Satan and his ways.

It is on the field of low aims and satisfied results, that the devil wins his chief victories.

A spiritual growth, constant and sure spiritual development, is the surest safeguard against Satan's wiles, assaults and surprises. Constant growth is all eyes and all strength. Satan never finds it asleep, drowsy nor we…

Paul's marvellous career was simple, not complex. He sums it up in fighting, running, watching, the three elements of continuous advance.

Fight the devil and overcome him, is John's process of becoming fathers in spiritual power, rooted, grounded and perfected. Overcoming the devil, is with John the presage of overcoming the world.

We often end praying just where we ought to begin. We quit praying when God waits and is waiting for us to really pray.

Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.

Temptation is really a solicitation to evil arising from the devil or born in the carnal nature of man. Trial is testing. It is that which proves us, tests us, and makes us stronger and better when we submit to the trial…

The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because…

The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. Light praying will make light preaching.

THE men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seekin…

A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully. The desire for God that keeps so far behind the devil and the world at the b…

Satan has all the vantage ground when we do not maintain the aggressive.

Prayer is an ardent and believing cry to God for some specific thing. God's rule is to answer by giving the specific thing asked for.

Is there any work, higher work for the disciple to do than His Lord did? Is there any loftier employment, more honourable, more divine, than to pray for men? To take their woes, their sins, and their perils before God; t…

Not to pray is not simply a privation, an omission, but a positive violation of law, of spiritual life, a crime, bringing disorder and ruin. Prayer is law world-wide and eternity-reaching.

To Christ Jesus prayer occupied no secondary place, but was exacting and paramount, a necessity, a life, the satisfying of a restless yearning and a preparation for heavy responsibilities.