Top 90 E.M. Bounds Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Walking with God down the avenues of prayer we acquire something of His likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His beauty and His grace.”

— E.M. Bounds

52. “Luther said: “To have prayed well is to have studied well.”

— E.M. Bounds

53. “The goal of prayer is the ear of God,” a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us.”

— E.M. Bounds

54. “Satan is always at church before the preacher is in the pulpit or a member is in the pew. He comes to hinder the sower, to impoverish the soil, or to corrupt the seed. He uses these tactics only when courage and faith are in the pulpit, and zeal and prayer are in the pew; but if dead ritualism or live liberalism are in the pulpit, he does not attend, because they are no danger to him.”

— E.M. Bounds

55. “Prayer is the keynote of the most sanctified life, of the holiest ministry. He does the most for God who is the highest skilled in prayer.”

— E.M. Bounds

56. “When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow’s grace or tomorrow’s bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today’s needs, not for tomorrow’s, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all!”

— E.M. Bounds

57. “The strongest one in Christ’s kingdom is he who is the best knocker. The secret of success in Christ’s Kingdom is the ability to pray. The one who can wield the power of prayer is the strong one, the holy one in Christ’s Kingdom. The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray.”

— E.M. Bounds

58. “The law of prayer, the right to pray, rests on sonship.”

— E.M. Bounds

59. “Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul and body are united, as life and the heart are united. There is no real prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer.”

— E.M. Bounds

60. “Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men be who take hold of and shape a generation for God.”

— E.M. Bounds

61. “There is an important principle of prayer found in some of the miracles of Christ. It is the progressive nature of the answer to prayer. Not at once does God always give the full answer to prayer, but rather progressively, step by step.”

— E.M. Bounds

62. “Praying saints are God’s agents for carrying on His saving and providential work on earth. If His agents fail Him, neglecting to pray, then His work fails.”

— E.M. Bounds

63. “The entire man must pray. The whole man, life, heart, temper, mind, are in it. Each and all join in the prayer exercise. Doubt, double-mindedness, division of the affections, are all foreign to the closet character and conduct, undefiled, made whiter than snow, are mighty potencies, and are the most seemly beauties for the closet hour, and for the struggles of prayer.”

— E.M. Bounds

64. “The preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as essential as food is to life.”

— E.M. Bounds

65. “None but praying leaders can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need some body who can set the saints to this business of praying.”

— E.M. Bounds

66. “It is neither words, nor thoughts nor ideas, nor feelings, which shape praying, but character and conduct.”

— E.M. Bounds

67. “The “poor in spirit” are eminently competent to pray.”

— E.M. Bounds

68. “Prayer – secret fervent believing prayer – lies at the root of all personal godliness.”

— E.M. Bounds

69. “The Gospel, in its success and power, depends on our ability to pray.”

— E.M. Bounds

70. “Prayer and sinning cannot keep company with each other. One or the other must of necessity stop. Get men to pray, and they will quit sinning, because prayer creates a distaste for sinning, and so works upon the heart, that evil-doing becomes repugnant, and the entire nature is lifted to a reverent contemplation of high and holy things.”

— E.M. Bounds

71. “God commands men to pray, and so not to pray is plain disobedience to an imperative command of Almighty God.”

— E.M. Bounds

72. “The range and potencies of prayer, so clearly shown by Jesus in life and teaching, but reveal the great purposes of God. They not only reveal the Son in the reality and fullness of His humanity, but also reveal the Father.”

— E.M. Bounds

73. “While Jesus Christ practiced praying Himself, being personally under the law of prayer, and while His parables and miracles were but exponents of prayer, He laboured directly to teach His disciples the specific art of praying. He said little or nothing about how to preach or what to preach. But He spent His strength and time in teaching men how to speak to God, how to commune with Him, and how to be with Him.”

— E.M. Bounds

74. “Paul lived on his knees, that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths, and depths of an unmeasurable saintliness, and “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

— E.M. Bounds

75. “The world is one of the enemies which must be fought and conquered on the way to heaven.”

— E.M. Bounds

76. “He is the wisest man who prays the most and the best.”

— E.M. Bounds

77. “Prayer for the preacher avails just as prayer by the preacher avails. Two things are always factors in the life and work of a true preacher: First when he prays constantly, fervently and persistently for those to whom he preaches; and secondly, when those to whom he ministers pray for their preacher.”

— E.M. Bounds

78. “Prayer affects three different spheres of existence – the divine, the angelic and the human. It puts God to work, it puts angels to work, and it puts man to work. It lays its hands upon God, angels and men.”

— E.M. Bounds

79. “Moses lived near God, and had the freest and most unhindered and boldest access to God, but this, instead of abating the necessity of prayer, made it more necessary, obvious and powerful. Familiarity.”

— E.M. Bounds

80. “It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God – men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it.”

— E.M. Bounds

81. “Men of piety are always men of prayer. Men are never noted for the simplicity and strength of their faith who are not preeminently men of prayer. Piety flourishes nowhere so rapidly and so rankly as in the closet. The closet is the garden of faith.”

— E.M. Bounds

82. “We must die in our closets before we can die on the cross.”

— E.M. Bounds

83. “God is revealed not by argument but by work. We learn what He is from what He does.”

— E.M. Bounds

84. “Praying men are a necessity in carrying out the divine plan for the salvation of men.”

— E.M. Bounds

85. “The preaching of the Word to a prayerless congregation falls at the very feet of the preacher.”

— E.M. Bounds

86. “It is easier to fill the head than it is to prepare the heart. It is easier to make a brain sermon than a heart sermon. It was heart that drew the Son of God from heaven. It is heart that will draw men to heaven.”

— E.M. Bounds

87. “The Bible is a revelation, not a philosophy nor a poem, not a science. It reveals things and persons as they are, living and acting outside the range of earthly vision or natural discovery.”

— E.M. Bounds

88. “The devil is a created being. He is therefore not self-existent nor eternal, but limited and finite.”

— E.M. Bounds

89. “Men who can set the Church ablaze for God, not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves every thing for God.”

— E.M. Bounds

90. “To save the world and ignore the individual is not only Utopian, but every way damaging.”

— E.M. Bounds

91. “He is always at church before the preacher is in the pulpit or a member in the pew, to hinder the sower, to impoverish the soil, or to blast the seed, that is, when courage and faith are in the pulpit, and zeal and prayer in the pew. But if dead orthodoxy or live heterodoxy are in the pulpit, he then puts in his time elsewhere at some point of danger.”

— E.M. Bounds

92. “Two things,” says his biographer, “he seems never to have ceased from – the cultivation of personal holiness and the most anxious efforts to win souls.” The two are the inseparable attendants on the ministry of prayer.”

— E.M. Bounds