Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Power November 5, 2007
Good book about how God uses praying men who are mighty in prayer.
God does not anoint plans, but praying men. Prayer is our mightiest weapon to use against the enemy.
Learn why prayer is good for you July 3, 2007
This simple book (only around 50 pages long or so) is quite inspiring. In it, Mr. Bounds expounds upon not only the many different reasons why we should pray, but also that we are being called to pray. He reminds us of how essential prayer was to the fathers in the Old Testament and how much prayer centered in the lives of Jesus and his disciples. While this book is written for pastors and other preachers of the gospel, it's a good inspiration to anyone wanting to grow closer to God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While I do not think anyone will literally "study" this book, I believe that reading it once or twice in our lifetimes would benefit us in more ways that we might imagine. Pray, pray, and then pray some more!
A compassionate call to pray April 18, 2007
I have never read a book like this book about prayer with such an overwhelming weight, compelling exposition and reasoning in regard to why not only preachers, but christians should pray. What I mean by pray is one that is "...strongly into the heart and life as Christ's "strong crying and tears" did; must draw out the soul into an agony of desire as Paul's did; must be an inwrought fire and force like the "effectual, fervent prayer" of James; must be of that quality which, when put into the golden censer and incensed before God, works mighty spiritual throes and revolutions."(Ch.4)
I can not say I agree with everything Bounds said, but I can not help but be stricken with so many strong statements he made or quoted from the giants of Christianity in the past, among which are as follows (I have to restrain myself from revealing too much of the book):
- Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces. Professional praying there is and will be, but professional praying helps the preaching to its deadly work. Professional praying chills and kills both preaching and praying. Much of the lax devotion and lazy, irreverent attitudes in congregational praying are attributable to professional praying in the pulpit.(Ch.3)
- Prayer--secret fervent believing prayer--lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the language where a missionary lives, a mild and winning temper, a heart given up to God in closet religion--these, these are the attainments which, more than all knowledge, or all other gifts, will fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of human redemption. (Ch.4, quoted from Carey's brotherhood)
- Preachers who are great thinkers, great students must be the greatest of prayers, or else they will be the greatest of backsliders, heartless professionals, rationalistic, less than the least of preachers in God's estimate. (Ch.4)
- The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. (Ch.4)
- Prayer is humbling work. [1] It abases intellect and pride, [2]crucifies vainglory, and [3]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. ...perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.(Ch.5)
- No ministry can succeed without much praying, and this praying must be fundamental, ever-abiding, ever-increasing. (Ch.6)
- 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 beginning of the day will never catch up. (Ch.9)
- "The leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a devotional habit." Richard Cecil (Ch.10)
- "I urge upon you communion with Christ a growing communion" -- Sam Rutherford (Ch.11)
- "All the minister's efforts will be vanity or worse than vanity if he have not unction." -- Richard Cecil (Ch.16)
- Apostolic praying was as taxing, toilsome, and imperative as apostolic preaching. They prayed mightily day and night to bring their people to the highest regions of faith and holiness. They prayed mightier still to hold them to this high spiritual altitude. The preacher who has never learned in the school of Christ the high and divine art of intercession for his people will never learn the art of preaching (Ch.17)
- "If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith." -- Martin Luther (Ch.20)
This is an unquestionably must read for Christians who long for sweet and growing communion with Christ and need some fuel and fire to do so.
A Magisterial Volume on Prayer February 10, 2007
E.M. Bounds's brief work, "Power Through Prayer," is well-deserving of its recognition as a classic work on prayer. This ought to be required reading for pastors. My only hesitation, and the reason I rate it with 4 stars, is that it is rather difficult to hand it off to laypeople, so directed as it is to clergy. But if you are a pastor and have not read this work, it must be pushed to the top of your reading list (it can be read in one long evening of study).
 A Christian classic that I highly recommend to all believers November 10, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913), was a mighty man of God, a Methodist minister and devotional writer. Born in Shelby Country, Missouri, he first became a lawyer, but after the American Civil War he became a minister for the Methodist Episcopal Church. Rev. Bounds is most remembered today for his "Spiritual Life Books," all of which were written in the last seventeen years of his life, after a lifetime of serving God and his fellow man.
This wonderful book was written by Rev. Bounds as advice to the preacher, and in it he tells the reader why prayer is important, how to pray, and what it means. But, don't get the idea that this is a philosophical work directed at learned readers. Instead, this book is wonderful advice on prayer that will inform and convict any Christian reader.
Indeed, I must say that Rev. Bounds really knew what he was talking about. The book is very readable, and I found myself convicted by what he had to say. This is a great book on prayer, one that I would recommend for any and every preacher, and also any and every other Christian. This is a Christian classic that I highly recommend to all believers.
By the way, here's a great quote from Power Through Prayer: "What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use-men of prayer, men mighty in prayer." As true today as the day it was written!
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