E. M. Bounds on Prayer & the Word

Prayer invariably begets a love for the Word of God, and sets people to the reading of it. Prayer leads people to obey the Word of God, and puts them into the heart which obeys a joy unspeakable. Praying people and Bible reading people are the same sort of folk. The God of the Bible and the God of prayer are one. God speaks to man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer. One reads the Bible to discover God’s will; he prays in order that he may receive power to do that will. Bible-reading and praying are the distinguishing traits of those who strive to know and please God. And just as prayer begets a love for the Scriptures, and sets people to reading the Bible, so also, does prayer cause men and women to visit the house of God, to hear the Scriptures expounded. Church-going is closely connected with the Bible, not so much because the Bible cautions us against “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is,” but because in God’s house, God’s chosen minister declares his Word to dying men, explains the Scriptures, and enforces their teachings upon his hearers. And prayer germinates a resolve in those who practice it not to forsake the house of God.

Prayer begets a church-going conscience, a church-loving heart, a church-supporting spirit. It is the praying people who make it a matter of conscience, to attend the preaching of the Word; who delight in its reading; exposition; who support it with their influence and their means. Prayer exalts the Word of God and gives it preeminence in the estimation of those who faithfully and wholeheartedly call upon the name of the Lord.

Prayer draws its very life from the Bible, and has no standing ground outside of the warrant of the Scriptures. Its very existence and character is dependent on revelation made by God to man in his holy Word. Prayer, in turn, exalts this same revelation, and turns men toward that Word. The nature, necessity, and all-comprehending character of prayer, is based on the Word of God.

From, The Necessity of Prayer, (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI: 1990), as found in The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds on Prayer, pages 72-73