Unhurried Prayer

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003399" TEXT="#080000" background="040c8c00erkjxk.jpg"> <div> <B><U>E.M. Bounds</U></B></div> <div> <B>was born in Shelby County, MO.  He practiced law for three years until he was called to the gospel ministry.  While serving as a chaplain in the Civil War, he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, TN.  He later held several pastorates in Missouri, Tennessee, and Alabama.  He was a profound man of prayer, and his books on prayer remain classic works.  He spent the last 17 years of his life in Washington, GA, where his is buried.  His final years were spent in prayer, reading and writing.</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#0000CC" FACE="Brush Script MT" ><B>Restoration Ministries</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFF99" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#0000CC" FACE="Arial" >    </FONT><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Restoration Ministries"><U>H</U></A><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Restoration Ministries"><U>ome</U></A></div> <div>                                                   </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="070f8480.jpg" border=0 width="504" height="72" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>by E.M. Bounds</B></div> <div> ______________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of their essence. The ability to wait, stay and press belongs essentially to our intercourse with God. Short devotions are the enemy of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry. Short devotions deplete spiritual vigor, arrest spiritual progress, sap spiritual foundations, and blight the root and bloom of spiritual life. They are the prolific source of backsliding, the sure indication of superficial piety; they deceive, blight, rot the seed, and impoverish the soul.</div> <bR> <div> It is true that Bible prayers are short, but the praying men of the Bible were with God through many a sweet and holy wrestling hour. They won by few words but long waiting. The prayers Moses’ records may be short, but Moses prayed to God with fastings and mighty cryings forty days and nights.</div> <bR> <div> The statement of Elijah's praying may be condensed to a few brief paragraphs, but doubtless Elijah, who when “praying he prayed,” spent many hours of fiery struggle and lofty intercourse with God before, with assured boldness, he said to Ahab, “There shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word” (1 Kings 17:1). The Bible record of Paul's prayers is short, but Paul prayed night and day exceedingly.</div> <bR> <div> The Lord's prayer is a divine epitome for infant lips. The man Christ Jesus, prayed many an all-night before His work was done, and His all-night and long-sustained devotions gave to His work its finish and perfection, and to His character the fullness and glory of its divinity.</div> <bR> <div> 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 will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass just as well in public. We can adjust ourselves to our weak praying until it looks well to us; at least it keeps up a decent form and quiets the conscience — the deadliest of opiates! We can curtail our praying, and not realize the peril till the foundations are gone. Hurried devotions make weak faith, feeble convictions, and questionable piety. To be little with God is to be little for God. To cut short the praying makes the whole religious character short, miserly and slovenly.</div> <bR> <div> It takes good time for the full flow of God into the spirit. Short devotions cut the pipe of God's full flow. It takes time in the secret places to get full revelation from God. Little time and hurry mar the picture.</div> <bR> <div> Henry Martyn laments that “lack of private devotional reading and shortness of prayer through incessant sermon-making had produced much strangeness between God and my soul.” He judged that he had dedicated too much time to public ministry and too little to private communion with God. He was much impressed with the need to set apart times for fasting and to devote time for solemn prayer. Resulting from this, he records: “Was assisted this morning to pray for two hours.” Said William Wilberforce, the peer of kings: “I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of private devotions starves the soul; it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.” Of a failure in Parliament, he says: “Let me record my grief and shame, and all, probably, from private devotions having been contracted, and so God let me stumble.” More solitude and earlier hours were his remedy.</div> <bR> <div> More time and early hours for prayer would act like magic to revive and invigorate many a decayed spiritual life. More time and early hours for prayer would be manifest in holy living. A holy life would not be so rare or so difficult a thing if our devotions were not so short and hurried. A Christlike spirit in its sweet and passionless fragrance would not be so alien and hopeless a heritage if our closet stay were lengthened and intensified. We live shabbily because we pray poorly. Plenty of time to feast in our closets will bring marrow and fatness to our lives. Our ability to stay with God in our closet measures our ability to stay with God out of the closet. Hasty closet visits are deceptive. We are not only deluded by them, but we are losers by them in many ways and in many rich legacies. Tarrying in the closet instructs and wins. We are taught by it, and the greatest victories are often the results of great waiting — waiting till words and plans are exhausted, and silent and patient waiting gains the crown. Jesus Christ asks with an affronted emphasis, “Shall not God avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto Him?”</div> <bR> <div> To pray is the greatest thing we can do, and to do it well there must be calmness, time and deliberation; otherwise it is degraded into the smallest things. True praying has the largest results for good and poor praying the least. We cannot do too much of real praying, we cannot do too little of the sham. We must learn anew the worth of prayer, and enter anew the school of prayer. There is nothing which takes more time to learn. And if we would learn the wondrous art, we must not give a fragment here and there — ”A little talk with Jesus” as the tiny saintlets sing — but we must demand and hold with iron grasp the best hours of the day for God, or there will be no praying worth the name.</div> <div> ______________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> This brief extract of is from chapter 12 of E M. Bounds' book <I>Power Through Prayer.</I></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>