I was recently given a book to read called Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds, all I can say is thank you Bob Cochrane! It is a fantastic read and is challenging me on many levels!
I thought I would share a little of who this EM Bounds was and some quotes from one of his books 'Power Through Prayer'.
Life of EM Bounds
Bounds was born in
Shelby County, rural Missouri. Although apprenticed as an attorney, and admitted to the bar, Bounds felt called to the ministry in his early twenties. He was ordained by his denomination in 1859, and was named pastor of the Monticello, Missouri Methodist Church. Instead of practicing law however, He became a chaplain in the Confederate States Army (Fifth Missouri Regiment) and was taken prisoner during the first battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Upon his release, he felt compelled to return to war-torn Franklin and help rebuild it spiritually. His primary method was to establish weekly prayer sessions that sometimes lasted several hours. Bounds was regionally celebrated for leading spiritual revival in Franklin and eventually began an itinerant preaching ministry throughout the country.Quotes
I actually got these Quotes from the reformation21 blog where they also have been challenged by this EM Bounds book!
The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves. It has no self-propagating
power. It moves as the men who have charge of it move. The preacher must
impersonate the gospel. Its divine, most distinctive features must be embodied
in him. The constraining power of love must be in the preacher as a projecting,
eccentric, an all-commanding, self-oblivious force. The energy of self-denial
must be his being, his heart and blood and bones.
He must go forth as a man among men, clothed with humility, abiding in meekness,
wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove; the bonds of a servant with the spirit of
a king, a king in high, royal, independent bearing, with the simplicity and
sweetness of a child. The preacher must throw himself, with all the abandon of a
perfect, self-emptying faith and a self-consuming zeal, into his work for the
salvation of men. Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men
be who take hold of and shape a generation for God. If they be timid
timeservers, place seekers, if they be men pleasers or men fearers, if their
faith has a weak hold on God or his Word, if their denial be broken by any phase
of self or the world, they cannot take hold of the Church nor the world for God.
The preacher’s sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His
most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself. The
training of the twelve was the great, difficult, and enduring work of Christ.
Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is
well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not
great talents or great learning or 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. These
can mould a generation for God.
