The Essentials of Prayer By: E M Bounds

Author: E M Bounds, Dekton Publishing

The eight books included in this collection

The Essentials of Prayer
The Necessity of Prayer
Power Through Prayer
Prayer & Praying Men
Purpose in Prayer
Reality of Prayer
The Weapon of Prayer
The Possibilities of Prayer

Edward McKendree Bounds was born in Missouri in 1835. He trained as a lawyer, but after hearing God’s call to ministry left his law practice to become a clergyman in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also served as an Army chaplain during the American Civil War.

When it came to the subject of prayer, Bounds lived out what he preached. Every morning, he would pray for three hours as part of his own prayer routine. He did not regard his time in prayer as a waste of time, but rather as an opportunity to change the world through God’s power and grace.

Bounds constantly encouraged Christians to get closer to God and overcome life’s obstacles through genuine prayer and communion with God. In his books on prayer, he draws heavily from the Scriptures and uses examples of how the greatest characters in the Bible were people of prayer.

Bounds said, “Prayer should be the sound of our hearing, the growth of our growing, the breath of our breathing, the thought of our thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living.”

In this collection of eight of Bound’s books on prayer, we learn that “good deeds, communion, church activities, and other such activities do not and should not take the place of prayer.”