The Weapon of Prayer

Learn the secrets of effective prayer for every need. E. M. Bounds truly followed the charge to pray without ceasing. It was as normal and essential to him as breathing. But though he was in prayer constantly, it never became a chore to him. Throughout his life, whether he was ministering to troops during the Civil War or bringing God's Word to his congregation, E. M. Bounds relished his time in conversation with God. Prayer is an absolute necessity to the proper carrying on of God's work. God has made it so. This must have been the principal reason why in the early Church, when the complaint that the widows of certain believers had been neglected in the daily administration of the Church's benefactions, that the twelve called the disciples together, and told them to look out for seven men, "full of the Holy Ghost, and wisdom,. who they would appoint over that benevolent work, adding this important statement, "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word". They surely realized that the success of the Word and the progress of the Church were dependent in a preeminent sense upon their .giving themselves to prayer". God could effectively work through them in proportion as they gave themselves fully to prayer.