Please join me in savoring these precious words on the relationship of the Word of God and prayer. They were written by E. M. Bounds over a century ago but still ring as true as they did the day he penned them!
"The Word of God is a great help in prayer. If it be lodged and written in our hearts, it will form an out-flowing current of prayer, full and irresistible. Promises, stored in the heart, are to be the fuel from which prayer receives life and warmth, just as the coal, stored in the earth, ministers to our comfort on stormy days and wintry nights. The Word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong. Prayer, like man, cannot live by bread alone, ‘but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.’
“Unless the vital forces of prayer are supplied by God’s Word, prayer, though earnest and even vociferous in its urgency, is in reality flabby, vapid, and void. The absence of the vital force in praying can be traced to the absence of a constant supply of God’s Word by which to repair the waste, and renew the life. He who would learn to pray well, must first study God’s Word, and store it in his memory and thought.
“When we consult God’s Word, we find that no duty is more binding, more exacting, than that of prayer. On the other hand, we discover that no privilege is more exalted, no habit more richly owned of God. No promises are more radiant, more abounding, more explicit, more often reiterated, than those which are attached to prayer.”
Amen, Pastor Bounds! May we learn, then, to delight in the Word of God and continue steadfastly in prayer.
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