Prayerful Thoughts

You may know from the little "Here's What I'm Reading" section on my blog, that I am reading E.M. Bounds on Prayer. Well the chapter I read today was called Prayer and Desire. It was so challenging and so encouraging, I thought I'd share a few little exerts.

The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer.

Even if it is discovered that the desire is honestly absent, we should pray anyway. We ought to pray. The ought comes in, in order that desire and expression are produced. God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray-whether we feel like it or not-and not allow our feelings to determine our prayer habits. In such circumstances, we ought to pray for the desire to pray. This desire is God-given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire.

The dampening of the flame of holy desire is destructive to the vital, aggressive forces in church life. God expects to be represented by a fiery church or He is not, in any proper sense, represented at all. God Himself is all fire; and His church, if it is to be like Him, must also be like white heat. The only things the church can afford to be on fire about are the great, eternal interests of heaven-born, God-given faith.

Desire is intense, but narrow. It cannot spread itself over a wide area. It wants a few things and wants them badly. It wants them so badly that nothing but God's willingness to answer can bring it ease or contentment. (Psalm 27:4)

So, praying is, after all, inspired to seek after God. Prayer desire is ignited to see God and have a clearer, fuller, sweeter, and richer revelation of God. So, to those who pray this way, the Bible becomes a new Bible and Christ a new Savior by the light and revelation of the prayer closet.

The essential prerequisite for all true praying is a deep-seated desire that seeks after God Himself. It remains unsatisfied until the choice gifts in heaven have been richly and abundantly given.

For anyone wanting to study prayer, I highly recommend this book. I'll probably talk more about it, and let you know my thoughts when I'm finished, but folks, that'll be a while...it's a big book. I think that he actually wrote 7 smaller books, and this is just all of them put together. Even if you picked up one of the smaller books, I think it would bless you.