Power Through Prayer Study Guide: 6 Sessions with Discussion Questions
This study guide splits E. M. Bounds' Power Through Prayer into six sessions of three or four short chapters each. It works for a small group, a pastors' fellowship, a staff meeting or a person reading alone. Each session lists the chapters to read, a short overview, a key line from the book, a Scripture passage, discussion questions and one thing to practice that week.
The chapters are short. Most groups can read a session's chapters in under an hour. Read Power Through Prayer free in TheWay Library on a phone or computer, so everyone has the same text.
Before you start
Bounds wrote mainly to preachers, and he writes with force. Some readers find him hard at first. Encourage your group to read slowly and to take his words as a call, not as a scolding. If some in your group aren't pastors, ask them to read "preacher" as "anyone who serves others for God." His principles hold for teachers, parents and every believer.
It helps to read the two short forewords, by A. C. Dixon and Albert A. Head, before the first meeting. For a map of the whole book, see our chapter-by-chapter summary. For background on the author, see Who Was E. M. Bounds?
Session 1: God's method is a man (chapters 1 to 3)
Read: chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3.
Bounds opens with his central claim: God works through people, and the person matters more than the plan. Then he warns that preaching can give life or kill, and that even correct, orthodox preaching goes dead without prayer.
Men are God's method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter I
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
2 Corinthians 3:6
Discuss:
- Where do you see churches today looking for "better methods"? Is anything wrong with good methods?
- Bounds says "it takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man." What has God been building in you over the years?
- What is the difference between "the letter" and "the spirit" in preaching or teaching?
- How can orthodox teaching become "dead orthodoxy"? Have you seen it?
Practice: Set aside one unhurried time of prayer this week, and ask God to shape you, not just your plans.
For more on this session, read Men Are God's Method.
Session 2: Prayer first (chapters 4 to 6)
Read: chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6.
Bounds names two dangers: hiding in study and losing people, or staying busy with people and losing God. He insists prayer must come first and get the best of our time, and that little praying can be worse than none.
Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter IV
Discuss:
- Which of the two "extreme tendencies" in chapter 4 are you more drawn to?
- Bounds says "the preacher may lose God in his sermon." How can good work for God crowd out God?
- Why does he say little praying may be worse than no praying?
- What does "the closet first, the study and activities second" look like in an ordinary week?
Practice: Before you prepare a lesson, a talk or a hard conversation this week, pray for the people first.
Session 3: Time with God (chapters 7 to 9)
Read: chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9.
These chapters are full of examples: Wesley, McCheyne, Brainerd, Judson and others who gave hours to prayer, often early in the morning. Bounds says the clock isn't the measure, but time is essential.
And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
Mark 1:35
Our short prayers owe their point and efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter VII
Discuss:
- Which example from these chapters struck you most, and why?
- Bounds says the value of prayer isn't "measured by the clock." Then why does he stress time so much?
- "If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day." Is that true in your experience?
- What keeps you from early or longer prayer? What could you change?
Practice: Try giving God the first part of your morning, before your phone, for five days.
Session 4: Devotion and the heart (chapters 10 to 13)
Read: chapter 10, chapter 11, chapter 12, chapter 13.
Bounds says ministry is not a profession but devotion to God. He tells the story of David Brainerd's praying life, then argues that prayer makes a "heart preacher" and that a prepared heart matters more than a prepared sermon.
A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter I2
Discuss:
- What's the difference between ministry as a profession and ministry as a devotion?
- What in Brainerd's life, as Bounds tells it, challenges you?
- Bounds says "our great lack is not in head culture, but in heart culture." How do you cultivate your heart?
- He writes that "the closet is the heart's study." What have you learned in prayer that you couldn't have learned from a book?
Practice: Spend part of your prayer time this week simply asking God to search your heart.
Session 5: Unction (chapters 14 to 16)
Read: chapter 14, chapter 15, chapter 16.
Unction is Bounds' word for the anointing of the Holy Spirit on preaching. It can't be manufactured. It's often confused with earnestness or emotion. It comes in answer to prayer and is kept by prayer.
This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter I5
Discuss:
- How would you describe unction in your own words?
- Bounds says earnestness "may be selfishness simulated." How can we tell earnestness from the Spirit's anointing?
- Why does he call unction "a conditional gift"?
- Have you heard teaching that was plainly true but seemed lifeless? What was missing?
Practice: Ask God each day this week for the Holy Spirit's help in whatever you'll say to others for Him.
Session 6: Praying leaders and praying people (chapters 17 to 20)
Read: chapter 17, chapter 18, chapter 19, chapter 20.
The apostles gave themselves to prayer. Paul asked church after church to pray for him. Bounds warns against short, hurried devotions and closes with a call for leaders who will put the church to praying.
But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.
Acts 6:4
To be little with God is to be little for God.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter I9
Discuss:
- Why did the apostles hand off other work so they could pray?
- Bounds asks, "Do you pray for your preacher?" How could your group do this regularly?
- "We live shabbily because we pray meanly." What does that mean?
- "A praying pulpit will beget praying pews." What would change if your church became a praying church?
- Looking back over the six weeks, what's one change you want to keep?
Practice: Choose a leader you know and pray for them by name every day this week.
For pastors leading the study
If you lead this as a pastor, read chapter 18 with care. Bounds says the preacher "covets with a great covetousness the prayers of God's people." It's fine to tell your group plainly that you need their prayers. That's what Paul did.
Want a few lines to put on a slide or handout each week? See Power Through Prayer Quotes. And to get everyone the same text, send them to the free online edition.