Power Through Prayer Summary: E. M. Bounds' 20 Chapters Explained
Power Through Prayer by E. M. Bounds is a short book with one message: God works through people, and the people He works through most are people of prayer. Bounds wrote it mainly for preachers. He argues that a minister's power doesn't come from learning, talent or method but from time alone with God. Every chapter comes back to that point from a new side: the preacher's character, the danger of dead preaching, the time great saints gave to prayer, the "unction" of the Holy Spirit, and the need for churches to pray for their pastors.
You can read Power Through Prayer free in TheWay Library. This edition has two forewords and twenty numbered chapters. Most chapters open with a short quotation from another writer, such as Richard Baxter, Robert Murray McCheyne or John Wesley, before Bounds speaks in his own voice. Below is what each part says, with a link to read it.
The two forewords
Foreword by A. C. Dixon. Dixon tells how two friends gave him the book. He'd never heard of the author. The first page stopped him, and when he finished he felt he knew more about prayer and, better, "felt more like praying."
Foreword by Albert A. Head. Head says the great need of the church is power in prayer. He commends the book to preachers, teachers, evangelists and intercessors, and calls it a "trumpet call" to the church to arise and pray.
Chapters 1 to 3: the man and the preaching
Chapter 1. The book's famous opening argument. The church keeps looking for new plans and organizations, but God is looking for better men. The Holy Spirit doesn't flow through methods but through people. The preacher is like a golden pipe the oil flows through, and the pipe must be clean and open. Bounds says it takes twenty years to make a sermon because it takes twenty years to make the man. The real sermon is made in the closet, and the pulpit of his day was weak in praying. (For more on this chapter, see Men Are God's Method.)
The real sermon is made in the closet.
Power Through Prayer, Chapter I
Chapter 2. Preaching can give life, and it can kill. Bounds builds on Paul's words that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Preaching that kills is preaching without the Spirit. It may be correct and earnest, but the trouble lies in the preacher, whose inner life has never fully surrendered to God. Only a crucified man can give crucified, life-giving preaching.
Chapter 3. Dead preaching can be fully orthodox. It can be scholarly or careless, eloquent or plain, and still deal only with the surface. Its root is prayerlessness. Bounds also warns against long, dry "professional praying" in the pulpit and wishes for a school that would teach preachers to pray.
Chapters 4 to 6: prayer in the life of the minister
Chapter 4. Two dangers face ministers. One is hiding in the study until God and people are both forgotten. The other is becoming a busy man of affairs who doesn't pray at all. Even sermon work can harden the heart if prayer is neglected: "The preacher may lose God in his sermon." Prayer has to come first, with the study second, and it has to get the best of our time.
Chapter 5. Prayer must fill the preacher's study and pulpit. Like fire in an engine, prayer makes the steam. The preacher must move God toward the people before he can move the people toward God. Bounds says little praying may be worse than none, because it quiets the conscience, and he describes the preacher who only prays briefly at his bedside.
Chapter 6. In every truly spiritual ministry, prayer is an evident and controlling force. Colleges and books can't make a preacher; praying does. God's true preachers differ in many things but meet at one point: they were men of prayer.
Chapters 7 to 9: time, examples and early hours
Chapter 7. Time is essential to prayer. Our short prayers draw their strength from long ones that came before. Bounds lists the habits of Charles Simeon, John Wesley, John Fletcher, Robert Leighton, Thomas Ken, Francis Asbury, Samuel Rutherford, Joseph Alleine, McCheyne and John Welch.
Chapter 8. More examples: Henry Martyn, Edward Payson, who wore grooves in the floor with his knees, David Brainerd, William Bramwell, Henry Havelock and Adoniram Judson. Bounds concludes that no one can be a man of prayer who doesn't give much time to praying.
Chapter 9. The men who did most for God were early on their knees. If God doesn't come first in the morning, He'll be last the rest of the day. Getting up early isn't the point by itself; the desire for God is. "Our laziness after God is our crying sin."
Chapters 10 to 13: devotion, Brainerd and the heart
Chapter 10. The church needs saintly preachers. Money, genius and culture can't move God's cause; holiness can. The preacher's ministry is not a profession but a devotion to God, and prayer is as necessary to that devotion as food is to life. Prayer is what makes saints.
Chapter 11. A portrait of David Brainerd, the young missionary to the Native Americans whose diary records long seasons of prayer and fasting. Bounds finds the reason for Brainerd's results in the man himself, a channel God could flow through.
Chapter 12. Prayer makes a heart preacher. A prepared heart is better than a prepared sermon. Ministers have learned the "scaffolding" of sermon-making and mistaken it for the building. The preacher's great lack is not knowledge but holiness.
Chapter 13. "The heart is the saviour of the world." Heads don't save; the gospel flows through hearts. A pastor's real power is his heart, and a professional ministry is a heartless one. The closet is the heart's study, and thought itself is born in prayer.
Chapters 14 to 16: unction
Chapter 14. Bounds introduces unction, the anointing of the Holy Spirit on preaching. He quotes Alexander Knox, who found warm, living preaching mostly among the Methodists of his day, and Charles Spurgeon, who said unction can't be manufactured. "This unction is the art of preaching."
Chapter 15. Unction is often confused with earnestness. Earnestness is good, but it can be purely human, and Bounds says it "may be selfishness simulated." Unction comes "not in the study but in the closet," as God's answer to prayer.
Chapter 16. Unction is what separates gospel preaching from every other way of presenting truth. It can be imitated by emotion. It isn't a permanent possession but a conditional gift kept by the same prayer that first gained it. Without that prayer it spoils, like manna kept overnight.
Chapters 17 to 20: leaders, intercession and a call
Chapter 17. The apostles gave themselves "continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word." Paul's praying carried his converts farther than his preaching. A church becomes what its leaders are, and "a pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing."
Chapter 18. The preacher must pray, and the preacher must be prayed for. Bounds walks through Paul's letters, where he asks church after church to pray for him. He asks the reader plainly: "Do you pray for your preacher?"
Chapter 19. Hurried prayer is the enemy of deep faith. The prayers recorded in the Bible are short, but the people who prayed them spent long hours with God. "To be little with God is to be little for God."
Chapter 20. Bounds calls for praying leaders who will put the church to praying. "A praying pulpit will beget praying pews." God can do wonders "if He can get a suitable man," and the book closes with a one-line prayer that God's promise to prayer would be more than realized.
Where to go next
Learn more about the author in Who Was E. M. Bounds?, see the book's best-known lines in Power Through Prayer Quotes, or work through it with others using the Power Through Prayer Study Guide. Then open the book and read it for yourself. It takes only a few evenings.