Purpose in Prayer Summary: E. M. Bounds' 13 Chapters
Purpose in Prayer is a short book by E. M. Bounds, the Methodist preacher who spent the last part of his life writing about prayer. It came out in 1920, several years after his death, and it runs to thirteen chapters. The chapters have no titles, so the headings below are our own labels for what each one covers.
The whole book presses one idea from many sides. God has tied the advance of His kingdom to the prayers of His people. "Ask of Me," God's word to His Son in Psalm 2, is for Bounds the condition behind everything. The church has not lacked money, plans or talent nearly as much as it has lacked praying. So Bounds calls readers to pray more, pray longer, pray with a definite aim, and keep on until the answer comes.
You can read Purpose in Prayer free in TheWay Library. Each chapter below links straight to the reader.
Chapter 1: God shapes the world by prayer
Bounds opens with the claim that the world is better for every prayer offered in it. Prayers outlive the people who pray them, and God keeps them before Him. The saints' prayers are "the capital stock in heaven" for Christ's work on earth. He builds the chapter on Psalm 2, where the Father promises the nations to His Son on one condition: "Ask of Me." That condition never changes, and the lesson Bounds draws is simple. Learning how to pray matters more than anything else we learn. The chapter closes with short sayings on prayer from Brother Lawrence, Philip Henry, Henry Martyn and others. Read chapter 1.
Chapter 2: Prayer that changed God's purposes
Here Bounds walks through Old Testament cases where prayer turned back a judgment God had announced. Abraham prayed and Abimelech's house was healed. Job prayed for his friends. Jonah prayed from the fish. Pharaoh begged Moses four times to pray, and the plagues lifted. Moses prayed forty days for Israel after the golden calf. Nineveh repented and was spared, and Hezekiah was given fifteen more years. Then Bounds turns to how Israel lost this power through cold, formal praying. Prayer without fire, he says, is "like dead spices." Read chapter 2.
Chapter 3: More praying and better
"More praying and better is the secret of the whole matter." Bounds asks why sin still reigns and the world is still unreached, and answers that we have not asked. The Father is always ready to give; the Son prays through His people; the church has been slow. He quotes God's words in Isaiah, "command ye Me," and points to Elijah as proof that one man's prayers can shut and open heaven. He also notes that most congregations give more money than prayer. The chapter ends with James: "Ye have not, because ye ask not." Read chapter 3.
Chapter 4: Prayer with a purpose
This chapter gives the book its name. Bounds tells of men who prayed for definite things and expected answers: John Wesley praying for a wind at sea, George Müller trusting God for a deck chair for his wife, William Bramwell praying a soldier out of an order to Spain. He also gathers examples of prayer woven through the day, from Stonewall Jackson, James Gilmour and Sir Thomas Browne. His warning at the end: for many of us prayer is only asking for ourselves. Read chapter 4.
Chapter 5: A trade to be learned
Bounds says his own time was busy but not prayerful. Prayer meetings had become lectures, and few prayed in their homes or in secret. Prayer, he says, is a trade we must serve an apprenticeship to learn, and it cannot be separated from a holy life. He calls for leaders who pray, because "a praying pulpit will beget praying pews." Prayer is not the enemy of work; the closet is "the battlefield of the Church." Read chapter 5.
Chapter 6: Importunity
This is the book's central chapter on persistence. Bounds takes the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, the friend at midnight, and the Syrophenician woman, and draws the same lesson from each: keep pressing. Importunity is "not a performance but a passion." He points to Jacob wrestling all night, Moses' forty days, and Abraham, who stopped asking for Sodom before God stopped granting. Even Christ, he notes, gained His greatest supplies through importunate prayer. A long quotation from Spurgeon closes the case: asking is the rule of the kingdom. Read chapter 6.
Chapter 7: Men ought always to pray
Bounds explains what "always" means in Luke 18:1. It does not mean leaving our work. It means a heart that returns to God the moment it is free, like a bird to its nest. Prayer is not a telephone call of a few hurried words. He holds up Moody's morning prayer in a coal shed, Müller's habit of turning Bible reading into prayer, and Robert Murray McCheyne's resolutions on secret prayer. He ends with Hannah, whose praying out of grief brought Samuel and a revival with him. Read chapter 7.
Chapter 8: Praying men
From 1 Timothy 2, "I will therefore that men pray every where," Bounds calls men in particular to pray. God's true leaders, he says, are always marked by prayer: Moses, Elijah, Paul, Wesley. He warns the church against trusting in machinery, money and numbers, because God looks first at the man and his holiness. William Wilberforce's journals show a busy statesman guarding his time alone with God. The chapter ends with Spurgeon urging Christians to spend a night in prayer like Jacob at Jabbok. Read chapter 8.
Chapter 9: The possibilities of prayer
"No lazy saint prays," Bounds begins. Real prayer is hard work. He then shows that "the possibilities of prayer run parallel with the promises of God." Prayer clears the way for the promises to be kept. He lists answers through the Bible: the dead raised, Esau's anger turned, Samuel born, the shadow turned back on the dial of Ahaz. The promises are as wide as "all things whatsoever," and prayer must be on fire to lay hold of them. Read chapter 9.
Chapter 10: Hindrances to prayer
Why don't we pray? Bounds names the most common reason: other duties crowd prayer out, one stage at a time, until it dies. Satan uses good things to destroy the best. The cure is to value prayer as Daniel did. He also says a holy life is the only preparation for the closet, since "the stream of praying cannot rise higher than the fountain of living." The last part of the chapter exposes "prayerless praying": words without desire, faith or heart. Read chapter 10.
Chapter 11: Answers to prayer
Bounds opens by repeating the line that closed the last chapter: prayer can do anything that God can do. The aim of prayer is to get the thing asked for. The rest of the chapter is a collection of answered prayers. A father's dying prayer for his prodigal son. A school in Japan given a well. Hudson Taylor's ship pulled from a reef by a sudden breeze. A politician converted on the day his wife began to pray. Moody's prayer for the head of an infidel club. Read chapter 11.
Chapter 12: Revival born in prayer
"All the true revivals have been born in prayer." Bounds shows that revival is God's work, but God works through people who pray. His main story is Moody's visit to London, where a cold morning service turned into hundreds of conversions that evening because a bedridden woman had been praying for him. He adds the revival at Shotts in 1630, Baxter at Kidderminster, Whitefield, and a church whose revivals stopped when one member stopped praying on Saturday nights. Read chapter 12.
Chapter 13: The example of Christ
The last chapter returns to Jesus. Christ taught that we must ask, then seek, then knock, each step more earnest than the last. He repeated His promises because He knew answers would sometimes be delayed and our faith would need them. Bounds names love as the first condition of prayer and the name of Jesus as our passport. He ends by saying that the purpose of prayer is to make us like our Lord and to use us for God's glory and the salvation of others. Read chapter 13.
Reading it for yourself
Most readers can finish the book in about three hours, and the chapters are short enough for one a day. If you want the book's best lines in one place, see our Purpose in Prayer quotes. For more on chapter 6 and chapter 13, read what Bounds teaches about importunate prayer. If you're new to Bounds, our guide to E. M. Bounds' books suggests where to start, and many readers begin with the shorter Power Through Prayer.
When you're ready, open Purpose in Prayer and start with chapter 1.