Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from EM Bounds’ book, The Necessity of Prayer.
“Our Lord was seeking to teach that laxity must be guarded against, and persistence fostered and encouraged. There can be no two opinions regarding the importance of the exercise of this indispensable quality in our praying.”
“Importunate prayer is a mighty movement of the soul toward God… it is the ability to hold on, press on, and wait. Restless desire, restful patience, and strength of grasp are all embraced in it.”
“This wrestling in prayer may not be boisterous nor vehement, but quiet, tenacious, and urgent. Silent, it may be, when there are no visible outlets for its mighty forces.”
“Prayer is the one infallible mark and test of being a Christian. Christian people are prayerful, the worldly-minded, prayerless. Christians call on God; worldlings ignore God, and call not on His name. But even the Christian have need to cultivate continual prayer…prayer must be habitual”
“Prayer has everything to do with molding the soul into the image of God, and has everything to do with enhancing and enlarging the measure of divine grace.”
“…importunity – the pressing of our desires upon God with urgency and perseverance; the praying with that tenacity and tension which neither relaxes nor ceases until its plea is heard, until its cause is won.”
“The repeated intercessions of Abraham for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah present an early example of the necessity for, and benefit deriving from importunate praying. Jacob, wrestling all night with the angel, gives significant emphasis to the power of a dogged perseverance in praying, and shows how, in things spiritual, importunity succeeds, just as effectively as it does in matters relating to time and sense.”
“He prays not at all, who does not press his plea. Cold prayers have no claim on heaven, and no hearing in the courts above. Fire is the life of prayer, and heaven is reached by flaming importunity rising in an ascending scale.”
“At the same time he teaches that importunity conquers all untoward circumstances and gets to itself a victory over a whole host of hindrances. He teaches, moreover, that an answer to prayer is conditional upon the amount of faith that goes to the petition. To test this, he delays the answer. The superficial pray-er subsides into silence when the answer is delayed. But the man of prayer hangs on, and on. The Lord recognizes and honors his faith, and gives him rich and abundant answer to his faith-evidencing, importunate prayer.”
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