The following excerpt is taken from a book entitled The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer by E.M. Bounds.
Prayer is always in place in the house of God. When prayer is a stranger there, then it ceases to be God’s house at all. Our Lord put peculiar emphasis upon what the church was when he cast out the buyers and sellers in the temple, repeating the words from Isaiah, “It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer.” He makes prayer preeminent, that which stands out above all else in the house of God. They, who sidetrack prayer or seek to minimize it and give it a secondary place, pervert the church of God, and make it something less and other than it is ordained to be.
Prayer is perfectly at home in the house of God. It is no stranger, no mere guest; it belongs there. It has a peculiar affinity for the place, and has, moreover, a divine right there, being set therein by divine appointment and approval.
The inner chamber is a sacred place for personal worship. The house of God is a holy place for united worship. The prayer closet is for individual prayer. The house of God is for mutual prayer, concerted prayer, united prayer. Yet even in the house of God, there is the element of private worship, since God’s people are to worship him and pray to him, personally, even in public worship. The church is for the united prayer of kindred, yet individual believers.
The life, power, and glory of the church is prayer. The life of its members is dependent on prayer and the presence of God is secured and retained by prayer. The very place is made sacred by its ministry. Without it, the church is lifeless and powerless. Without it, even the building itself is nothing, more or other, than any other structure. Prayer converts even the bricks, and mortar, and lumber, into a sanctuary, a Holy of Holies, where the Shekinah dwells. It separates it in spirit and in purpose from all other edifices. Prayer gives a peculiar sacredness to the building, sanctifies it, sets it apart for God, conserves it from all common and mundane affairs.
With prayer, though the house of God might be supposed to lack everything else, it becomes a divine sanctuary. So the tabernacle, moving about from place to place, became the Holy of Holies, because prayer was there. Without prayer the building may be costly, perfect in all its appointments, beautiful for situation, and attractive to the eye, but it comes down to the human, with nothing divine in it, has God in it. When prayer is set aside, God is outlawed. When prayer becomes an unfamiliar exercise, then God himself is a stranger there.
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Prayed…
Father, thank You that it is a new day
We see You head over this day
We welcome the presence of Your precious Holy Spirit
Thank You for the manifestation of Your great presence
We know that there is more
It’s up to us to pray and to yield and expect more of Your presence in our lives and this ministry and all over the earth
We lift up that time when Your Word says Your Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh—the former and later rain together
Baptize us with Your fire—may that fire cause within us to open up our lives for more of You
To push away hindrances that would hold us back or get us going in a wrong way
We push ahead to the places You’ve called us to be
Limitations, be removed
Let us be steady in Your way
Things are being lined up now in Jesus’ name
We’ll not abandon the right way and we plead the blood over that way
Clearing out the obstacles in the way
Realignments
A sustained way, a strengthening for the day, a realigning and reconnecting
A new territory, a new region—we take it by faith
Never to go back or shrink back but to move ahead
Never moved in that place before or stood in those positions before
But we apply the blood over every facet and detail—it’s the rising and expansion of the Church
She will and he will—there’s a way, a right way for that expansion to come forth and it shall come forth
They’re directors, leaders—wisdom from heaven
Understanding and revelation about what to do and where to go, to move, how to speak
There will be adjustments along the way
We watch over those specific steps—adjustments even today
Not ever to be the same and continually change
It’s the Master’s plan
Word came forth…
Sometimes in Church history and even in the days we’re living, bumps in the road have been magnified into mountains. They tend to hold the Church in a kind of disarray and produce questions about “Which way” and “What way” and “What is happening” and “How do we get through.” But I prayed out beyond into the future and looked back and saw those things were small little bumps in the road. If we’d continually contend in prayer, not putting our minds so much on the bump and focus on our spirit man, we will look back and see they were small hindrances trying to get in the way of the body, corporately, going in the right way. So in Jesus’ name, out here, out beyond where we are right now, out in the future we look back, so to speak, knowing there is no distance or time in the realm of the spirit, and we pray over the Church in these days that the Church is in right now and we call for an increase, momentum through prayer, an increase of contending through prayer, the connection to heaven. In some ways where the Church has cooled off, where the temperature has gone down, we lay hands on the temperature gauge and say “Heat up, in Jesus’ name. Be heated up.” We declare some fresh fire over the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in this hour, right now in 2014 in September. Things that seem so big will not matter in the weeks and months and years to come.
