Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Speak Life Today Podcast. I’m your host Felton Thompkins, Gospel Minister and Ambassador for Jesus Christ our Lord. A few episodes ago we talked about focusing on prayer, praying with attitude. Well on this episode of The Speak Life Today Podcast we will resume with the topic of praying with attitude. You might recall me mentioning a great book that was gifted to me over the holidays entitled E M Bounds on Prayer. Some call this magnificent work of E M Bounds the encyclopedia of prayer, and the more that I read of it, the more that I am inclined to go along with them.
 
This week I’m pressed to go a little different route. This week I would like to share with you a few paragraphs or excerpts from the book E M Bounds on Prayer in hopes of encouraging us and imparting in us a desire to evaluate or re-evaluate our attitudes or views when it comes to the business of prayer.
 
Now, it could be that after you have heard what’s about to be read in your hearing. You may be one that have already been blessed enough to have reached that mark. If so, I truly commend you of your piety and dedication to our Lord’s work of prayer, and please continue to pray for the saints that many of us will desire to have a deeper, stronger, more passionate, more fervent and a more loving relationship to prayer and too our Heavenly Father. Glory to the name of Jesus.
 
Again, what you are about to hear will be read from E M Bounds on Prayer: Purpose in Prayer, I will be reading out of chapter #10 entitled “Prayerless Praying.”
 
And it reads as thus….
“Prayer is a rare gift, not a popular, ready gift. Prayer is not the fruit of natural talents; rather, it is the product of faith, of holiness, of deeply spiritual character. Men learn to pray as they learn to love, for, as Fenelon said, “Perfect prayer is only another name for love.” Perfection in simplicity, in humility, in faith, these form it’s chief ingredients. Novices in these graces cannot be experts in prayer. It cannot be seized upon by untrained hands; only graduates in heaven’s highest school of art can touch its finest keys, raise its sweetest, highest notes. For to graduate from the school of prayer is to master the course of a religious life. Fine material, fine finish are requisite. Master workman are required, for mere journeyman cannot execute the work of prayer.
 
The spirit of prayer should rule our spirits and our conduct. The spirit of the prayer chamber must control our lives, or the hour in the prayer will be dull and sapless. Always praying in our spirits, always acting in the spirit of praying-these make our praying strong. The spirit of every moment is that which imparts strength to the communion of the prayer closet. It is what we are outside of the prayer closet that gives victory or brings defeat to the prayer closet. If the spirit of the world prevails in our non-closet hours, the sp