Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones — E.A. Johnston

I've got a special treat for us this morning, friends. In my hand is a little yellow book, which is the unabridged edition of Iain Bounds' great work, Preacher and Prayer, and what makes this edition unique, it also has the book Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones by Marion Price, which is the account of the salvation of Bounds' son, Osborne.

I had read Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones years ago, and it had a real impact on my own life. I will share this story with you. I was preaching in a conference in Atlanta. When I was through preaching, there was a man waiting for me in the back of the church.

His son introduced him to me by saying, this is my father, Marion Price. I answered, well now, are you the same Marion Price who wrote Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones? He said he was. Well, Revival Literature has combined both these books into one, and I wrote the foreword to it, which I shall read to you shortly.

And after that, I'll tell you the story of how the son of Iain Bounds was saved, as related by Marion Price. Then I will read us the last chapter of Bounds' great work, Preacher and Prayer. This whole exercise should be an exhortation to us to pray harder, pray more frequently, believe God in prayer with more faith, to pray more urgently in these dark days of apostasy before the Lord's return.

Christ's Promise to Those Who Ask, Seek, and Knock

In the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 11, verses 9 through 10, we have the words of Christ who taught his disciples how to pray. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Listen friends, there is one thing missing in the church in America today, and that is the power of prayer.

The church decided long ago it was better to run on money and manpower rather than God and Holy Ghost power. So the church did away with the weekly prayer meeting, which was the only engine of the church.

I fear most churches have run out of gas because they have no power in the pulpits because of the lack of prayer. We should study the works of Bounds more and be inspired by his life, so it is vitally important this morning to listen carefully to what he has to say to us regarding prayer and the preacher.

Praying Men and Powerful Pulpits

I really believe, friends, the main reason there is so little power in our pulpits today is because we don't have enough praying men occupying them. For us to have better preachers, we need better prayers, men who have lingered with the Most High God long enough to breathe eternity to their hearers when they preach.

I am going to open up this little yellow book right now and read you first my foreword to it, then Marian Price's wonderful story of how he led the son of Ian Bounds to the Lord, and then I will finish with the actual words of Ian Bounds to us here today.

E.M. Bounds and the Providential Power of Prayer

Here now is my foreword to this new edition of Bounds' Mighty Treatise on Prayer. The greatest need in our land today is a prophet, a man sent from God, a God's man who will stand in the gap between heaven and earth, between mortal man and Almighty God, a holy man who is so wholly sold out to God, so intoxicated with Christ, and so consumed with eternity that his very footprints leave a smoky trail of the lingering fire of God, a man whose desperate life of prayer has left fingerprints on the horns of the alterant glory, a man who is in boldened faith and enoch-like walk with God, moves mountains of resistance and proves that the God of the Bible is alive and interested in the most minute requests of man, a God who will always raise up, and Elijah, whose prayers impact a sleeping nation, the church in each generation has had individuals who live upon their knees, whose prayers reach heaven with a holy violence, India had her pray and hide, China her Hudson Taylor, England her Puritan, Scotland her Covenanters, America her fiery E .M. Bounds, voices which gained the attention of the throne room startled angels and shook the gates of hell, making even the demons quake and tremble with their desperate prayers.

As a sovereign God hears and answers the prayers of His saints on earth, He also orders the steps of His servants by His providence, guiding them along the divine chessboard of life. Each piece, like the pawn, rook, and bishop, are strategically placed and arranged by a providential hand to fulfill the divine purpose.

Man's life's cross at appointed junctures, eternity is impacted, and through these divinely arranged human relationships, the purposes and plans of the Almighty are carried out. There is no expiration of a prayer, for a prayer once made has wings, a life, and a force that reach forward to the future and into eternity, all for the glory of God.

A man prayed, a God listened, a God would answer in His perfect time. This was the case in the life of E .M. Bounds in a small southern town of Washington, Georgia. A frail old man prayed. He prayed for the salvation of his offspring.

His knees grinded the gray wooden slats of his prayer closet as he anguished in intercessory prayer for his boy Osborne. E .M. Bounds died in 1913 with his son Osborne unsaved. Sixty-three years later, in 1976, God moved a strategic piece on His chessboard in the form of Marian Price.

Marian Price was used of God to lead the 84-year-old son of E .M. Bounds to Christ. God had finally answered the desperate prayer of E .M. Bounds for his son Osborne. We will let Brother Price relate the story taken from his own account in his book entitled, Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones, and that's what I'm going to read us right now, friends, the account of the Lord's work in the life of Osborne M. Bounds Sr., son of E .M. Bounds, as written by Marian Price.

Searching for E.M. Bounds and Meeting His Children

Psalm 127 .3 declares, Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord. Years ago, I was introduced to the works of E .M. Bounds through the ministry of an evangelist and dear friend, Leonard Ravenhill. Mr. Ravenhill was ministering in our area, and for a week I sat under his preaching.

He referred often to Master Bounds. Ravenhill was so well acquainted with the writings of E .M. Bounds that he had used them in compiling the book, A Treasury of Prayer. Once I read this book, I was hooked for several months thereafter.

I searched everything I could to find that was written by Bounds. I later discovered that the earthly remains of this dear saint of God were buried in Washington, Georgia, not more than two-and-a-half hours from where I lived at the time.

In the summer of 1976, I went to Washington in search of the grave. After looking through the city cemetery for some time, I could not find Bounds' resting place. As a last resort, I searched the telephone directory for any families with the Bounds' name.

To my surprise, I found an Osborne M. Bounds Sr. listed. When I called the number, a young lady answered the phone. I asked if Osborne Bounds might possibly be a distant relative of the old Methodist preacher E .M. Bounds.

Yes, Osborne is his son, the lady replied. His son? I responded in startled amazement. Yes, he's eighty-four years old, and I am his granddaughter, Ann Reynolds, she said. I told Ann that I was a Baptist pastor and that I would like to visit with Mr. Bounds if it were at all possible.

She said he would be delighted to see me. When I arrived at the Bounds' home, no one was there. At first, I thought perhaps I had misunderstood the directions and had ended up at the wrong address. Then a car entered the driveway.

A thin, frail, white-haired gentleman exited the car and began walking toward me, taking half-steps with the help of a young lady. It was Osborne Bounds and his granddaughter Ann. They had run an errand before our appointment.

Osborne made his way to a rocking chair on the back of the porch and sat down. Looking up, he smiled and apologized for taking so long to get up the steps. After we had chatted with each other for a few minutes, another car rolled into the driveway.

Out bounded, an aristocratic and spry southern lady who seemed to have more energy than I at thirty-seven. She was Mary Willis Bounds Armstrong, Osborne's eighty-one-year-old sister. As the conversation between the three of us continued, I sat in absolute awe that I was talking with two living children of E. M. Bounds.

I asked question after question about their father, and they graciously and patiently answered, telling me everything they could remember about him. After we talked for a short time, Mary offered to take me to the cemetery and show me where their father was buried.

Asking Osborne Bounds About His Spiritual Condition

I knew that it was getting late, that I should be leaving, but before I went, I had a strong impulse to ask Osborne Bounds about his spiritual condition. All of our conversation to this point had been about their father, and what a good man he was.

Mr. Bounds, are you a saved man? I asked. Osborne dropped his head in momentary silence. Then, as meekly as a man could answer such a question, he said, Oh, I don't know. I hope so, but I'm not sure. About this time, Mary, with her strong southern accent, interrupted, Why, Reverend Price, Os is one of the best men in the county.

While he's helped more people, you won't find a better man anywhere. Immediately, she rose from her chair and said, Let me take you to the cemetery. On the way, she told me that her father would rise at four o 'clock each morning and pray until breakfast at seven.

In his later years, she said he would rise at three o 'clock. I asked Mary what time he would go to bed each night. Early, she replied, before anyone else. If visitors were at the house, he would excuse himself by saying something like, I have an early appointment.

As we arrived at the gravesite, I again stood in awe. There was the marker at the head of the grave, Edward McKendree Bounds, D .D., August 15, 1835 to August 24, 1913. Another stood at the foot, a chaplain, E. McKenzie Bounds, three-month infantry, C .S .A.

When we left the cemetery, Mrs. Armstrong carried me by the old home place, which is now used by the Washington Wilkes Historical Society as a museum. As we looked through the home, she showed me the room where Dr. Bounds often resorted for private prayer.

Spiritual Warfare for an Unsaved Family

Soon, we were back at Iceborn's house, where I thanked him and Mrs. Armstrong for their gracious help and said goodbye. On my drive home, the Spirit of God burdened my heart with the thought that neither of these children of a dear man of God, though one was 81 and the other 84, was saved.

Their answers to simple gospel questions revealed their true spiritual standing. Pondering this terrible thought, I cried like a baby. I was a preacher with seven children. These two older Bounds children reminded me of two of my own who, in their early teen years, had given me a few anxious moments.

Anne Reynolds, Osborne's granddaughter, had told me that she had been praying for her granddaddy for some time. Knowing his age and frail condition, she was concerned about his soul. Brother Price, when you walked up on that porch and I saw a gospel track in your shirt pocket, I knew the Lord had sent you to talk to my granddaddy, she said.

Anne's words humbled my heart. I began to realize that I was involved in spiritual warfare for the souls of two children of a preacher who had already been in heaven for 63 years. After arriving home, I contacted twelve preachers in whom I had great confidence and asked them to help me pray for these two people.

Thereafter, each time I went to Washington, I would go by the cemetery, then to Dr. Bounds's prayer room, and then to visit with Osborne. But each time I visited, there were people around and I did not have the liberty to talk with him about the gospel.

Next to the last time I visited him, he was in the hospital. His foot had been amputated. I prayed with him, but I still had no liberty to talk with him about the Lord. Finally, on what was to be my last visit to Osborne's home, things were different.

A dear black lady in a nurse's uniform met me at the door. Recognizing me from previous visits, she ushered me into Osborne's room where he lay in a hospital bed. As she was leaving, she turned and smiled to me as if to say, now is the time.

I'll see that you're not disturbed. I felt confident that the dear soul stood in the gap for Osborne and made a spiritual head to protect the two of us. Talking with Osborne, I lost sight of the fact that he was the son of E .M. Bounds.

I saw him simply as a man who seemed to have a hungry heart for the things of God. Indeed, I was a preacher's son talking to a preacher's son. On the mantle behind me sat a picture of E .M. Bounds, who seemingly was overlooking our conversation.

More importantly, however, I sensed the presence of the living Lord actually overshadowing and directing the eternal affairs taking place. When I asked Osborne if I could read the scriptures, he replied, certainly, please do.

Then I shared with him the gospel story and the hopelessness of man without the Lord Jesus. I told him that a man must come to God with a repentant heart, confessing sin, and then by faith receive him as Lord and Savior.

I asked Osborne if he thought much about these matters. He answered, all the time. Then with the boldness of a lion, and yet with a holy trembling inside, I asked, are you ready to call on the Lord and ask him to save you?

Yes, sir, I would, Osborne said. As he began to pray, without being coaxed, like a little child, he confessed his sinful condition and his doubt in heart, asking the Lord to forgive him. When he finished, I asked, Mr. Bounds, did you really mean what you just prayed?

He tried to raise up a little in the bed, looked me straight in the eye, and said, well, I guess I did. Then with a peaceful smile on his face, he slumped onto his pillow. Before leaving Osborne's room, I read more scripture, gave him some gospel literature, and prayed with him.

In the days following, I questioned whether Osborne Bounds had truly been saved, or had I talked him into a false profession. The Lord reminded me that this man had been bathed in prayer. His father had died praying for his children.

His granddaughter, Anne, had been praying for him. Twelve preachers and I had prayed three months for him. Besides these, there might have been countless numbers of people whom we did not know who had prayed for him.

God's Peace and the Assurance of Salvation

Osborne's death in 1979. After that, his daughter, Mrs. Rosemary Reynolds, told me, from the time Daddy talked with you that last time, he had more peace than he ever had before. Praise the Lord. That settled my own heart.

One of the first evidences of genuine salvation is the peace God gives to the heart. Hallelujah for the cross. God answers prayer. He is still faithful to save any who will come to him. John 6 .37 says, All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

The children of Ian Bounds had the highest regard for their father. They spoke of him in glowing terms. Surely he had drilled them with the word of God in their youth. But the fact remains that Osborne Bounds was an old man before he came to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

We are assured that God will accomplish his purposes. John 17 .12 declares, Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost. God has chosen before the foundation of the world to save Osborne, and if I had not obeyed the Holy Spirit's leading in witnessing to him, the Lord would have sent someone else.

I am so thankful that he used this servant. Lest you become weary in praying for your loved ones, remember Osborne Bounds. The Lord surely encouraged my heart with this glorious experience. The lesson for us is clear.

Never Quit Praying for Your Loved Ones

We should never quit praying for our loved ones. We may not see the answer before we die, but we can go to the grave with a prayer on our lips for their salvation. And God is not limited to my lifetime or yours.

Sixty-three years after we die, he can send a simple gospel witness to speak to those for whom we have prayed. Well, now, friends, after that remarkable story, I am going to read us the last chapter in preaching prayer, the words of Ian Bounds.

Listen carefully. I pray they will encourage us to be better prayers and better prayer warriors. Only glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the Apostles get before Pentecost, but the Spirit coming and filling on Pentecost elevated prayer to its vital and all-commanding position in the gospel of Christ.

The Church's Need for Apostolic Prayer Leaders

The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit's loudest and most exudant call. Sainthood's piety is made refined, perfected by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.

Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to pray and put them to it do we know? We are raising up a prayerless set of saints. Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God's people to praying?

Let them come to the front, do the work, and it will be the greatest work which can be done. An increase of educational facilities and a great increase of money for us will not be the direct will be the direst curse to religion if they are not sanctified by more and better praying than we are doing.

More praying will not come as a matter of course. The campaign for the 20th or 30th century fund will not help our praying but hinder if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific effort from a praying leadership will avail.

The chief ones must lead in the apostolic effort to eradicate the vital importance and fact of prayer in the heart and life of the church. None but praying leaders can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints.

A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need somebody who can set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Non-praying saints are a burglary gang of saints who have neither their order nor the beauty nor the power of saints.

Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles who can set the church to praying. We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the church and this in all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied holiness, of such marked spiritual vigor and consuming zeal that their prayers, faith, lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and aggressive form as to work spiritual revolutions which will form eras in individual and church life.

Holy Consecration and Spiritual Revolution

We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices nor those who attract by pleasing entertainment, but men who can stir things and work revolutions by the preaching of God's word and by the power of the Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of things.

Natural ability and educational advantage do not figure as factors in this matter, but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of oneself in God's glory, and an ever-present and sensational yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God.

Men who can set the church ablaze for God, not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God. God can work wonders if he can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders if they can get God to lead them.

The full endowment of the Spirit that turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of the church.

The church has never been without these men. They adorn its history. They are the standing miracles of the divinity of the church. Their example in history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An increase in their number and power should be our prayer.

Christ's Promise of Greater Works Through Believing Prayer

That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again and be better done. This was Christ's view. He said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I shall do he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father.

The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing great things for God. The church that is dependent on its past history for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen church. God wants elect men, men out of whom self and the world have gone by severe crucifixion, by bankruptcy, which is so totally ruined self and the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery.

Men who by this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect hearts. Let us pray ardently that God's promise to prayer may be more than realized. Well, friends, I hope that this little exercise in studying prayer will exercise us to lay hold of God and prayer more fervently in these last days.