Part 1

This month, I started making my way through a collection of books on prayer by E.M. Bounds. A few years ago I began seeing his name referred to by Pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. So, of course, his writings sounded intriguing. I titled this post "Part 1" as I'm only on book two of an eight book collection. It may take a while to get through them. (As DJ likes to comment, "There aren't any pictures for you....") grrrr.

Yesterday, a few sentences popped out at me and I've found my thoughts going back to them repeatedly:

"This is a busy age, bustling and active, and this bustling spirit has invaded the church of God. Its religious performances are many. The church works at religion with the order, precision and force of real machinery. But too often it works with the heartlessness of the machine. There is much of the treadmill movement in our ceaseless round and routine of religious doings. We pray without praying. We sing without singing with the Spirit and the understanding. We have music without the praise of God being in it, or near it. We go to church by habit...." E.M. Bounds, The Essentials of Prayer.

Now, here's the most interesting part: This book was published in 1925. 1925. So have we progressed? In some churches and circles --- absolutely! In others, sadly, I doubt it; the comments are most likely more true today than when written.

And then I began thinking about all the wonderful places in this bloggy world where we can find people just offering to pray with you. Some of us might be friends in regular (is there a bloggy term for this?) life, but mostly....we're simply people who want to prayerfully support and remind each other, "There's Hope." (See Beloved Mama or Christian Women Online for more information.)

I think E.M. Bounds would be impressed. And he probably would be blogging his thoughts every day....