E.M.Bounds

In God’s name, I beseech you, let prayer nourish your soul as your meals nourish your body. Let your fixed seasons of prayer keep you in God’s presence through the day, and may His presence frequently remembered through it be an ever fresh spring of prayer. Such a brief, loving recollection of God renews a man’s whole being, quiets his passions, supplies light and counsel in difficulty, gradually subdues the temper, and causes him to possess his soul in patience, or rather gives it up to the possession of God.
—Fénelon
It was said of the late Charles Spurgeon that he glided from laughter to prayer with the naturalness of one who lived in both elements. With him, the

habit of prayer was free and unfettered. His life was not divided into compartments, the one shut off from the other with a rigid exclusiveness that barred all intercommunication. He lived in constant fellowship with his Father in heaven. He was ever in touch with God, and thus it was as natural for him to pray as it was for him to breathe.
“What a fine time we have had; let us thank God for it,” he said to a friend on one occasion, when, out under the blue sky and wrapped in glorious sunshine, they had enjoyed a holiday with the unfettered enthusiasm of schoolboys. Prayer sprang as spontaneously to his lips as ordinary speech did, and there was never the slightest incongruity in his approach to the divine throne after any of his activities.
That is the attitude with regard to prayer that ought to mark every child of God. There are, and there ought to be, set seasons of communion with God, when everything else is shut out and we come into His presence to talk to Him

and to let Him speak to us. And out of such seasons will spring that beautiful habit of prayer that weaves a golden bond between earth and heaven. Without these seasons of prayer, set as a pattern in our lives, the habit of prayer can never be formed; without them, there is no nourishment for the spiritual life. By means of them, the soul is lifted into a new atmosphere—the atmosphere of the heavenly city, in which it is easy to open the heart to God and to speak with Him as friend speaks with friend.
Thus, in every circumstance of life, prayer is the most natural outpouring of the soul, the unhindered turning to God for communion and direction. Whether in sorrow or in joy, in defeat or in victory, in weakness or in health, in calamity or in success, the heart leaps to meet with God, just as a child runs to his mother’s arms, ever sure that her sympathy will meet every need.
Dr. Adam Clarke, in his autobiography, recorded that, when Mr. Wesley was returning to England by ship, considerable delay was caused by contrary