Praying the Scriptures
A PRACTICE FOR PRAYING IN HARD TIMES
Growing up in church I often heard that the Bible should inform how we pray, and I’d nod my head in agreement. ‘Of course! We pray the Scriptures.’ The problem was that in reality I didn’t really know what that looked like. Did I just say the verses back to God? Were my prayers restricted to only things mentioned in the Scriptures?
After some reading through church history and conversations with a Christian mentor, I slowly began to work out what that meant, and why it was helpful. Here’s what it boiled down to:
In the Scriptures, God gives us his priorities—so by praying what the Scriptures say we allow God’s priorities to shape our own.
Praying the Scriptures really means praying God’s will to be done, and not just our own. God gives voice to many of our thoughts, feelings and longings in the Scriptures, and he also directs our desires back toward him when they go astray.
It doesn’t limit or restrict the content of our prayers, but rather gives shape to what we bring before the throne of God’s grace. The Scriptures show us how to lament in times of grief and sorrow. They model thankfulness in times of joy. And they speak to the mundane moments of our everyday lives.
Not long after that, I decided to start keeping notes of verses in Scripture that could fuel my prayer life—and before long I had hundreds written down. I came to realise that my prayer life was deeper, richer, and wider because I wasn’t trying to remember what was worth praying for each time I came before God, but rather I had a deep well of God’s own words—his very heart—from which to draw upon. Now, I’m regularly writing whole prayers where every line is based on a verse of Scripture, like the ones you can find here.
Maybe for you the idea of using God’s word to inform your prayers sound weird, rigid or old-fashioned. After all, why do we need any kind of formula to pray? I hear that. And in a lot of ways, I agree. For me, I’ve seen it as a way of supplementing and not stifling my prayers. I still pray for the things on my heart, the struggles in life, and for the people I love. Those prayers have been deepened by allowing Scripture to give language to the longings I have but often can’t articulate, and have brought me back to God’s purposes when my own have been warped.
Why not start keeping note of some verses that could inform how you pray, and see where it takes you?
Today, when you sit down to read the Scriptures, you might even take a moment and consider how they should shape your prayers. Take a few moments throughout your day, and return to praying on those verses.
May the Scriptures be a deep well of wisdom as you pray.
