Praying Scripture

Prayer and scripture are vitally linked together. 

More knowledge of Scripture produces more robustly God-dependent prayers.

More praying feeds a greater hunger for Scripture.  

If you love one, it will drive you to the other.

Nineteenth century French pastor Adophe Monod said of the two disciplines, “Without the Word, prayer is nothing, having no source of nourishment.  Without prayer, the Word is powerless and does not penetrate into the heart.”

Prayer and Scripture reside together in vital union.  Not only do they exist alongside each other, but they also work well with each other:  as we read the Bible, we pray for discernment and understanding and as we pray, we affirm the truths we have read in Scripture.  

While there are books that have been written about how to pray Scripture, I admit that I have not read any of those works.  But I regularly work to pray what I read.  How do I do that?  Here are a couple of principles for how I do that and then a recent example of how I lead a prayer from Scripture in corporate worship.

Read the Bible and find the meaning of what you read.  When I want to pray the Bible, I read the Bible.  Slowly.  And as I read, I want to make sure I understand what it means.  I need to discern who wrote it, whom was he addressing, and what was he communicating to the readers.  That is the meaning of the text and I need to know that meaning if I want to pray accurately.  (I regularly also read commentaries while I read my Bible to help me with some questions of meaning.)

Read the Bible and meditate on the implications of the verse.  Scripture is revelatory.  It tells us of God and a great many other realities in our world.  So along with the meaning, I want to consider the big principles exposed in the verse:  What does this verse teach me about God, the world, people/mankind, the church, followers of Christ?  What are the universal principles that are being taught in the verse?

And because Scripture supremely reveals God, I am always probing verses to see what is being exposed about Him and then I want to pray those truths back to Him, especially in the adoration/worship portions of my prayers.  What is in this verse that will encourage my worship of and delight in God?

Read the verse and meditate on personal implications.  What are some particular implications of the verse for me?  Since the verse teaches ____, how does that change the way I need to think about God, what are things I should think about or meditate on, for what can I be thankful, or what are things that I can do?

So praying Scripture is fundamentally a means of extending our meditation on a section of Scripture (often just a single verse will give you plenty to pray for an extended period of time).  If you want to practice, you might even take some of the prayers of Scripture and pray them (e.g., Mt. 6:9-15; Eph. 1:18-23; 3:14-21; Phil. 1:9-11; Col. 1:9-12).

What does that actually look like?  Often the pastoral prayers in our worship services are at least partially a prayer rooted in Scripture.  Recently, following a reading of Zacharias’ prophecy (Lk. 1:67-79), I used that reading as a basis for a reflection on the advent of Christ and our redemption (vv. 68-71) and then a prayer for those whom we know who don’t know Christ to come to believe in Him (vv. 78-79), and for our effectiveness in fulfilling His desire for the salvation of the nations (vv. 74-77).  All those requests are rooted in that passage. 

Read the passage, and then follow the outline of that Sunday’s prayer to stimulate your own prayer of that passage.