Praying the Scriptures is a prayer method that is easy to learn and put into practice, and if practiced regularly, it will enhance not just our regular prayer time and communal prayers, but also enrich one’s bible reading.
The aim of our THIRST-DAY SERIES is to equip our pastoral leaders with a variety of tools, tips, techniques, exercises and guides in order to have “scripture-focused” discussions during their regular small group meetings.
EPISODE 1: PRAY THE SCRIPTURES — this is my slide deck for the first episode in the THIRST-DAY Series (in pdf format).
Most of us follow certain patterns during our quiet time in daily prayer. Some use the acronym A.C.T.S. to guide them. Others follow the sequence of our fingers when placed together in prayer, in order to remember praying for important persons in their lives. Catholics have their devotions to the Holy Rosary. These are good patterns to follow so as not to miss out on important prayer concerns.
Those of us who have the good habit of reading scripture every day also have our routine. Most likely, we follow some pattern that dictates what verses we would read for the day. Some would follow the daily Mass readings. Others use a daily devotional, and read the scripture for the day. Still others would follow a daily reading plan that paces them from beginning to end of books and chapters of the bible. Whatever pattern we use, the Holy Spirit moves us to get to know God, His works, and His will, and to reflect on our relationship with the Lord, with others, and with our own self and situation.
Unlike our bible readings which have fresh new topics and messages that often vary from day to day, when it comes to our prayers and intercessions, we tend to be praying for the same things, over and over, varying only when a new concern comes our way or is brought to our attention.
TWO METHODS OF PRAYING THE SCRIPTURES
This lesson will show us two ways of how we can enrich our prayer and bible reading, so that we can use God’s very words in our prayers and to guide us in what to pray for.
The first method is to begin with your “prayer agenda”, with what you want to say or to bring to the Lord in prayer. You would then “season” your prayer with a verse or two from scriptures.
The second way does not begin with your prayer agenda. Rather, it begins while you are reading scripture. In that sense, it begins with you listening to God’s agenda.
As you can see, praying the scripture, whether beginning with your agenda or with God’s word, enables you to have scripture-based prayers of worship, of thanksgiving, or even of intercession. It also allows you to respond in prayer to whatever He speaks to You through scripture.
SCRIPTURE-POWERED SUPPLICATIONS
Citing biblical verses to our supplications for ourselves and for others adds power and brings hope and faith in our prayers.
There are many verses in Scripture where God speaks to us words of encouragement, and words of hope because we learn of stories of His loving kindness and tender mercies. We also hear Him speak to us, almost personally, about His assurances and His promises of love and blessings and comfort and protection.
If we, therefore, take these verses and quote them as we bring our concerns to the Lord in prayer, we add more life and power to our pleadings, knowing that our prayers are backed up by God’s own promises and assurances.
Especially when we bring to God our lamentations and our desperate pleas, God reminds us with His words to pray to Him fully trusting that He hears us and that He is Sovereign and always has our good in mind. When we quote scripture that is appropriate to our prayer concerns, we use God’s very own words from Scripture. Then our prayers become prayers of faith and confidence and thanksgiving, and we have peace beyond understanding despite our difficult circumstances.
In a previous article, I recommended a technique I learned from Pastor Ric Sarthou about how to compose your “BAHALA KA NA, LORD” prayer. In this method, I recommend that you cite who God is, what He has done, and the promises that He has made – all of these three can be verses directly coming from the bible.
To make it easy for you to select the appropriate verse to add to your prayers, there are many articles on the web giving a list of God’s promises. Here’s one that I find particularly useful, because it classifies the promises of God according to different situations. GOD’S PROMISES: 50 POWERFUL BIBLE PROMISES TO BUILD YOUR FAITH.
Of course, we need to be discerning when we select and claim for ourselves a promise straight out of the bible, or straight outright from the lists that we download. I highly recommend that you read this article beforehand: WHICH PROMISES ARE FOR ME? It shows us how to be careful and discerning when quoting God’s promises.
PRAYING WHAT YOU READ
When we “pray what we read”, we turn what we read in scripture into a personal prayer. It is the scripture that initiates the content of our prayer. In the method we learned above, we start with our prayer agenda, and we incorporate scripture verses within our prayers. In this method, we start with God’s agenda – the verses that we read for the day – and we either turn these verses and pray them back to Him, or we respond to His message in a prayer.
Since we read scripture daily anyway, and since there is variety in the scripture passages that we pray, if we use what we read for the day and pray these scriptures, we allow the Holy Spirit to provide fresh words to use when we pray to Him. Furthermore, by praying the scripture we are able to further internalize God’s word that He speaks to us.
Here is a simple method for you to pray scripture. Whenever you encounter a passage of scripture, look for and select specific verses in that passage that will either make you Rejoice, Repent, or Request.
- What about the passage gives you reason to rejoice, to give thanks, and praise?
- Is there something about the passage that reveals sin in my own life that should lead me to repentance? Remember, there are sins of commission and sins of omission. Does the passage admonish you to do something that you have ignored doing?
- Does the passage lead you to make a request to God for yourself or for others?
Then either quote or personalize those specific passages, and respond with your personal prayer of thankfulness and praise, of repentance and recommitment, or of intercession.
Do this whenever you read or hear words of scripture. Certainly, during your daily bible reading – whether daily readings from the Catholic Mass, or your passages-for-the-day according to your reading pattern. Begin to make it a habit to pray the scriptures that you read.
The Psalms are a great place to start praying the scriptures, because many of the passages in the Psalms are actually prayers in themselves. But don’t just limit your prayer of scripture to the psalms. The epistles and the gospels are full of instructions. The old testament stories are full of lessons about God’s love and faithfulness, and about how He desires man to respond to Him.
Here are several links from various authors you can visit to learn more about praying the scriptures:
HOW TO PRAY SCRIPTURES – 4 THINGS TO GET YOU STARTED — including list of verses that you can pray for thanksgiving, confession, praise, God’s promises, etc.
HOW TO PRAY USING SCRIPTURE – this expands what I summarized above.
PRAYING THE BIBLE WITH DON WHITNEY – this is a YouTube video, where Don Whitney demonstrates an example of how he prays the scripture.
If you have been using a devotional bible or a devotional prayer book, some authors actually follow this same method of praying the scriptures. They begin by citing a bible passage for the day, and then they write a few words about how the passage applies to a particular aspect of life. Finally they would end the devotional with a prayer. That prayer would be written in the style of praying-the-scriptures.
Scripture comes from the breath of God; He speaks. (2 Tim 3:16-17) God expects a response from those who hear and listen. Someone once said, “When I pray, I speak to God; when I read the Bible, God speaks to me.” We could add, “When I pray Scripture, I pray the words of God!”
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