“Praying the Bible” sounds odd to the ears of most believers today. That’s unfortunate.
The first time I flew into Novosibirsk, Siberia, a British driver picked me up from the airport. At least I thought he was British. To my American ears, he sounded like he had just relocated from London to the land of ice and snow.
He had not. He was as Russian as they come.
“Where’d you get the accent, then?” I asked him.
“My English teacher was British.”
“Ah, I see. Makes sense now.”
And, of course, it did and still does. Our language mirrors our language teachers and fellow speakers, be they parents, siblings, friends, or anyone talking around us. Our speech imitates our surroundings.
To use a silly example, I can hear my fellow Texan ask, “Jeetyet?” and know precisely what he means. A non-Texan probably hears a nonsensical word; I hear the condensed sentence, “Did you eat yet?”
If our general speech is imitative, then the prayers we speak tend to be the same. We all have learned to pray, whether we realize it or not. That means our prayers have “accents” that we have picked up from parents, preachers, and other fellow pray-ers.
And, ideally, a major influence on that prayer-accent is from praying the Bible itself.
What Does This Mean?
If I ask you to stick a verb in this blank, “_____ the Bible,” what would it be? You would likely pick reading, teaching, or preaching. All good. All true. We Christians are used to reading the Bible and teaching the Bible. We also debate the Bible, love the Bible, and use the Bible for wisdom to apply to our lives.
But “praying the Bible” sounds odd to the ears of most believers today. That’s unfortunate.
Here are a few suggestions on how we can change that, how we can incorporate praying the Bible into our devotions, Bible Study, and the daily rhythm of our workday lives.
Praying the Psalms
Let's begin with the Psalms. These prayers have been at home on human lips for at least 3,000 years. Though there are varieties of psalms – lament, imprecatory, praise, wisdom, and so forth – they are all spoken or sung to God as prayer. Imagine that! We have 150 divinely inspired prayers that give us the words to speak to God when we are confused or scared, ashamed or guilty, at the top of our game or the bottom of the pit.
Why would we not pray them?
I am a strong advocate (and practitioner) of not only praying psalms but learning by heart as many as possible. To do so, my advice is to choose a translation and stick with it. I have been using the NASB for three decades, but perhaps you prefer KJV, ESV, CSB, or another version. Whatever translation you choose, do not change once you begin. Altering versions will make memorization difficult, if not impossible.
Next, pray two or three psalms every day. Better yet, use this chart to guide you through praying through the entire book of Psalms monthly. Pray each psalm word for word, as you would the Lord’s Prayer. Pray them aloud, not in a mindlessly rote fashion but meditatively. Savor the words.
These psalms are both God speaking to you and you speaking to God. What you will discover, over time, is that this rich feast of prayers in the Psalms will not only deeply nourish you, but make you question how you ever survived on the fast-food petitions common in pop spirituality.
Praying Other Parts of the Bible
Maybe you’re thinking: “OK, I get praying the psalms. I mean, these are prayers, after all. But Genesis, Proverbs, Matthew, or Hebrews? How can we pray these books?”
Let’s answer that question with an example. Say you are looking at Genesis 12, where God calls Abraham to leave everything and go to a land that the Lord will show him. Read the words. Slow down and mentally note keywords, ideas, actions, and impressions. Sit in silence and reflect upon what God is doing and what Abraham is being told to do.
Now, weaving these thoughts and words of Scriptures together with your own life, pray something like this: “O Lord, heavenly Father, you told Abraham to leave his country, kindred, and his father’s house to go to the land that you would show him. And he went by faith, not knowing where he was going or what would happen to him. Give me also the gift of faith to trust you and lean not on my own understanding, but to follow you in the way that you lead me. Amen.”
Add reading to meditation; meditation to introspection; and transform all of this into prayer.
Or, let’s say you are studying Christ’s cleansing of the leper in Matthew 8:1-4. Having read the words and meditated upon the man’s need and what Jesus says to him, you could pray: “Lord Jesus, as you cleansed that leper, saying to him, ‘I will; be clean,’ create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. Purify me from all defilement of sin by your atoning blood, and grant that I may turn to you as my great and merciful High Priest in every time of need.”
This is what I mean by praying the Bible. Add reading to meditation; meditation to introspection; and transform all of this into prayer which incorporates the words of Scripture, speaking back to God what he has first spoken to us.
Praying at Work
Finally, we can pray the Bible in the daily rhythm of our vocational lives by choosing short phrases from the Scriptures which become our spoken or unspoken prayers throughout the day. For instance, prayers such as these:
+Lord, have mercy (e.g., Matt. 20:31)
+Lord, help me (e.g., Matt. 15:25)
+Lord, be gracious to me (e.g., Ps. 41:10)
+I love you, O LORD (Ps. 18:1)
+Any petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
When we are teaching students, we pray, “Lord, help me and them.” When a farmer plants his crops or the rancher feeds his stock, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we are growing impatient with a coworker, “Lord, be gracious to me and give me grace toward him/her.” On any occasion when we feel threatened or overwhelmed, “Deliver us from evil.”
In this way, we punctuate all that we do with biblical prayers. And with such prayers, we constantly remind ourselves that we live and move and have our being in God; that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us; and that all our lives are under the banner of his love.
Heavenly Father, from whom come all good and perfect gifts, fill our hearts with the gift of your Word, that out of the overflow of our hearts will come praise, lament, and petition. When we arise, when we work, when we play, when we go to sleep, may your Word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, that we may walk in the way that leads to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
