Why I Pray the Bible

For many years now, all my public prayers have been directly from Bible passages, and most of my personal prayer time is directed by my Bible reading.  So why do I pray the Bible?

I always thought of myself as a “prayer wimp,” because I couldn’t keep a prayer list; I couldn’t remember everything I was “supposed to” pray for; prayer was a hard chore; I was often bored with prayer -- especially prayer meetings;  At the same time, I loved the Bible; I loved the stories in it; I loved the things God would teach me or remind me as I read.  I loved the theological truths often presented.

Then I was told to pray the Bible back to God, and everything about my prayer life was totally transformed.

So here are ten reasons to pray the Bible:

Most of my life prayer has always been about me. But Jesus’ sample prayer is about God. “Pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’” Half the prayer is about God.  More than half if you add the traditional ending, “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.” If Jesus’ sample prayer is as much about God as us, our prayers should be the same.

I first heard that expression from Daniel Henderson, whose input on prayer has had a dramatic impact on my life. Grocery list prayers are those lists we bring to God of our desires or requests. Those are not wrong, and many people are motivated to pray this way, but prayer must be much more than our list of today’s wants. Prayer is a two-way relationship. If all we did with a friend was bring our list of needs to him day after day, that wouldn’t make for much of a relationship.

(Matt 6:7)  Some prayers are just that, memorized words that have little real meaning.  Even our personal prayers can be this way.  How often have your heard, ”God just bless this situation or this person?” Scripture can give us specific things to pray for others. Check out Paul’s prayers for his churches (Philippians 1:3-11 for example).

On a related note, praying the Bible keeps us away from things that simply are not biblical; For example, I’ve heard people pray the blood of Jesus over something. Jesus’ blood is important and powerful; it won our forgiveness, but you won’t find praying it over things encouraged or displayed in the Bible anywhere. It is Jesus who has authority over the enemy.

John Piper summarized these first three points well, “If we don’t form the habit of praying the Scriptures, our prayers will almost certainly degenerate into vain repetitions that eventually revolve entirely around our immediate private concerns, rather than God’s larger purposes.” (desiringgod.org  6 Feb 2017)

(1 John 5:14) Certainly we can stretch the word to say what we want it to say, but God’s word is God’s will; it expresses his heart. So when we are honest with it, our prayers are in accord with God’s desires. This way we are less likely to ask with wrong motives (James 4:3).

When Jesus was tempted, every answer he gave was a quote from the Bible. Satan said, “Make bread;” Jesus replied, “Man does not live by bread alone;” “Bow down to me;” “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only;” “Cast yourself down from here, prove who you are;” “Don’t test the Lord your God.” Jesus could have rebuked Satan by his own authority, but he quoted scripture instead. The Word of God is our sword in the armor of God, our only offensive weapon.

Why didn’t Jesus just use his authority over Satan to defeat him? Why did he quote scripture instead? Maybe the answer has to do with what we are taught. The word is a weapon at our disposal too. We should not only know it, but also speak it in our prayers.

(Is 55:10-11, Mark 4:14-20)  We often think to see God at work we need to see the miraculous, but more often than not, God works through his word, teaching and applying it to our lives.

(Josh 1:8; Psalm 1)  Meditating on God’s word is the formula for prosperity. Praying God’s word back to him is one form of meditation on the word. The prosperity promised in these verses is not the prosperity defined by our culture, but a prosperity defined by God:  Being all he wants us to be and doing all he wants us to do.

(Psalm 138:2)  Praying God’s word is the equivalent, or at least the complement, to praying in Jesus’ name since “God has exalted above all things his name and his word.”

Ezra (Ezra 9:10-12, Neh 8:5-6); Nehemiah (Neh 1:8-9, 9:3-31); Jonah (Jonah 2); Daniel (Dan 9:1-19); Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:14-19); Jesus on the cross (Matt 27:46); Early Christians (Acts 4:25-30)