Praying scripture

Do you ever get halfway through your prayer time, stop, and think, “God, are you bored with me? I’m bored with me.”

Am I the only one? I guess I should be happy with myself for showing up semi-regularly, but I can’t help but feel like it’s the same old thing, day after day. “Hi God, thanks for being great. Here’s my list.” I mean, I pray throughout my days as things come up, but when it comes to a dedicated time of getting alone and communing with God through my own words, it was lacking in substance.

One of the books I read this year was Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney. It is exactly what the title says: the author explains and shows you how to pray scripture. I thought it might be a little too formulaic for my taste, but my formal prayer time couldn’t get worse, so I read through the book.

You should read it too.

Basically, you look at a passage of scripture and read the first verse. Then stop and pray whatever comes to mind based on it. When you come to a natural end, read the next verse and keep going like that. After doing this just a few times, I noticed a couple of things.

First, memorizing scripture is important because you don’t always have a Bible in front of you to give you prayer prompts. When issues pop up here and there, it’s nice to have God’s word right there in your mind already, without having to go searching for it.

Second, praying God’s own actual words back to him helps me feel like I am truly on the same literal page with him. And while I don’t want to depend on my feelings to depict my relationship with the Lord, it’s nice to “feel” close.

Here’s an example of a scripture I was reading through recently and stopped to pray.

David was still a very young man when Saul was determined to kill him. It seems David was always on the run, and at one point he and his 400 misfit men were hiding from Saul in a cave.

It must have been frustrating, knowing he’d done nothing to deserve death. And scary! I’m sure David was feeling like “What on earth?”

And yet David is the only one in the Bible who is recorded as having “encouraged himself in the Lord.” How did he do that?

By rehearsing out loud everything that God was to him. It’s like he was reminding the Lord of his own goodness, asking for some of that blessing to fall in his direction.

When David was hiding in the cave, he wrote several psalms.

Here are parts of Psalm 34, which David wrote during this time of running for his life:

“I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.
O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
… they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.
The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.
The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart …
… none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.”

See how David is giving himself reminders of all the things God is? David invented affirmations, only he didn’t tell himself how great he was, he remembered how great God is.

You can do this too and you don’t have to write your own psalms to accomplish it. You can use the ones David already wrote.

Open your Bible to Psalm 34 and read the first verse.

“I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

Now close your eyes and pray according to what you just read.

Lord, I am here to praise you now for you are worthy. You are so deserving of my worship that I will have words of praise in my mouth all the time. There is never a time I won’t praise you.

Now the second verse:

“My soul shall make her boast in the LORD …”

Now you pray:

Lord, I have nothing to boast about. Everything that is good in my life has come from you. I know that and I acknowledge your goodness to me. Thank you for caring for me so well.

You can skip verses if you want to.

“O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”

Lord, you are so very good. Everything you do is good and right and perfect. You know what I need and when I need it. I am blessed indeed when I trust in you. Help me not take matters into my own hands out of impatience. Help me wait for your goodness, knowing your timing is always perfect.

See how that works? You can start with any scripture passage. Don’t be surprised if you get started on one verse and just keep going. There is no right or wrong to pray the scriptures. You are just communing with the Lord over his own words.

Are you struggling today? Hiding from the world’s attacks—or maybe some from within?

It’s okay to tell God about it—he knows your heart anyway. Find some verses to pray through, reminding God of what he’s already said about himself. In the process, you will be reminding yourself of the great God you serve. I promise, you will be uplifted and helped!

That’s how you encourage yourself in the Lord. David showed us how to do it.

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