Praying the Bible

by Donald S Whitney

  And, thankfully, these things don’t change dramatically very often. Families, for example, don’t experience the changes of marriages, births, and deaths month after month, year in and year out. While there may be frequent small changes in these areas, really big changes in our family, work, etc., usually don’t happen every week or even every month.

  So, if you are going to pray about your life, and if these six things are your life, and if these things don’t change significantly very often, that means you are going to pray about the same old things most of the time. That’s normal.

  Saying “the Same Old Things” Is Boring

  Therefore the problem is not that we pray about the same old things; rather, it’s that we say the same old things about the same old things. It seems that virtually everyone begins to pray this way sooner or later, and it is boring. And when prayer is boring, we don’t feel like praying. When we don’t feel like praying, it’s hard to pray, at least in any sort of focused, heartfelt way.

  That’s when we are tempted to think, It must be me. I must be just a second-rate Christian.

  The natural response to such discouragement can be, “Then stop it! Quit praying. Why do this to yourself? If prayer is so boring and leaves you so frustrated and disheartened, then don’t pray anymore.”

  A true Christian would recoil, astonished at such a suggestion. No matter how boring a believer’s prayer life, no matter how few prayers are answered, no matter how deep the sense of failure in prayer, anyone indwelled by the Holy Spirit can never permanently give up prayer. That’s the result of the ongoing ministry of the third person of the Trinity, which is referred to by theologians as the “preserving work” of the Holy Spirit. Once the Spirit of God brings people to spiritual life, he preserves them in that life, granting them the grace to persevere in the evidences of that life, such as prayer. In other words, once the Spirit causes a person to begin to cry, “Abba! Father!” he continues creating Godward looks and pleas in that person forever.

  So, due to the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, you believe in prayer and you really want to pray. But when you try to pray, it just feels like, well, like something’s wrong. Then perhaps you hear a sermon on prayer, or you hear a testimony about answered prayer, or you read a book (like this one) on prayer, and for a while you go back to prayer, recommitted and rejuvenated but basically still saying the same old things about the same old things, just with a bit more spiritual “oomph” behind it. Very soon, though, the new enthusiasm evaporates, and you find that saying the same old things about the same old things is as boring as before, only now you feel guiltier than ever because you had been so resolved that things would be different this time.

  Once again you return to what seems the inevitable conclusion: “It must be me. Something’s wrong with me. I must be just a second-rate Christian.”

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  The Solution

  Nothing has brought more vigor, satisfaction, and consistency to my own prayers as this single discipline.

  T. M. Moore

  Is there a solution? If so, it has to be fundamentally simple. Since God invites—indeed, if by his Spirit he enables—all his children to pray, then prayer must be essentially simple. God has children all over the world, as diverse as people can be—from age nine to ninety-nine, some with low IQs and some with high IQs, some with no formal education and some with the highest levels of formal education. And most of them are ordinary folks, not primarily those whom the world considers intellectual or cultural elite. As the apostle Paul put it, “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards” (1 Cor. 1:26).

  Every Christian Can Have a Meaningful, Satisfying Prayer Life

  Although God doesn’t choose many who are “wise according to worldly standards,” he does call people from every imaginable circumstance and background. Our Father draws to himself people with few Christian resources and people with many Christian resources, such as those who aren’t able even to own a Bible and those who own many; those who do not live near a good, healthy church and those who experience rich fellowship and sound biblical exposition every week; those who cannot read or who have no Christian books and those for whom many Christian books are readily available; those who have no access to Christian teaching by means of various media and those who do. But if God invites and expects all his children—regardless of their age, IQ, education, or resources—to do the same thing—to pray—then prayer has to be simple.

  Therefore, it must be possible for every Christian, including every Christian reading this book, to have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life. For if you with all your Christian resources—presumably a Bible, a church family, the availability of Christian books, access to Christian teaching via radio and the Internet, and more—if you can’t have a fulfilling prayer life in spite of all these helps, then what hope is there for our brothers and sisters in isolated locations, lands where non-Christian religions dominate, or places of persecution where few, if any, of these Christian resources are available?

  Are you ready to say, “Well, that’s pretty tight logic, for if I, despite my education, experience, and all my Christian resources, don’t seem capable of a meaningful, satisfying prayer life, then that necessarily implies that almost no Christian in the world can enjoy one either, since almost no follower of Jesus anywhere has as many of these helps for prayer as I”?

  No. Of course not. You’d never say that. Instead, you’re more likely to think, Look, I don’t know about anybody else. I just know that when I pray, it’s boring. So it must be me. There’s something wrong with me. In fact, now that you’ve shown me all the advantages I have in comparison to many other Christians in the world, I feel guiltier than ever. I felt like a failure in prayer before, but apparently I’m even worse than I thought. Thanks a lot! Boy, I’m sure glad that I picked up this book!

  So now we’ve come to the most challenging part of this book. It’s possible that you have been saying the same old things about the same old things in prayer for so long that it’s hard for you to believe that you could easily learn to pray any other way, as though you were listening to a lung specialist say that you could easily change the way you breathe. Many who are reading this book have endured the guilt of an incurably wandering mind and feelings of boredom in prayer for decades, and here comes a writer asking you to believe that there is a simple, permanent, biblical solution to a problem that’s plagued you for most of your life. Would I really ask you to believe that?

  Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

  I do realize that after all these years of unsatisfying prayer, you might find it challenging to believe that the problem is not you, Christian, but your method. But once again, let’s return to the facts. The Lord has his people all over the world, and among them are believers of every sort of demographic description. And yet by his Spirit, he gives to all of them a desire to pray. Would he do this for all if meaningful prayer was doable only by some? Would your heavenly Father make prayer so difficult or confusing that you could never enjoy it or, rather, never enjoy him through prayer? Despite his love for his people, a love demonstrated by the incarnation and crucifixion of his Son for them, a love made evident by providing the Holy Spirit and the Bible and the church, would he then devise a means of communion between himself and his children that most would find to be a frustrating, boring monotony?

  That makes no sense. What does make sense is that the Father, who wanted to enjoy fellowship with all his children and wanted all his children to enjoy talking with him, would make it simple for all to do so.

  The Simple, Permanent, Biblical Solution

  So what is the simple solution to the boring routine of saying the same old things about the same old things? Here it is: when you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture, particularly a psalm.

  That probably didn’t seem as dramatic as you were expecting. In fact, you may have heard something similar to this before. If so, it was most likely when someone tea
ching through one of the prayers of the apostle Paul (e.g., Eph. 1:15–23; 3:14–21; Phil. 1:9–11) said, “We should pray these prayers today.” And I agree; we should. Better yet, though, I believe we should pray everything in Paul’s letters, not just his prayers.

  The best place, however, for learning to pray through a passage of Scripture is in the book of Psalms.

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  The Method

  The Psalms: they are designed to be prayed.

  Gordon Wenham

  Now we’re going to see what praying through a psalm looks like. Let’s use the twenty-third psalm as an example. And let’s say that, as is probably true in real life, you read your Bible first. Perhaps you read in Matthew, or in Hebrews, and then you turn to prayer. You decide to pray through a psalm, and you choose Psalm 23. You read the first verse—“The LORD is my shepherd”—and you pray something like this:

  Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd. You’re a good shepherd. You have shepherded me all my life. And, great Shepherd, please shepherd my family today: guard them from the ways of the world; guide them into the ways of God. Lead them not into temptation; deliver them from evil. O great Shepherd, I pray for my children; cause them to be your sheep. May they love you as their shepherd, as I do. And, Lord, please shepherd me in the decision that’s before me about my future. Do I make that move, that change, or not? I also pray for our under-shepherds at the church. Please shepherd them as they shepherd us.

  And you continue praying anything else that comes to mind as you consider the words, “The LORD is my shepherd.” Then when nothing else comes to mind, you go to the next line: “I shall not want.” And perhaps you pray:

  Lord, I thank you that I’ve never really been in want. I haven’t missed too many meals. All that I am and all that I have has come from you. But I know it pleases you that I bring my desires to you, so would you provide the finances that we need for those bills, for school, for that car?

  Maybe you know someone who is in want, and you pray for God’s provision for him or her. Or you remember some of our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world, and you pray for their concerns.

  After you’ve finished, you look at the next verse: “He makes me lie down in green pastures” (v. 2a). And, frankly, when you read the words “lie down,” maybe what comes to mind is simply, “Lord, I would be grateful if you would make it possible for me to lie down and take a nap today.”2

  Possibly the term “green pastures” makes you think of the feeding of God’s flock in the green pastures of his Word, and it prompts you to pray for a Bible teaching ministry you lead, or for a teacher or pastor who feeds you with the Word of God. When was the last time you did that? Maybe you have never done that, but praying through this psalm caused you to do so.

  Next you read, “He leads me beside still waters” (v. 2b). And maybe you begin to plead,

  Yes, Lord, do lead me in that decision I have to make about my future. I want to do what you want, O Lord, but I don’t know what that is. Please lead me into your will in this matter. And lead me beside still waters in this. Please quiet the anxious waters in my soul about this situation. Let me experience your peace. May the turbulence in my heart be stilled by trust in you and your sovereignty over all things and over all people.

  Following that, you read these words from verse 3, “He restores my soul.” That prompts you to pray along the lines of:

  My Shepherd, I come to you so spiritually dry today. Please restore my soul; restore to me the joy of your salvation. And I pray you will restore the soul of that person from work/school/down the street with whom I’m hoping to share the gospel. Please restore his soul from darkness to light, from death to life.

  You can continue praying in this way until either (1) you run out of time, or (2) you run out of psalm. And if you run out of psalm before you run out of time, you simply turn the page and go to another psalm. By so doing, you never run out of anything to say, and, best of all, you never again say the same old things about the same old things.

  So basically what you are doing is taking words that originated in the heart and mind of God and circulating them through your heart and mind back to God. By this means his words become the wings of your prayers.

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  More about the Method

  Open the Bible, start reading it, and pause at every verse and turn it into a prayer.

  John Piper

  To pray the Bible, you simply go through the passage line by line, talking to God about whatever comes to mind as you read the text. See how easy that is? Anyone can do that.

  If you don’t understand the meaning of a verse, go on to the next verse. If the meaning of that one is perfectly clear but nothing comes to mind to pray about, go on to the next verse. Just speak to the Lord about everything that occurs to you as you slowly read his Word. You do this even if—and this page of the book is potentially the one most likely to be misunderstood—even if what comes to mind has nothing to do with the text.

  Now, let me defend that biblically. What does the text of Scripture tell us to pray about? Everything, right? The Bible tells us that in Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” We may bring “everything by prayer” to God. Everything is something we may pray about. Every person, every object, every issue, every circumstance, every fear, every situation—everything in the universe is something we may bring before God. So every thought that enters your mind as you are reading a passage of Scripture—even if that thought has nothing to do with the text before you at the moment—is something you may bring to God.

  Interpreting the Bible versus Praying the Bible

  I want to make a crucial distinction between what I wrote in the previous paragraph and interpreting the Bible accurately, a process formally known as “hermeneutics.” Correctly handling the Word of God does not permit making the text say what we want. To understand the Bible accurately—which is essential for right belief and living, for truthful sharing with others, and for authoritative teaching and preaching—we must do whatever is necessary to discover (or “exegete”) the single, God-inspired meaning of every verse before us. The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not “what it means to me.”

  When we come to the Bible on all other occasions I can think of, our primary purpose is to understand and apply it. So let’s say we are doing Bible study. Primarily we are putting in the mental effort (and perhaps physical effort too, if we are using other reference tools) to understand what the text before us says and means. Secondarily we are praying. “Lord,” we might ask from time to time, “what does this mean?” or occasionally pray, “How do I apply this?”

  As I said, that’s our mind-set, more or less, on almost all occasions when we come to the Bible, whether it’s a deeper level of Bible study or simply the daily reading of one or more chapters of Scripture.

  But that’s not what we’re doing here.

  With what I’m advocating, our primary activity is prayer, not Bible intake. Bible reading is secondary in this process. Our focus is on God through prayer; our glance is at the Bible. And we turn Godward and pray about every matter that occurs to us as we read. Do you see the distinction?

  Let me use a ridiculous illustration to make the point. Suppose you are praying through Psalm 130, and you come to verse 3: “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” And when you see that verb “mark,” your friend Mark comes to mind. What should you do? Pray for Mark! You know that verse is not about Mark, but it’s certainly not wrong to pray for Mark just because he popped into your head as you were reading Psalm 130:3.

  Here’s a more realistic illustration. Let’s return to a verse from which we prayed a few moments ago, Psalm 23:3: “He restores my soul.” I said that one of the things this verse might prompt you to pray for is the salvation of a person with whom you are trying to share the gospel, to pray that God would rest
ore that person’s soul from darkness to light, from death to life. If I were to preach on Psalm 23 and say, “This verse is about evangelism; about God restoring the souls of those in spiritual darkness,” I would be sinning. That verse is not about evangelism, and I know it. It’s about a believer’s soul being restored to the joy of God’s salvation. Were I to declare to others that God’s Word here means one thing when I know it means another would be, at best, to misuse the text. We never have the right to claim that the Bible says something it does not.

  But if, while you are praying through Psalm 23:3, your non-Christian friend comes to mind, and you use the language of this verse to say, “Lord, restore my friend’s soul; restore him from darkness to light, from death to life,” that’s fine. This isn’t reading something into the text; it’s merely using the language of the text to speak to God about what has come into your mind.

  So, again, simply turn every thought Godward as you read the passage. At some points you will pray exactly what the text is about, as when you pray, “Lord, restore my soul to the joy of your salvation.” At other times you will use biblical language to pray thoughts unrelated to the text that come to you while reading the text, as in, “Lord, restore my non-Christian friend’s soul from death to life.”

  Confidence in the Word and the Spirit

  I have enough confidence in the Word and the Spirit of God to believe that if people will pray in this way, in the long run their prayers will be far more biblical than if they just make up their own prayers. That’s what people usually do: make up their own prayers. What’s the result? We tend to say the same old things about the same old things. And without the Scripture to shape our prayers, we are far more likely to pray in unbiblical ways than if we pray the thoughts that occur to us as we read the Scripture. So while it’s true that people may use this method and pray about things that are not found in the text, I contend that will happen much less if people will pray while reading the text. By this means, the Spirit of God will use the Word of God to help the people of God pray increasingly according to the will of God.