Pray the Bible

Do you ever use Bible words in your prayers? There are several ways to do this.

You can pray complete prayers as they are written. Some well known Bible prayers are the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), and the prayers that Paul prays for the early church in Ephesians 1:15-20 and 3:14-21. Wes and Stacey Campbell have collected a total of 88 such prayers in their book Praying the Bible: The Book of Prayers. It’s a fabulous resource for one’s prayer time.

Or you can string together short bits of scripture according to topic. That’s what Barb Billett has done in her book Praying with Fire. This is another book of powerful, faith-building prayers.

Still another way is to pray the scripture whenever it impacts you, as Dick Eastman describes in his book The Hour That Changes the World: A Practical Plan for Personal Prayer. He gives a three-part plan for devising scripture prayers:

“1. Listen to or read a passage from the Bible.

2. Stop listening or reading the moment you discover a verse or two that impress truth on your heart:

• Meditate on what the verse is saying to you.

• Ponder every aspect of the passage.

• Evaluate how the passage might be transformed into a specific petition. Ask:

* Does this verse prompt me to pray for something specific?
* How can this passage be directly applied to my petition?
* Can I use some of the words of the passage verbatim as I pray?

3. Using your meditation “form a personal prayer ‘enriched’ by that promise from God.”

– Dick Eastman, The Hour That Changes the World, pp. 59-60.

Whatever method you use, you will be encouraged and your faith built up as you hang onto God’s promises and pray them back to Him.

Do you pray the Bible? What are your favorite Bible prayers?