Praying the scriptures.

It’s a popular Christian practice to drop little bits of bible into our prayers. Kinda like so.

Father, we come to you because you tell us “if my people, who are called by my name, seek my face, I will hear from heaven,” and we recognize “your word won’t return void,” so we call upon you today, Lord. Hear our prayers, meet our needs, heed our cries. “Give us today our daily bread.” Amen.

We pray the Lord’s Prayer of course. Sometimes we pray the psalms. Sometimes full psalms—yes, we can pray entire passages from the scriptures. Many of the more famous rote prayers consist of lines lifted straight from the bible and arranged to sound like a prayer.

We do this for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes not-so-legitimate ones, like we want our prayers to sound more bible-y. That’s why we’ll trot out the King James Version English with its “thee” and “thou” and old-timey verbs. If it’s old-fashioned we figure it’s more solemn and serious and holy. It’s not really—but people think so, which is why they do it.

Or we covet the bible’s power. We quote bible because the bible is God’s word… and since God’s word is mighty and powerful, maybe quoting it in prayer is also mighty and powerful. Maybe those words can make our prayer requests mighty and powerful, and we can get what we want because we’re tapping that power.

Or we’re padding our prayers. Short prayers are fine, but way too many Christians think long prayers are, again, more solemn and serious and holy. So if our prayers are too short, maybe we can stretch ’em out by throwing in a dozen bible verses. Plus they’ll sound bible-y, plus they’ll tap the bible’s power; we can do this for all three inappropriate reasons.

But don’t get me wrong; there are appropriate reasons to include bible verses in our prayers. Really good reasons.

Meditation, obviously.

Christians are expected to meditate on the scriptures: Read your bible, think about what it means, ask the Holy Spirit to show you stuff about it, and grow in knowledge and wisdom from these experiences. Ideally we’ll even change our way of thinking because the Spirit has shown us a better way to think.

True, we often don’t bother to do this. We just read our bibles, and that’s all—we don’t sit and reflect, nor ask the Spirit for insight. Many of us are just trying to tick all the boxes in our bible-reading plan, and we barely make time for that, much less extra time to really let it sink in and change our way of thinking.

But meditation should be a regular part of our Christian lives. “God, in your scriptures you have thus-and-so. What do you want me to learn from that? How do you want me to live it? Does this part apply to me?” We should be praying about the scriptures… and clearly there should be a lot of scriptures in our meditative prayers.

And where appropriate, we should ask God for the things we just read about. Fr’instance if we’re reading Jesus’s prayer about how all his followers should be one, Jn 17.20-24 it oughta provoke us to pray for what Jesus just prayed: We should want us followers to be one. If we’re truly following Jesus, praying his prayers—and trying to mean them when we pray them—only makes sense.

So in order to get more of the scriptures into our heads and lives, and in order to know and understand God better, we oughta have scripture in our lives, and oughta be praying about those scriptures. And, like every revelation we think we got from God, we need to confirm everything, lest we run wild with one of our own ideas instead of something God truly wants to teach us. Too many Christians confirm nothing, go with what they think God told ’em, and have a lot of rubbish ideas as a result. Don’t do that. Double-check everything.

Praying back the bible.

Because it’s often a good idea to write out our prayers, various Christians wisely try to base their written-out prayers on bible. They look for bible passages which are trying to teach Christians something, than ask God to teach those things to us personally. Or ask him to keep on us so we do the things we’re taught to do.

Fr’instance where Jesus teaches on money in his Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 6.19-24 NKJV

19“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Unless you’re a Mammonist who’s scouring this passage for loopholes, you’re gonna want to live by Jesus’s teaching. You’re gonna want to pray, “God, help me do as Jesus teaches.” Based on this particular teaching, you’re gonna dig into each of these sentences and pray for the power to follow Jesus.

Father, I don’t want to hoard wealth on earth, where bugs and corrosion and thieves can get at it. I want my wealth in heaven. I want my mind on my wealth in heaven. I don’t want to be one of those stingy people whose “eye isn’t healthy,” but whose eyes are on you. I want to be lit up inside because you are light. I don’t want to be a slave to any master but you. I don’t want to follow Mammon. Help me fight it and those tendencies. Help me recognize you are my treasure in heaven.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God’s will be done, but too many Christians don’t even know God’s will, ’cause they don’t read their bibles and don’t reinforce what they read. When they pray for stuff, they selfishly pray for stuff God doesn’t want us to have, and of course he’s not gonna say yes to such prayers. And when they get those things anyway, ’cause either they bought it themselves (in other words, ’cause of Mammon) or coincidence, they’re incorrectly gonna think God answered their prayers—again, because they don’t know his will.

Hence praying the scriptures—praying for the stuff Jesus blatantly tells us he does want—is a great way to learn God’s will, and pray for it. And let the scriptures, and our prayers, change us for the better.

Pray it in context.

When we don’t actually care at all about God’s word—when we’re trying to co-opt it so we can get our way—we won’t care about context. We don’t care what it legitimately means. We’re only looking for verses that are close enough to our own will. If it’s a promise meant only for King David, for ancient Israel, for Jesus, and for people who are actually following Jesus instead of people who apathetically aren’t, people will name and claim it for themselves.

Then they’ll wonder why God isn’t answering the named-and-claimed scriptures in their prayers—aren’t these God’s promises they prayed? Of course they are! But he didn’t make those promises to us, and he has zero obligations to fulfill “biblical promises” pulled out of context. Doesn’t matter how hard we believe those promises will come true. God has no motivation to reward the sloppy bible-quoter who only wants their prayers to sound holier than they truly are.

Well, the scriptures aren’t magic words we use to get what we want. And when we legitimately care about God’s word and God’s will, we’re gonna care about interpreting bible properly, and quoting it correctly in our prayers. Context is gonna matter.

So let’s respect the God who inspired his scriptures. Let’s do our homework, meditate on these verses, seek God’s thoughts, and then quote bible in our prayers. And do it properly, ’cause we understand their purpose. See what he then does with your prayer life.