Praying the Bible Read online

  I think it’s important enough to say it again: regardless of how far from the true meaning of the text people’s minds and therefore their prayers may wander, 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. Moreover, is there any better way for people to learn the true meaning of the text—if they are alone with the Holy Spirit and the Bible—than to pray over the text? The godly nineteenth-century Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne affirmed this when he said, “Turn the Bible into prayer. . . . This is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray.”3

  In reality, I think that most of the time people will pray fairly close to the true meaning of the text, for if they don’t understand a verse while praying through a passage, they’ll probably move on to the next verse that they do understand. I’ve given these illustrations not to excuse someone’s laziness in handling the text but rather to show that even in the case where a person prays about a matter far removed from the proper interpretation of the text, it’s acceptable to speak to God about such matters. People should feel free to pray about whatever comes to mind as they read through a passage of Scripture.

  A Simple Method

  That’s it. If you are praying through a psalm, you simply read that psalm line by line, talking to God about whatever thoughts are prompted by the inspired words you read. If your mind wanders from the subject of the text, take those wandering thoughts Godward, then return to the text. If you come to a verse you don’t understand, just skip it and go to the next verse. If you don’t understand that one, move on. If you do understand it but nothing comes to mind to pray about, go to the next verse. If sinful thoughts enter in, pray about them and go on. You may read twenty or thirty verses in that psalm, and yet on a given day have only five or six things come to mind. No problem. Nothing says you have to pray over every verse. Nothing says you have to finish the psalm.

  I was teaching this method at a church in Santa Rosa, California, and gave the people an opportunity to try praying through a passage of Scripture. One woman prayed for twenty-five minutes and never got past “The LORD is my shepherd.” For nearly half an hour she talked to the Lord about those five words. Do you think that in heaven the Lord was saying, in a huff, “You didn’t finish the psalm!”? No, I think he was delighted that she found so much delight in him as her shepherd that she could talk to him for twenty-five minutes about that, regardless of whether she prayed through the rest of the psalm. At other times, though—and this is probably more common—you will go through many verses and only a few matters will come to mind. Fine; just keep turning the page.

  Imprecatory Psalms

  You’ll come to those sections known as the “imprecatory psalms,” those passages where the psalmist calls for God’s judgment upon his enemies—people also presumed to be God’s enemies. But how do you pray through a psalm when it contains verses like these:

  Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones

  and dashes them against the rock! (Ps. 137:9)

  O God, break the teeth in their mouths! (Ps. 58:6)

  Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime. (Ps. 58:8)

  Well, maybe there’s someone at work for whom you are tempted momentarily to pray such things, but it’s difficult to do with a pure motive, isn’t it? While I believe those sections of Scripture are inspired as fully as John 3:16 and any other part of the Bible, I don’t think we should pray verses like these with specific people in mind. To do that would be hard to reconcile with Jesus’s command in Matthew 5:44–45, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

  I do think we can put specific sins in those passages, praying that God will smash their teeth as they attempt to devour our souls. I sometimes pray angrily that all the enemies of God born in my sinful heart will be destroyed as thoroughly as these imprecatory psalms describe. I also believe we can pray these imprecations against national sins, as I sometimes do, for example, against abortion and racism. Ultimately, as we view the Scriptures Christocentrically, we can put such psalms in the mouth of Jesus. Someday he is going to do far worse than just break the teeth in the mouth of his lifelong, unrepentant enemies. Essentially we can pray these psalms in such a way that reflects the attitude, “Lord, I am on your side and against all your enemies. I want your justice and righteousness to win the final victory over sin and rebellion against you.”

  But let’s say that one day next week as you are praying through a psalm, you come to one of these sections. You might think, “That Whitney guy in the book on Praying the Bible said we could pray through these kinds of psalms, but I don’t remember what he said.” That’s okay. Maybe you’ll pray, “Lord, what does this mean?” or “Please show me how I can pray from this passage.” Perhaps you’ll move past the entire section and go to the next verse that gives you clear direction in prayer. Any of this is fine. That’s why this method is so simple, and anyone can do it.

  Some of the Benefits

  It’s not only easy to begin praying with this method; this method makes it easy to continue in prayer. The basic spirituality course I teach in seminary is called “Personal Spiritual Disciplines.” On the first day of class I announce that once during the semester, each student is to spend four consecutive hours alone with God. When I say this, the concern I read on many faces tells me that they are thinking, What am I going to do for four hours? But after I teach them how to meditate on Scripture and how to pray through a passage of Scripture, most of them spend the entire four hours alternating between those two activities, sometimes writing their meditations or prayers in a journal. What’s so encouraging is that nearly all the students spend more than four hours on the assignment—not because they have to but because they are enjoying it so much that they don’t want to stop. Many of them walk while praying through a psalm, and if they reach the end of the psalm but want to keep walking and praying, they simply turn the page and continue praying.

  Praying the Bible in this way is so practical because it expands or contracts to accommodate however much or how little time you have for prayer. So it works if you have four hours, like those students, and yet it works if you have just four minutes. If you have only four minutes, you won’t get very far in the text, but you can still pray the Bible. Conversely, if you have four hours for prayer, you just keep turning the page. No matter how long you pray, you never run out of things to pray when you pray the Bible.

  Even better is the fact that when you pray through a passage of Scripture, you don’t pray empty, repetitive phrases. Talk to God about the words you read in the Bible, and you’ll never again pray the same old things about the same old things. That alone is worth the time you’ve invested in reading this book, isn’t it?

  But it gets even better than that, because the words you use when you pray the Bible are not just fresh, new phrases you haven’t used in prayer before, as energizing as that is. Praying from the Word of God means your prayers include inspired words. As Joni Eareckson Tada explains:

  I have learned to . . . season my prayers with the word of God. It’s a way of talking to God in his language—speaking his dialect, using his vernacular, employing his idioms. . . . This is not a matter simply of divine vocabulary. It’s a matter of power. When we bring God’s word directly into our praying, we are bringing God’s power into our praying. Hebrews 4:12 declares, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword.” God’s word is living, and so it infuses our prayers with life and vitality. God’s word is also active, injecting energy and power into our prayer.4

  There is a supernatural quality to the words of Scripture that you pray. Jesus said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). When you pray the Bible, you aren’t just praying ordinary words; you are praying words of spirit and life.r />
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  Praying the Psalms

  By praying the Psalms back to God, we learn to pray in tune with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  Ben Patterson

  As a whole, the psalms comprise the best place in Scripture from which to pray Scripture. I base that on the original purpose for which God inspired the psalms. The book of Psalms—which means “book of praises” in Hebrew—was the songbook of Israel. The psalms were inspired by God for the purpose of being sung to God.

  It is as though God said to his people, “I want you to praise me, but you don’t know how to praise me. I want you to praise me not because I’m an egomaniac but because you will praise that which you prize the most, and there is nothing of greater worth to you than I. There is nothing more praiseworthy than I, and it is a blessing for you to know that. It will lead to your eternal joy if you praise me above all others and above all else and to your eternal misery if you do not. But there’s a problem. You don’t know how to praise me, at least not in a way that’s fully true and pleasing to me. In fact, you know nothing about me unless I reveal it to you, for I am invisible to you. Therefore, since I want you to praise me, and it is good for you to praise me, but since you don’t know how to praise me, here are the words I want you to use.”

  Why the Psalms?

  In other words, God gave the Psalms to us so that we would give the Psalms back to God. No other book of the Bible was inspired for that expressed purpose.

  In addition, we know that singing the Psalms continues to be pleasing to God and edifying to his people today, for in two key New Testament passages (Eph. 5:18–19 and Col. 3:16) a healthy church is characterized by singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”5 So in the Psalms God teaches us to come before him using words such as:

  You, O LORD, are a shield about me. (Ps. 3:3)

  O LORD, our Lord,

  how majestic is your name in all the earth!

  You have set your glory above the heavens. (Ps. 8:1)

  You make known to me the path of life;

  in your presence there is fullness of joy;

  at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Ps. 16:11)

  How precious is your steadfast love, O God! (Ps. 36:7)

  A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:17)

  Your righteousness, O God,

  reaches the high heavens.

  You who have done great things,

  O God, who is like you? (Ps. 71:19)

  Your way, O God, is holy.

  What god is great like our God? (Ps. 77:13)

  You, O Lord, are good and forgiving,

  abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. (Ps. 86:5)

  O LORD my God, you are very great!

  You are clothed with splendor and majesty,

  covering yourself with light as with a garment,

  stretching out the heavens like a tent. (Ps. 104:1–2)

  Your word is a lamp to my feet

  and a light to my path. (Ps. 119:105)

  O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

  You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

  you discern my thoughts from afar. (Ps. 139:1–2)

  Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,

  and your dominion endures throughout all generations. (Ps. 145:13)

  Have you considered the Psalms from this perspective? That is, for our good and his glory, God wants us to praise him. And, indeed, all those indwelled by his Spirit yearn to praise him. But we have no way of knowing what sort of praises are worthy of our glorious God. So he revealed in the Psalms the praises that express the yearnings his Spirit produces in us and which are appropriate for and consistent with his glory. As we pray the Psalms, therefore, we are returning to God words that he expressly inspired for us to speak and sing to him.

  The “Psalms of the Day”

  I want to commend to you a systematic approach for praying a psalm each day. The approach did not originate with me, but I can’t recall where I first encountered the concept decades ago. It’s called “Psalms of the Day.” Before I explain how it works, here’s why I think it’s worth your time to learn it. If you intend to pray through a psalm, using the Psalms of the Day approach helps you avoid thumbing through the middle of your Bible, randomly searching for a psalm that looks interesting. Too often, such an inconsistent process results in omitting many of the psalms. It also can slow your devotional momentum as you find yourself aimlessly meandering through chapters instead of praying.

  With the Psalms of the Day you take thirty seconds or so to quickly scan five specific psalms and pick the one that best leads you to prayer on that occasion. It’s based on taking the 150 psalms and dividing them by thirty days (because most months have at least thirty days). That results in five psalms per day. (If bringing math into prayer is making you skeptical, stay with me! There’s a simple chart in the back of the book that may visually convey all you’ll need to understand what I’m trying to describe.)

  Or to put it another way, if you were to read five psalms a day for an entire month, at the end of the month you would have read through the entire book of Psalms. While reading five psalms a day is a great practice that many enjoy, that’s not what I’m advocating here. What I’m suggesting is that you take half a minute to quickly scan five psalms and pick one of those five to pray through.

  Here’s how it works. The first psalm is the one that corresponds with the day of the month. If today is the fifteenth of the month, then your first psalm would be Psalm 15. On the fifteenth day of the month you start with the fifteenth psalm.

  To get your second psalm, you simply add thirty. Why thirty? Because there are thirty days in the month. So thirty added to fifteen is forty-five. Thus the second psalm you would scan on the fifteenth of the month would be Psalm 45.

  After that you just keep adding thirty until you get your five psalms. So thirty added to Psalm 45 takes you to Psalm 75, and thirty more to Psalm 105, and then thirty more to Psalm 135. So on the fifteenth of the month the Psalms of the Day are 15; 45; 75; 105; and 135. Those five psalms are the Psalms of the Day on the fifteenth of every month. So on the fifteenth day of this month, next month, and the month after that, you take thirty seconds to scan Psalms 15; 45; 75; 105; and 135, and then pick one of those five as the psalm you pray through.

  What psalm do you use on the thirty-first of a month? That’s when you pray through part (or all if you have time!) of Psalm 119. Of course, Psalm 119 will come up on the twenty-ninth, for the Psalms of the Day on the twenty-ninth are 29; 59; 89; 119; and 149. But even if you decide to use Psalm 119 on the twenty-ninth, because of its length chances are that there will be unused portions of the psalm that you can pray through on the thirty-first.

  Since I’m a professor, I’m going to give you a pop quiz here. What are the Psalms of the Day for today?

  Did you get them? Again, if you need to, refer to the chart in the back of the book to confirm that you understand how to identify the five Psalms of the Day on any day of the month.

  The Benefits

  As we’ve learned, the most important benefit of this little plan is that it gives you direction and momentum. No matter how tired, sleepy, or distracted you might be when you go to pray, with this method you know on any given day exactly which five psalms you will consider. And it helps you avoid saying, “Let’s see. What psalm should I use today? Hmmmm, how about this one? No, I read that one the other day. Then maybe this one? No, I don’t really like that one.” Instead of helping the heart soar in prayer, such an unordered approach tends to pour sludge into the soul. Usually it’s far better to know immediately which psalms you will scan.

  A second benefit of using the Psalms of the Day plan is that by it you regularly and systematically encounter each of the 150 psalms. All the psalms are equally inspired, and all are worthy of your consideration in prayer. They are not all equally easy to pray through—the imprecatory psalms are more challenging to use in
prayer than Psalm 23—but they are equally God-breathed. And if you will take thirty seconds to review five psalms every day, it is uncanny how one of them will express something that is looking for expression in your heart.

  Praying a “Psalm of the Day”

  Having explained how to find the Psalms of the Day, now let’s use it to review the main point of the book, which is to actually pray through Scripture, in this case, one of those five psalms. Suppose today is the twentieth of the month. The Psalms of the Day are 20; 50; 80; 110; and 140. After a quick scan of them, let’s say you settle on Psalm 20 as the one you want to pray through. So you might read the beginning of verse 1—“May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble!”—and pray:

  Lord, please answer me today. I am in trouble—my finances are in trouble, my body is in trouble, and my relationships are in trouble. O answer me today, Lord, because I am in trouble in so many ways.