To pray the Bible, you simply go through a 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.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t 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\u2014and this can be easily misunderstood\u2014even if what comes to mind has nothing to do with the text.<\/p>\n
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: \u201cDo not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.\u201d We may bring \u201ceverything by prayer\u201d to God. Everything is something we may pray about. Every person, every object, every issue, every circumstance, every fear, every situation\u2014everything 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\u2014even if that thought has nothing to do with the text before you at the moment\u2014is something you may bring to God.<\/p>\n
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 \u201chermeneutics.\u201d Correctly handling the word of God does not permit making the text say what we want. To understand the Bible accurately\u2014which is essential for right belief and living, for truthful sharing with others, and for authoritative teaching and preaching\u2014we must do whatever is necessary to discover (or \u201cexegete\u201d) the single, God-inspired meaning of every verse before us. The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not \u201cwhat it means to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s say we are doing Bible study. Primarily<\/em> 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<\/em> we are praying. \u201cLord,\u201d we might ask from time to time, \u201cwhat does this mean?\u201d or occasionally pray, \u201cHow do I apply this?\u201d<\/p>\n As I said, that\u2019s our mind-set, more or less, on almost all occasions when we come to the Bible, whether it\u2019s a deeper level of Bible study or simply the daily reading of one or more chapters of Scripture.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing here.<\/p>\n With what I\u2019m advocating, our primary<\/em> activity is prayer, not Bible intake. Bible reading is secondary<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n Let me use a ridiculous illustration to make the point. Suppose you are praying through Psalm 130, and you come to verse 3: \u201cIf you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?\u201d And when you see that verb \u201cmark,\u201d your friend Mark comes to mind. What should you do? Pray for Mark! You know that verse is not about Mark, but it\u2019s certainly not wrong to pray for Mark just because he popped into your head as you were reading Psalm 130:3.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a more realistic illustration. Let’s consider Psalm 23:3: \u201cHe restores my soul.\u201d 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 restore that person\u2019s soul from darkness to light, from death to life. If I were to preach on Psalm 23 and say, \u201cThis verse is about evangelism; about God restoring the souls of those in spiritual darkness,\u201d I would be sinning. That verse is not about evangelism, and I know it. It\u2019s about a believer\u2019s soul being restored to the joy of God\u2019s salvation. Were I to declare to others that God\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n But if, while you are\u00a0praying<\/em>\u00a0through\u00a0Psalm 23:3, your non-Christian friend comes to mind, and you use the language of this verse to say, \u201cLord, restore my friend\u2019s soul; restore him from darkness to light, from death to life,\u201d that\u2019s fine. This isn\u2019t\u00a0reading something into<\/em>\u00a0the text; it\u2019s merely\u00a0using the language<\/em>\u00a0of the text to speak to God about what has come into your mind.<\/p>\n The Spirit of God will use the word of God to help the people of God pray increasingly according to the will of God.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cLord, restore my soul to the joy of your salvation.\u201d 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, \u201cLord, restore my non-Christian friend\u2019s soul from death to life.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s what people usually do: make up their own prayers. What\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Content adapted from\u00a0Praying the Bible<\/em>\u00a0by Donald S. Whitney. This article first appeared\u00a0on\u00a0Crossway.org; used with permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pray about Everything To pray the Bible, you simply go through a 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\u2019t understand the meaning of a verse, go on to the next verse. If the … Continue reading “How God Helps Us Pray According to His Will”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Confidence in the Word and the Spirit<\/h3>\n