Grant Abbott Child of Father, Follower of Son, Student of Spirit

I believe there are reasons to pray the scriptures and reasons not to.

Reasons to pray the scriptures

1. The bible is God’s book. This is his will for our lives. God includes the lives of people, including their words and prayers, as examples and warnings to us. I often pray Psalm 51 as a prayer to confess my sins to God, in addition to naming the specific sins I am aware of.

2. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them a model, recorded in the gospels, called the Lord’s Prayer. Many churches pray this prayer, out loud together, during their church services.

3. Sometimes, God places a burden of prayer upon us but we know very little about the person’s needs or circumstances of life. For example, other people in our local church we don’t know very well. In these situations I often pray the words of scripture. Personally, I really like and use the apostle Paul’s prayer to the church in Ephesus, recoded in Ephesians 1:3-23.

Reasons not to pray the Scriptures

1. If I want to give thanks to God in prayer, there are many prayers in the bible I can use, but God wants to know from my heart, what I am specifically thankful for today.

2. I am aware of specific needs in another person’s life that I want to pray for and scripture doesn’t provide that specific guidance, so I need to find my own words to pray. For example, my oldest son needs to buy a car to replace one that just died and he’s on a limited budget. So I can pray that God would lead him to find the perfect car that meets his needs within his budget.

3. Jesus said “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” This is a clear invitation from Jesus to pray our own words for the things we need in life.

September 28 2020 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report