Have you ever sat down to pray but been at a loss for what to say? Or maybe you start praying but realize you’re saying the same thing you prayed yesterday. You run through a quick list of people who need to be healed, be saved, or be safe and then throw a few “thanks” in there for things like food, weather, and family. A boring prayer for a boring start of a boring day. Merely a routine where the words are not very deep and certainly not very meaningful. 

How can we change how we pray? How can we truly pray in a way that is fresh and exciting, like we are actually communicating with the God of the universe who wants to hear us pray? How can we add the excitement, the drive to our prayers? 

One idea is to let the Word of God inspire your prayer life. 

As you probably noticed in our 40 Days of Prayer booklet, the prayers are all centered around Scripture. Really, all that goes into the “Prayer from Scripture” section is a rephrasing of several passages along a common theme. Take March 31, for instance – “God’s Unchanging Goodness.”

“You have proclaimed Your name: the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. [This is straight out of Exodus 34:6-7, one of the ‘for further study’ passages, where God tells His character to Moses.] And this, Your name, is our strong tower. [This is from Proverbs 18:10.] You are good and do good, good to all; and Your mercy is over all that You have made. [This is what Psalm 145:9 says.]”

But if you were just to read that paragraph and didn’t know those passages, you would think that the prayer sounded pretty natural, modern – the type of prayer any one of us may pray. Anyone of us, that is, that is actually putting meaning and depth into our prayers.

And that’s the point. The Scripture records prayers that are relevant and timely. Exciting and alive, not mindless repetition. Certainly, there are some sections of Scripture that would be difficult to pray in your circumstances (perhaps, the imprecatory Psalms where judgment is called down on Israel’s national enemies). But by and large, whole sections of Scripture can be read and then taken directly to the throne. Maybe you have never thought of such an idea. 

But what better way to pray to God than with the very words He inspired? Think of Exodus 34:6-7. When we pray that list of God’s attributes back to Him, we are praying His very words to Him. “This is who You said You were, God. We ask You to reveal this to us!” How powerful.

This idea is not a modern one. Many of the “heroes of the faith” we look back on from church history practiced this model of praying Scripture back to God. This method became more popular after Don Whitney published his book, Praying the Bible, where in a concise format he walks the readers through exactly how to do this. His method may not be best for your personality or schedule, but it is worth considering. He recommends starting with the Psalms, which as you notice is where a lot of the prayers in our booklet are from. The Psalms are quite simply the soul of God’s people being directed up to Him for a whole host of reasons. 

So, if during our 40 Days of Prayer, you’re impressed with this method, I recommend reading Whitney’s book and consider trying out his “Five Psalms” method – there’s even an app for it! 

Take God’s Words that He has revealed in Scripture and bring them before the Throne. He has said that He is good and gracious – ask Him to be so in your trial or in the suffering of a friend. He has said He is faithful – ask Him to show His faithfulness in providing a job for someone, in healing someone, in helping one of our gospel partners, or in protecting one of our government officials. 

God desires us to pray to Him. I encourage you to evaluate your prayer life after our series on the spiritual disciplines in Sunday Classes in spring 2019 and our 40 Days of Prayer. How can you, by the Spirit’s help, develop this discipline beyond our 40 days? How can you put life into your prayers?

Community Groups this year are going through the Psalms and including time praying through each Psalm each week. In addition, Men’s Cross Training is doing Praying the Bible by Don Whitney. Join either study to develop this discipline with others!