When you don't know what to pray.......

“As you pray a Psalm, think about the pathway from the Psalm to you through the mediation of Christ.” Graeme Goldsworthy

For freshness of utterance, breadth of comprehension, elevation of thought, and intimacy of heart, there is no prayer like that which forms itself in the words and thoughts of Scripture.” Graham Miller

Sometimes the hardest part of prayer is simply knowing what to say. We honestly want to pray, believing prayer matters, but after a few minutes we find ourselves praying about the same things with almost the same words. We pray for our family, health, work, and our future. 

There’s nothing wrong with praying for all of this. The problem is not that we keep praying about the same things. As Donald Whitney puts it, we tend to “say the same old things about the same old things.”

Eventually prayer can become mechanical. Our minds wander and feel “automatic.” And when this is our typical format, even five minutes can feel like a really, really, long time. 

One of the simplest solutions is to let God teach us how to pray by praying the Bible. 

There is a fascinating example of this in Jonah 2. Jonah is sinking toward death. The waters are closing over him. Then God appoints a great fish to rescue him. From inside the great fish……..Jonah prays.

What is striking is how saturated his prayer is with the Psalms. His language and imagery echo several of them. Jonah had apparently learned the Psalms well enough that when his world collapsed, biblical language came out. He matched his moment with borrowed words.

That is one reason I want the Psalms buried deeply in my own heart. When I have trouble praying, sometimes a line from a Psalm is enough to get me started: 

“How long, O LORD?” “Create in me a clean heart.” “Search me, O God.” “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”

Let God Give You the Words

Jesus warned against prayer that simply piles up words without meaning. In Matthew 6:7, he tells his disciples not to “heap up empty phrases.” The problem is not repetition itself. Even Jesus repeated prayers - and the Psalms repeated themselves. The problem is empty repetition. Our lips can keep moving while our minds and hearts are somewhere else. Instead of constantly trying to invent fresh things to say to God, we can let God's own Word direct the conversation. 

How to Pray the Bible

The practice is remarkably simple. Open the Bible and begin reading slowly. When a verse, phrase, truth, command, promise, or description of God gives you something to pray, stop reading and pray. I can look like this…

Follow that thought in prayer. Then return to the text and continue reading. You do not have to finish the passage. You get no extra points for doing this after every verse either. Finishing the passage is not the goal. Talking with God is.

Scripture Does More Than Keep Prayer Interesting

Praying Scripture certainly helps with boredom and distraction. But that is not its greatest benefit. You see, left to ourselves, prayer can easily shrink to our immediate circumstances: “Fix this. Give me that. Protect me from this. Make this easier.” 

These prayers are not necessarily wrong. Jesus himself teaches us to ask for daily bread. But Scripture enlarges our prayers.

It teaches us to pray for God's name to be honored, his kingdom to advance, sinners to be saved, churches to mature, injustice to end, suffering believers to endure, holiness to grow, Christ to be treasured, and Jesus to return.

Praying the Bible does not merely give us more things to say, but maybe better things. 

Start With the Psalms

You can pray through any part of Scripture, but the Psalms are an especially good place to begin because they give voice to nearly the entire range of human experience.

They teach us to praise, confess, remember, rejoice, grieve, wait, repent, give thanks, plead for help, express confusion, fight fear, and hope again. I’ve always called it a “compendium of all human emotion” mostly because I have no other place to use the word “compendium.” 

The Psalms also remind us that mature prayer does not always sound cheerful. Big faith can cry - and ask big questions. Big faith can ask, “How long, O Lord?” It talks through the tears without ignoring them. 

Pray Through Christ

Finally, praying Scripture is not another technique for earning a better audience with God. We do not have access to God because we learned how to pray correctly. Because Christ is our great High Priest, Hebrews 4 tells us that we can approach the throne of grace with confidence. Our confidence therefore does not depend on eloquence, emotional intensity, or the length of our prayers. This is great news for us right? Very simply, Jesus is our mediator. 

So tomorrow, try something simple. Choose a Psalm. Read it slowly. When something gives you reason to pray, stop and pray. Then keep reading. Do not worry about sounding impressive. Just borrow the words God has already given you.

If Jonah could reach for Scripture from the belly of a fish, it is worth putting some of those words into our own hearts before we need them. When you do not know what to pray, open the Bible and borrow God's words. 

The Psalms have proven to be the easiest book to pray through. One effective way to do this is to take whatever day of the month it is, and add 30 repeatedly until you get five Psalms to choose from. (ex: the 19th would generate Psalms 19, 49, 79, 109, and 139).  

The Psalms are also a great start because they contain tremendous theology and have even been called the “small Bible” as they express all of God’s characteristics, the gospel, and vent the full range of human emotion.  All passages can be prayed, not just the Psalms - but starting and practicing the Psalms have repeatedly shown by many to be the most effective because they were built to be prayed.