This Year’s Prayer Insight

Those of us who are A.D.O.S. struggle with prayer. We have a hard time sitting still and focusing. Like Martha, we are easily distracted. I suppose I have felt that way most of my life… until recently.

Recently I read Donald Whitney’s excellent book, Praying the Bible. The big idea is this. Instead of sitting down and saying, “I am going to pray for half an hour,” you read the Word and pray about what you read about. God speaks to us through the Word, we speak to Him through prayer.

In my case, I spend about half an hour in scripture memory/ meditation using the Scripter Typer app. (Have I mentioned I love this app!) Then, I spend about a half an hour reading the Word and praying about what I read about.

Donald Whitney describes the problem this way:

Since prayer is talking with God, why don’t people pray more? Why don’t the people of God enjoy prayer more? I maintain that people—truly born-again, genuinely Christian people—often do not pray simply because they do not feel like it. And the reason they don’t feel like praying is that when they do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things.

When you’ve said the same old things about the same old things about a thousand times, how do you feel about saying them again? Did you dare just think the “B” word? Yes, bored. We can be talking to the most fascinating Person in the universe about the most important things in our lives and be bored to death.

As a result, a great many Christians conclude, “It must be me. Something’s wrong with me. If I get bored in something as important as prayer, then I must be a second-rate Christian.”

Indeed, why would people become bored when talking with God, especially when talking about that which is most important to them? Is it because we don’t love God? Is it because, deep down, we really care nothing for the people or matters we pray about? No. Rather, if this mind-wandering boredom describes your experience in prayer, I would argue that if you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit—if you are born again—then the problem is not you; it is your method.

And the solution is a simple as it is profound:

So what is the simple solution to the boring routine of saying the same old things about the same old things? Here it is: when you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture, particularly a psalm.

You can continue praying in this way until either (1) you run out of time, or (2) you run out of psalm. And if you run out of psalm before you run out of time, you simply turn the page and go to another psalm. By so doing, you never run out of anything to say, and, best of all, you never again say the same old things about the same old things.

So basically what you are doing is taking words that originated in the heart and mind of God and circulating them through your heart and mind back to God. By this means his words become the wings of your prayers.

Perhaps an example will help. There are actually quite a number of books written that provide examples of this. Elmer Towns has written several fine volumes. Here is an example of how you might voice a prayer from Psalm 23:

Lord, You are my Shepherd,

I don’t need anything.

You make me lie down in green pastures,

You lead me beside still waters.

You renew my spiritual energy,

You guide me in the right paths;

To glorify Your name.

When I walk through dark valleys,

I will not be afraid of death shadows.

Because You are with me,

Your rod and staff protect me.

You prepare a banquet table for me,

And my enemies watch me eat.

You pour oil on my head to honor and heal me,

You fill my cup so it runs over.

Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me,

As long as I live on this earth;

And in eternity I will live in Your house forever.

One other application of this idea has to do with teaching. I have myself including this idea in a lot of lessons lately. I have a number of books that are “Praying the…” I will often ask this question: how can we turn this passage into a prayer. I’d encourage you to pray right then in class in response to that passage. My Logos library has 48 examples of prayers from the Twenty Third Psalm.

If you want to transform your prayer life, the means is simple: Read the Word. Pray about what you read about.