Praying the Bible

by

I took this book home Monday night and had it finished before I went to work on Tuesday.  Powerful book!

Here is the book’s synopsis:

All Christians know they should pray, but sometimes it’s hard to know how—especially if the minutes start to drag and our minds start to wander. Offering readers hope, encouragement, and the practical advice they’re looking for, this concise book by professor Donald Whitney outlines a simple, time-tested method that can help transform our prayer lives: praying the words of the Bible. Praying the Bible shows readers how to pray through portions of Scripture one line at a time, helping us stay focused by allowing God’s Word itself to direct our thoughts and words. Simple yet profound, this resource will prove invaluable to all Christians as they seek to commune with their heavenly Father in prayer each and every day.

This book was profoundly simple and has really revolutionized the way I have been praying.

I asked the Lord last December to make 2015 a year where he taught me to pray, and I cannot begin to tell you the change he has made through this resource, the War Room process, and his Word.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

  1. 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…the problem is not you; it is your method (12).
  2. When you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture, particularly a psalm (27).
  3. 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 (37).
  4. I have learned to…season my prayers with the word of God.  It’s a way of talking to God in his language – speaking his dialect, using his vernacular, employing his idioms…This is not a matter simply of divine vocabulary.  It’s a matter of power.  -Joni Eareckson Tada (42-43).
  5. The main reason why the psalms work so well in prayer is that the very purpose of God put them in his Word to us is for us to put them in our words to him (54).
  6. If you go to pray and your heart is as ice spiritually, you can take the fire of God’s Word and plunge it into your frosty heart by praying through a passage of Scripture (85).