Why and How to Pray Through Scripture ((Refresh Your Prayer Life!))

This blog post was originally a video on YouTube. Watch it here. 

What exactly is praying scripture? How do we do it? And why is it important? We're going to talk about all of those things today. 

My name is Eva Kubasiak, and I want to help you learn how to study the Bible, but not just for head knowledge, I really want to help you learn how to connect with God and have an intimate relationship with Him. 

Today, we're going to talk about praying through scripture, but first, I want to start with why do we pray through Scripture. 

Sometimes whenever I am praying, it seems like day after day, I'm bringing same wording, same thoughts to God in prayer, and it almost seems like it gets boring and repetitive, but whenever we are praying through Scripture, what we're able to do is take the words that God has given to us through His Word, and we're able to then pray those words back to him, and so today, we're going to talk about how to actually do that.

I'm going to start with a psalm that is really popular, you may have heard it before, Psalm 23, so we're going to kind of walk through what it would look like to pray through Psalm 23, and then after reading this, I would love it, if you would actually just try it yourself, you might be surprised at how it freshens up your prayer life to pray through a passage of scripture. 

Now you can pray through any passage of scripture, I prefer to pray through the psalms, because I feel like they are already prayers, like they're already outlined as prayers that someone is praying to God, so it helps me to take what they've already prayed, and then pray through it in my own words. 

So let's look at Psalm 23, we can pray through this passage, and just start with the first line. 

The Lord is my shepherd. 

What you want to do is after you have read through one line, you just want to pause for a second and think,  “What thoughts do this brings to mind?" "How am I?" "How is God talking through this word to me?"

Maybe you're feeling a lost in life right now, maybe you need someone to guide you, maybe you just want to reflect on what it actually means to have a shepherd, so just pray, whatever thoughts that come to your mind as you're reading each line. 

I would probably, in my life right now, pray about wanting some guidance, wanting some direction, a shepherd  guides the sheep and directs them, and that's something that I would love to have in my life right now, specifically direction. 

So you would read the first line, pray everything that comes to your mind, and then you can go to the next line, whenever you have finished, whatever it has come to your mind from that line. So let's go to the next one. 

I have all that I need. 

The Lord is also providing for us in this Psalm, and so we can reflect on the truth of that in our lives, even if we don't feel like it's true, and so we are just talking to God, based on what we have read in this Psalm. 

We know that God's word is true, we know that God's word is powerful, and as we are reading these things, we are seeing these truths in the Bible that we can then carry into our day-to-day life. 

So the Lord is our shepherd - He's guiding us. 

I have all that I need - He is providing for us

As you're going through the Psalm, line by line, you're just praying through whatever happens to be coming to your mind, as you are going through, it says

He lets me rest in green meadows. 

So you may think like, “it would be really nice to have some rest right now”, or you might be thinking of someone in your life that is stressed or overworked or tired, and you could say, “God, I want them to experience your rest, I want this person to know that you are guiding them, you are leading them, you are also their rest.”

 And so you just take your requests, line by line through the Psalm and pray, whatever comes to mind. 

Now, you can do this through an entire passage,and it actually will help you to start to memorize and start to meditate on some of these things that are true in Scripture! So it's a great way to revive your prayer life, but it's also a great way to engage with God's Word and see what exactly he is telling us through His Word in that particular passage. 

Now, we've got lint coming up in a couple of weeks, and I was never huge on lent growing up, I usually I would maybe say I was gonna give something up, and then a couple of weeks into it, I would have completely forgotten that I was giving something up, so I have tried over the last couple of years to make a dedicated effort for Lent, but instead of giving something up in the traditional sense, I actually take those 40 days to intentionally pray through Scripture, and I'm really excited because this year, I've actually got a guide for you in two different formats for you to pray through Scripture:

The first is a podcast, it's completely free. It's called borrowed prayers, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts right now, and you can tune in each day, it's two to five minutes, and I'm just kind of guiding you through praying a passage of scripture, be sure to tune in here. 

But then the next thing is, it's also a book, so the exact same content that is in the podcast is also in book format, so if you prefer to read it, or if you wanted to make it part of your time in God's word each day, you can do that through getting the book on Amazon! It's got Kindle and paperback versions, you can get it here. 

I would love it if you would join me for the next 40 days of Lent, and we can go through and pray through Scripture together. 

Lent starts on March 2. So there's already an episode waiting for you on the borrowed prayers podcast, and the book is live on Amazon, so you can go ahead and grab a copy of that as well. 

Have you ever tried praying through Scripture before? Is this something that you would love to try in your life? Comment and tell me praying through scripture has been so powerful in my own life, and I know that God is going to use it in your life as well.