Enhancing Your Prayers

How would you rate your prayer time? Are your prayers repetitive or monotonous? Are you uncomfortable with praying out loud in a group? Or are you confident praying anywhere?

Regardless of how you perceive your prayers and whether you are confident or not, I would highly recommend reading Donald S Whitney's book called "Praying The Bible" Don teaches us a new method which allows our prayers to include inspired words not empty repetitive phrases.

His method is praying the Psalms and other scriptures in the Bible. Does this surprise you? I had never thought of using the scripture to begin my prayers, but Don encourages us to read a verse and immediately pray about it. For example you would read Psalm 16:1 "Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge" then say a prayer about God being your refuge or thanking him for being a refuge to others etc. Once you are done praying you read vs 2 "I said to the Lord, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." pray whatever comes to mind and so on... Don says "you allow God to initiate the conversation by the means of your Bible, and you simply respond to his words there."

Romans 8:26

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

How can we strengthen our faith through our prayers?

Robert Murray M'Cheyne says "Turn the Bible into prayer... this is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray."

Colossians 4:2

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

Our challenge is to enhance our prayers by finding inspiration through God's Words. Not only will it help us become disciplined in praying but our prayers will become more specific and meaningful too! I hope you will try this and let me know how praying the Psalms has changed the way you pray!

John Piper says "Praying the Word means reading (or reciting) Scripture in a spirit of prayer and letting the meaning of the verses become our prayer and inspire our thoughts."

Written by: Jill Theriault

Crossroads Coaching - @crossroadscoachingongodstime