Have you ever wondered what to pray? How about praying things you find in the Bible?
The Bible doesn’t explicitly teach us to pray using the words of the Bible. But it does model the use of Scripture for prayer and assumes that the Bible will guide our prayers.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, the people cried out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” They also shouted, “Hosanna (=save us!”) in the highest,” (Matt 21:9; Mark 11:9). This was a combination of a blessing and a prayer drawn from Psalm 118:25-26. Luke 19:37 makes it clear that prayer was part of how they used these Scriptures: “the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen.” This is one example of drawing upon Scripture in prayer.
One week after the triumphal entry, our Lord Jesus hung on a cruel cross. There he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). These words from the mouth of our Lord were directed toward God. Jesus was praying. But Jesus was not praying without scriptural influence; he was praying the words that David a thousand years earlier had prayed in Psalm 22:1 to express his pain, grief, and sense of abandonment. Of course, Jesus also used Psalm 22 to communicate that he was fulfilling other details found in the psalm, including the mocking he experienced, his bones being pulled out of joint, his intense thirst, the piercing of his hands and feet, and the casting of lots for his garments, all of which are mentioned in Psalm 22. But Psalm 22 is a prayer, and Jesus prayed it. (By the way, it was a prayer he already had memorized….)
Furthermore, Jesus’s final words on the cross were also a prayer drawn from a psalm: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46 drawing on Psalm 31:5). Jesus prayed the Bible in his final words.
The early Christians also prayed the words of the Bible. In Acts 4:25—in the middle of a prayer!—this group of Christians prayed the words of Psalm 2:1-2:
Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed.
These bold Christians prayed the words of the Bible with powerful results: “the place in which they were gathered together was shaken” (Acts 4:31).[1]
Paul clustered worship passages together as he crescendoed toward a blessing in Romans 15:9-11. In just three verses, he drew prayer snippets from 2 Samuel 22:50 or Psalm 18:49, Deuteronomy 32:43, and Psalm 117:1.
As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”
And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”
Similarly, the author of Hebrews extolled Christ with a prayer from Psalm 45:6-7 (combined with a mix of other Old Testament passages):
But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”
So, yes, praying Scripture is modeled in the Bible.
But it is also assumed. Such is especially the case with the Book of Psalms, which contains many psalms that were written to be used for prayer and corporate worship.
Some of those psalms themselves drew upon earlier Scripture. As one example, during the pilgrimage festivals of Israel (Passover, Weeks, Tabernacles), when the Israelites worshiped the Lord using Psalms 15 and 24, they drew upon themes they had already learned in Deuteronomy 16.[2]
Later psalms sometimes even re-used earlier psalms. Since the Book of Psalms is a collection of hymns, laments, and other categories of psalms by various authors over a long period of time, this meant that some of the later-written psalms could draw upon earlier psalms—which they did. A few later psalms even borrowed entire sections of earlier psalms.[3] For example, when Psalm 108:1-5 was “composed,” the first section of that psalm was lifted entirely out of Psalm 57:7-11.
My heart is steadfast, O God!
I will sing and make melody with all my being!
Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn!
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let your glory be over all the earth!
Those words of praise appear twice in the Bible—because the later psalmist drew upon the earlier psalm.
A couple weeks ago, I was sitting with a group of college students talking about prayer around our dinner table. One of those students asked a basic but crucial question: “But what do I pray about? Anything that comes into my mind?”
Well, yes, we can pray about anything and everything. God is pleased when we share with him every aspect of our lives, and the best way to do that is to talk to him about everything. But one way to focus at least some of our prayer times—especially when we don’t know what to pray about—is to allow Scripture to guide our prayers. A few years ago, I posted a list of passages that work well for group prayer. That list also will work well for individual prayer.
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This chapter was adapted from chapter 7 of my recent book: The Bible by Heart: The Bible’s Own Method for Scripture Memory. Another blog post that will help you to think through the kinds of prayers you can pray for other people is HERE.
[1] The two examples of Jesus praying on the cross while using Scripture, as well as the example from Acts 4, are from Donald S. Whitney, Praying the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 85-89.
[2] Gary Edward Schnittjer, Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021), 485-486.
[3] See other examples of “doublets” and “composite psalms” in Schnittjer, Old Testament Use, 539.
