Scripture-Based Prayer: A Simple Process for Deepening Your Prayer Life

how to pray the scriptures. In episode nine, we discussed how to pray when we don't know what to say, and one of the ways that we shared that we could know what to say when we don't know what to pray is to pray the scriptures. And what that means is using the foundational truths of God's Word to structure our prayers. And that's what I'm going to.

situation that you're facing right now. One thing that you can do to find a scripture or decide what passage you want to pray over your life is to do a word search in the U version Bible app or any kind of Bible based software where you can search a particular term or word and it will pull up all the verses related to that particular topic, and that can be a good starting point for you and deciding

what verse you want to pray now. Also, a lot of Bibles, if you look in the back of some Bibles, they will have indexes where you can look up particular words and it will share with you what scripture references you can look up to find scriptures on that particular word or topic. So that's where you want to start. What scripture are you going to pray? And those are some ways that you can think about where to find

those scriptures. The next thing you want to do, once you've decided on your verse or your passage, you want to find the principal promise or command that the verse holds. And so I want to go over each one of these and how to pray over each one. So, if you find a promise in the scripture, a promise is a declaration that God will do something. It is not conditional. It's simply a statement about God or his character based

on who he always is. So, for example, when Jesus says I will be with you always in Matthew twenty eight twenty, that is a promise not dependent on what we do or what we don't do. When we pray promises of God, we are praying to believe his promises. We're asking God to renew our mind so that we can trust that what he's saying in his word, the

promises that he is giving us are true. Now, this is important because our beliefs reflect our actions, and so if we're not believing in the promises of God, we're not going to act like they exist. We're not going to act like God's always gonna be with us. We're not gonna act like he's going to keep his promises. We're not going to have that godly boldness and confidence that comes from truly standing on the word of God. And so that's why our prayer is, Lord, here is

your promise in your word. Help me to believe it. Transform my mind to believe it if I'm not already. And so God's giving us his promises for the purpose for us to stand on so that we can act accordingly. So let's look at Joshua one nine, where God says, have I not commanded you be strong and courageous, Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the

Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Now we see here that there's a command, and we'll talk about commands in a little bit and how to pray over those that you know. He's commanded to be strong and courageous. But that command is followed by a promise. God will be with Joshua, and God will keep his word. And as we believe in him, we are strengthened to follow his commands. Two Timothy two thirteen reminds us of the beauty of God's promises. It says if we are faithless,

he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Many times we mistakenly not believe the promises of God because we compare God to man. We think, well, I wouldn't do that, or I couldn't imagine for giving someone for that or loving someone like me. And God's not like us. If he says that he will do it, we must believe that he will. And if we struggle to believe, well, then that's what our prayer is for. Next, when you choose a scripture or a verse to pray about, you

want to see if there's a principle found there. Now, a principle is a foundational truth that is conditional. It's a statement that says, if you do this, then this will result. So let's look at the popular scripture Psalm thirty seventy four, which says, delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Now, many people mistake this verse as a promise that God will grant us the desires of our heart. But this

is not a promise. It's a principle. When we first delight on ourselves in Him, then we will receive the desires of our heart. So we're praying. When it comes to praying principles, we're praying to live according to the principle that we may experience the fruits of living in line with God's truth. So, for example, if again, if we're looking at Psalm thirty seven four, we're praying that God, please, you know, help me to delight myself in You so that then I can receive the desires of my heart.

And it's about being in alignment with God and his will when we're praying the principles. Last, when you're looking over your verse or passes that you want to pray over your life, you want to see is there a command? Now? A command is an authoritative directive or order from God. It's simply God telling us how he wants us to live our lives. So think of the ten commandments, Love God, don't steal, love your neighbor, don't kill, commands or orders

from God on how we are to conduct ourselves. Now, when it comes to praying commands, we need to pray for power to fight our flesh. Jesus tells us that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and so we need to be praying for God's power to truly show up in our lives so that we can live out these commands, because it's just not in our

nature to do so. Now, we also don't want to become discouraged in our weakness, because when we pray, we're unlocking God's strength in our lives so that His power can be great in us. I love Tewod Corinthians twelve nine that says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness, and God's power is made perfect in our weakness. So even when we fall short, we know that we can lean on the power of prayer to invite God's strength into our weakness.

That is what He is in the business of doing. As you reflect on the scripture that you've decided to pray over your life, you want to pray to believe any promises, to live by any principles, or to follow any commands, and in all those things we are just asking God to release his strength and power for us to do those things. Last, what you want to do when it comes to praying the scriptures is to commit to knowing God's word through the study of his word

and continual prayer. We can't pray what we don't know. If we don't know God's word, if we don't know God's truth, if we don't know his principles, his promises, or commands, then we won't pray them. And so this is where Bible study is very important to our prayer lives, especially if we want to be praying God's truth over

our lives. And the simple reflective methods that I've given you today, as far as pulling out the promises, pulling out the principles, and pulling out the commands, is a good starting point to knowing God's word and what it means and how you can apply it to your life. And you already have the power of prayer to unlock it in your life as well. And making those two connections between knowing God's word and praying God's word is

a great gift to the believer. It is my hope that today's episode has provided you with insight and helpful tips on how you can pray. We have so much more to talk about when it comes to prayer, so I hope that if you were encouraged by today's episode, you'll share it with a friend and subscribe so you won't miss any future episodes of the Teach Us to Pray podcast, where we will continue to learn how, just like breathing, prayer can become a natural, consistent, and life

giving part of our everyday lives. Until then, be sure to connect with me at Beloved Women dot org and check out the show notes to download my free five day prayer Guide. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. God bless you and I'll talk to you in the next episode.

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