Often when we pray for others, we either fall into meaningless repetition, or submit a grocery list of requests to God, hoping that He’ll respond to our wishes and desires. When we’ve finished praying, we end up being unsatisfied, fretful, and uncertain as to whether or not we can trust God with the assignment we’ve just given Him.
My personal experience has been that such “need-based” praying is often boring, filled with uncertainty, and reduces prayer to a meaningless exercise.
What if we changed our perspective on prayer and began to pray Scripture? What if we echoed back to God that which we know is His will? Wouldn’t that stimulate our faith, bring glory to Him, and rid us of the repetition that Jesus warned us about?
Years ago I discovered that when I pray Scripture, I anticipate my time of prayer with excitement, wondering exactly what I’ll pray next. Best of all, it sinks deep roots into God’s promises and His will. That kind of praying is effective, not just in moving God’s heart toward us, but by giving us a deep settled satisfaction of knowing that we’ve just connected with our Heavenly Father.
Will you join me in praying Scripture for ourselves and others?
God has blessed Rebecca and me with eight lovely and lively grandchildren. Long ago I gave up on the idea of simply listing their names before God and asking Him to “bless” them. What I’ve chosen to do is pray for each one of them one day a week beginning from the eldest to the youngest (I pray for two on Saturday!). And each week I choose a passage of Scripture to pray on their behalf. In other words, I use the same passage for each child but adapt it to their needs and ages.
Each week on this blog I’ll share the Scripture that I’ll be praying for each of my grandchildren. As already mentioned, although I’ll be praying the same verse each day of the week, I’ll adapt the passage for each child individually—mentioning other concerns and requests in the process—but the core of the prayer will be Scripture.
I encourage you to do the same for your children, your spouse, your friends, and for yourself. In the course of time we’ll be praying for all of their/our spiritual and material needs. Of course I hope that whole families can unite around these passages and pray them. I encourage you to choose seven (or more) people for whom you’ll pray each week so that you can follow along on this prayer journey.
Praying the same verse for various people during the week should in no way exhaust the praying we should do each day, but this will help you get started on a journey that I hope will last a lifetime. An added benefit is that you’ll probably have memorized the verses by the time the week is over!
Old Testament or New Testament?
Each month we’ll alternate between the Old and New Testaments as we pray passages of Scripture. There are plenty of promises, prayers, and other passages that can be adapted for prayer. What I will present is only a sampling of the vast resources of Scripture.
Ready to begin?