We’ve been considering how to grow in God’s Word in the year 2026. In the previous post, I offered some principles and tips on how to read our Bibles. This week, we’ll look at how to respond to God’s Word in prayer. In one sense, worship is like a conversation. God initiates by speaking to us in the Bible, and we respond to him in prayer. Fortunately, he has done more than just reveal himself to us in the Scriptures, but he’s actually taught us how to pray there as well.

The Bible as a Guidebook for Prayer

It’s as if the Lord knew that we would struggle with what to pray and how to pray. Therefore, in his kindness, he not only speaks to us in his Word, but he also provides us with a guidebook on how to respond to him in prayer. Here are three ways that the Bible instructs and aids us in our praying.

The Lord’s Prayer

In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus answers his disciples’ request by literally teaching them how to pray. And here is how he answers: “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ (Matthew 6:9-13, ESV). Jesus is not only giving them (and us) the words to say when we pray, but he’s also teaching us a lesson on how to pray. Namely, we appeal to God as our father, consecrating his name and advocating for the realities of his kingdom and will to be done here on earth. We bring him our supplications and we confess our sins as we rely on his grace for deliverance from sin and temptation. In these verses we have a masterclass on prayer – the very words of Jesus teaching us how to talk to God.

The Prayers of the Faithful

While Jesus’s words stand at the pinnacle of Biblical prayers, we have a number of other examples of faithful prayers from God’s people in the Old and New Testaments as well. Consider Moses’s prayer of praise and celebration in Exodus 15 after God’s people cross over the Red Sea and escape the Egyptians. How about Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Samuel 2. Or look at Nehemiah’s prayer of confession in Nehemiah 1. Similarly, Paul’s letters are filled with wonderful prayers, and the book of Acts gives us insight into how some of the earliest Christians prayed. If the Lord’s Prayer serves as instruction on how to pray, then these references serve as examples that should inform and shape our prayer life. We may not use the very words that Moses or Hannah prayed, but we can follow their form and let them guide our own prayers.

The Prayerbook

As if these examples of faithful prayers are not enough for us, God has graciously given us a prayerbook in the Psalter – 150 individual prayers located right in the middle of our Bibles. The Psalms give us the very language of prayer for all of life. As Tim Kellers says, “Every situation in life is represented in the book of Psalms. Psalms anticipate and train you for every possible spiritual, social, and emotional condition…therefore, they were written to be prayed, not merely to be read.” [1] Because the Psalter contains prayers for every season and stage of life, many Christians have made a habit of praying from the Psalms daily. I highly recommend to you Don Whitney’s short little book called Praying the Bible, where he not only covers a method for praying through the Psalms but also provides a plan to help you know which Psalm to pray each day of the month

Methods for Praying the Bible

We’ve covered a number of ways in which the Bible instructs and models for us how to pray. But you might still be wondering how to implement these prayers into your daily lives. More specifically, how can praying the Bible fit in with our normal rhythm of reading it? In addition to praying the Psalm daily like we mentioned above, I can think of at least three ways you can incorporate prayer into your daily scripture reading plan:

Pray Before You Read

One of the best and easiest ways to work prayer into your Bible reading is to pray before you even open your Bibles. In his excellent book Reading the Bible Supernaturally, John Piper provides four short prayers from the Psalms that he recommends praying each time you sit down to read your Bible. He uses the acronym I.O.U.S. to help remember it [2]:

I— Incline. “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain” (Ps. 119:36).

O— Open. “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps. 119:18).

U— Unite. “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name” (Ps. 86:11).

S— Satisfy. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Ps. 90:14). 

This prayer takes hardly a minute to say, but it’s a great way to speak God’s words back to him as you ask him to meet with you in your quiet time.

Pray While You Read

There will be times when you are so taken by the beauty and wonder of something you’ve read in God’s Word that you cannot help but respond in the moment. That is a good thing! Even the Apostle Paul was known to do this from time to time (see for example 2 Corinthians 9:15). Or perhaps the passage at hand has moved you to confess a particular sin, or intercede on someone’s behalf. We discussed in the last post that Bible reading requires active participation. That also means that we should be reading expectantly–anticipating that the Holy Spirit will speak to us specifically through the words on the page, eliciting in us a response. Again, worship is a conversation and it wasn’t meant to be one-sided. God’s Word should move us to prayer.

Pray After You Read

Maybe nothing from your daily reading has elicited spontaneous responses of prayer – that’s okay. A good practice to implement is, after you’re done reading, take a moment to reflect on that day’s passages. Try to find something in the text to turn back into prayer.  Consider the questions we addressed in the initial blog post–how has your reading shaped and informed your prayer of response? If all else fails and you can’t think of anything to pray from your daily reading (maybe you’re in Leviticus!), try praying through a Psalm like we discussed earlier. Don’t miss an opportunity to let God’s words shape your words back to him.

Unlike the goal of Bible reading discussed last week, which is to comprehend what was read, the goal of praying the Bible is communion with God. In some sense, reading the Bible is the necessary means to the end that is the sweetness of communion with the Lord. He has assured us that he hears our prayers, whether we use Scripture or not, however your time in prayer is sure to be enriched and strengthened when you learn to pray the Bible.

[1] Timothy Keller, The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms (New York: Viking, 2015)

[2] John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017)