Study 6. Praying and the Bible

A few years ago I remember waking up one morning really wanting to pray and ‘go after’ God in my life. So, I soon found a rhythm and was going to bed early (incredibly) so that I could be up before the children woke up and have some time praying. I need to be honest here, it was kind of part of the job description as I was a pastor of a church then, so it was expected that I would be doing some sort of prayer life. 

Anyway, I soon discovered that even though I wanted to pray, the reality of it was difficult. My mind wandered and sitting in the house just ‘thinking’ prayers often ended up with me falling back to sleep. 

So I decided to walk. I spent an hour from about 5am walking and praying. It was silent outside, still dark and I would just walk along a set route around the town where I lived. Just the milkman wandering around and not another soul about. I loved it. 

I would use my iPhone to listen to the Bible for the first half hour, the Bible spoken and read to me. It was so helpful. I would spend a month just listening to the same book or section of chapters and it was empowering to me in such a dramatic way. 

I would listen to worship music too, pray over certain things, people and situations in my mind then walk home and eat. 

All of this was done before my kids woke up. The thing is when I was doing this, I would wake my kids up and pray with them, I had some ‘God’ stuff and ideas from the Bible during the day, it had such a huge impact in my marriage too. Praying with my wife, sharing stuff with her that I was praying over or listening to from the Bible. 

Does this make sense? Prayer can quickly be so boring and one dimensional but it does not need to to be, we can be creative, but it does come at a cost. It requires our time, effort and as I have said before it requires resilience when we are hurting or struggling with certain things. 

But, if we can forge these patterns of prayer, if we can find mates to cheer us on or pray with us then we WILL, 100%, see the impact of it in our lives. 

I remember once praying and asking God to meet me, I was tired of dry prayers and a dry church experience. I read Psalm 51 every morning for about a month and prayed over the sections as they impacted my life each day. After about a month I had a dream one night, it was so profound and to this day I can remember it in such vivid detail. What was the dream? It was just an encounter where I felt the presence of God, in the dream I was with my wife and child (only had one then.) God met me because I was really looking for him and wouldn’t let go until something happened.  Try using the Psalms as a place to start when using the Bible in prayer.