What Is Praying Scripture, and How Do I Do It?

Question 11127.

Praying Scripture simply means taking a passage of the Bible and turning its own words into your own prayer to God, rather than composing every prayer entirely from your own vocabulary and immediate concerns. It sounds almost too simple to need explaining, and yet I find that most Christians who actually try praying Scripture discover their whole prayer life changing noticeably within a matter of weeks, because it keeps the content of prayer anchored in what God has actually said rather than in the narrow orbit of our own present mood.

I want to explain why praying Scripture has such solid biblical warrant, and then walk through, in practical terms, exactly how I do it myself, along with a caution or two about how the practice can be misused if we are not careful with it.

The Bible Itself Models Praying Scripture

The Psalms were Israel’s own prayer book and hymnbook, inspired words given so that God’s people would have language for lament, praise, confession and petition that their own vocabulary might never have found on its own. When Jesus cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Matthew 27:46), He was praying Psalm 22 word for word in His moment of deepest anguish, showing us that even the Son of God found in an existing, inspired text exactly the words His own heart needed at the hardest moment of His earthly life.

As I explore further in how Scripture relates to prayer, Paul’s letters are full of prayers too, and several of them, such as Ephesians 1:15-23 and Ephesians 3:14-21, function almost as templates, inviting later readers to make the same requests, for the eyes of the heart to be enlightened, for strength in the inner being, for the ability to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, on behalf of the people they love. Praying Scripture, in other words, is not a modern technique imposed on the text; it is simply following the pattern the biblical writers themselves already modelled.

A Simple Method for Praying Scripture

My own approach to praying Scripture is not complicated. I read a passage slowly, usually a psalm or one of Paul’s prayers, more than once, and I pay attention to which phrases are indicative statements about God or about His people, and which are already requests. Indicative statements, such as the Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 23:1), become the ground for thanksgiving and trust rather than direct petitions in themselves. Requests already present in the text, such as Paul’s prayer that the Ephesians would know the hope to which He has called them (Ephesians 1:18), I simply personalise, changing the pronouns so that I am asking God for that same thing for myself, or for the person I am praying for.

As I discuss further in how should Christians pray, I do not treat praying Scripture as a rigid formula, and I would encourage you not to either. Some days I linger on a single verse for the whole of my prayer time; other days I move through an entire psalm in a few unhurried minutes. The point is not speed or completeness, it is letting Scripture supply the shape of the conversation rather than my own limited imagination alone, day after day.

Avoiding the Misuse of Praying Scripture

I want to be careful here, a caution I develop further in should we claim verses in prayer, because praying Scripture can slide into something closer to a magic formula if we are not attentive to context. Treating a promise given to a specific person in a specific redemptive-historical situation as an unconditional guarantee for every reader in every circumstance is a misuse of the text, not a faithful use of it. The safeguard is simple: read enough of the surrounding passage to understand what God was actually promising and to whom, and let that shape how you personalise it rather than lifting an isolated phrase and demanding it apply to you exactly as written, regardless of its original context.

This caution matters especially with Old Testament promises given specifically to Israel under the terms of a particular covenant. Praying Scripture well means asking whether a promise belongs to the church directly, applies by legitimate principle, or was addressed to a different covenant people altogether, rather than simply assuming every promise in the Bible was written with the twenty-first century reader specifically in mind.

Why Praying Scripture Reshapes a Prayer Life

What I have found, both in my own life and in the lives of people I have taught this practice to over the years, is that praying Scripture keeps prayer from collapsing into an endless, repetitive list of personal requests. It exposes us to the full range of biblical concern, praise for who God is, honest lament over suffering, confession of sin, intercession for the wider church and the nations, in a way our own natural instincts rarely manage on their own. It is one of the simplest disciplines I know, and one of the most durable, precisely because it does not depend on our own fluctuating creativity or emotional energy on a given day.

Praying Scripture With Others

Praying Scripture also works well corporately, not only in private devotion. I have led our own congregation in praying through a psalm together during a service, each person offering the psalm’s words back to God in unison, and the effect is often noticeably different from an open, spontaneous prayer time, precisely because everyone present is anchored to the same inspired text rather than following one person’s own train of thought. Family devotions benefit from the same approach: reading a short psalm together and turning a phrase or two into a shared prayer is a manageable, repeatable practice even with young children present.

Praying Scripture When Words Fail You

Praying Scripture proves especially valuable in seasons when your own words genuinely fail you, grief, fear, or a kind of flat spiritual numbness where nothing you try to say in prayer feels adequate to what you are actually carrying. The Psalms were given, in no small part, for exactly this situation. Psalm 42’s honest question, why are you cast down, O my soul (Psalm 42:5), or Psalm 88’s unusually raw, unresolved lament, give voice to states of soul that a Christian in genuine distress often cannot articulate on their own. Praying Scripture in these moments is not a sign of spiritual weakness; it is making faithful use of exactly the resource God gave His people for these situations.

Building the Habit Over Time

Like any spiritual discipline, praying Scripture becomes easier and more natural with repetition. I would encourage a new believer to start with something manageable, five minutes with a single psalm each morning, rather than attempting a full hour immediately and abandoning the practice after a discouraging week. Over months, praying through the Psalter in this way, one or two psalms at a time, exposes a believer to the Bible’s own full emotional and theological range, which is a far richer diet than most of us would compose for ourselves if left entirely to our own instincts about what to pray.

A Note on Praying Scripture With Children

Families with young children can adopt praying Scripture at a level suited to their age, reading a single short verse such as the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want (Psalm 23:1) and simply asking a child to say it back to God as their own prayer before bed. Children raised with this habit often carry a working vocabulary of biblical prayer language into adulthood that serves them well long after they have left home, and it costs a family very little time to establish.

I would rather see a believer pray through half a psalm slowly and honestly than race through an entire chapter without ever pausing to mean what they are saying, since the whole value of praying Scripture lies in genuine engagement with the text rather than in simply covering more verses

None of this requires any special training or a particular temperament suited to contemplative prayer. It requires only a Bible, a few unhurried minutes, and a willingness to let the text set the agenda rather than arriving with your own agenda already fixed before you open the page

I have kept this discipline going myself for many years now, through easy seasons and considerably harder ones, and it remains one of the few habits I would genuinely struggle to recommend a substitute for, since nothing else I have tried keeps prayer quite so consistently anchored to what God has actually revealed rather than to whatever happens to be occupying my own mind that particular morning

Give it a genuine try before deciding whether it suits you, since a single attempt rarely reveals the full benefit that only comes with sustained, patient practice over several weeks

Start today rather than waiting for a more convenient season that may never actually arrive on its own

Begin now, this very day, with whatever small portion of Scripture is nearest to hand

So, now what?

So try praying Scripture this week. Take a single psalm, or one of Paul’s prayers in Ephesians or Colossians, read it slowly, and let its own words become your words to God. You will find, I think, that Scripture has already given you a richer prayer than you would have composed on your own, and that praying Scripture becomes, in time, less an occasional technique and more the ordinary shape of how you speak to God every day.

“That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love.”

Ephesians 3:16-17 (ESV)