- [Narrator] We'll be giving
away free books this week, so make sure to watch
till the end for details. - I don't know anyone who doesn't want to improve their prayer life. Any Christian wants to
improve their prayer life, their sense of intimacy with God, the frequency of answers
to prayer and so forth and yet in about 24 years
of pastoral ministry as well as many other ministry experiences through the years it's been my observation that virtually everyone struggles in their prayer life in this way in particular, we want to pray if we're
indwelled by the Holy Spirit. And yet while that is
pressing against one side of our souls, so to speak, colliding with that is our experience.
And our experience says but when I pray, it's boring. I want to pray, I believe
in prayer, I try to pray but when I pray it's boring. And when prayer is boring,
you don't feel like praying. And if you don't feel like
praying, you don't pray with any fervency, with any consistency. Because see, I think the problem in prayer is not that people pray
about the same old things, that's normal. Our lives tend to consist pretty much of the same old things. Your family, your future,
your finances, your bills or something like that, your
work or students schoolwork, your church, ministry,
Christian concern and the current crisis in your life. So if you put all that
together, if you're going to pray about your life, and
these six things are your life, and these six things
don't change dramatically very often, well that
means you're going to pray about the same old
things most of the time. That's not the problem. The problem is we tend to
say the same old things about the same old things. We can be talking to the
most fascinating person in the universe about
the most important things in our lives and be bored to death. Not because we don't love
God, not because we don't love who or what we're
praying about, I would contend that it is the method. If a person is indwelled
by the Holy Spirit, the problem is almost certainly not them, rather it is their method. I believe there is a
simple, permanent, biblical solution to this almost universal problem and it is, very simply, when
you pray, pray the Bible. Turn the words of Scripture
into the words of your prayers. I think the best place
in the Bible to do this is the book of Psalms. So what does this look like? Well, let's say you take
the 23rd Psalm and you want to pray that on a given morning. You read the first line,
the Lord is my shepherd, and then you might pray something like, Lord I thank you that you are my shepherd. You're a good shepherd
and you've shepherded me all of my life. But oh, great shepherd, would
you shepherd my family today? Guide them into the ways
of God, guard them from the ways of the world, lead
them not into temptation, deliver them from evil and
I pray Lord you would make my family members your sheep too. May they love you as their
shepherd as I love you as my shepherd and when you
can't think of anything else, you go to the next line: I shall not want. Lord I thank you, I've
never really been in want, I haven't missed many meals. All that I am and all that
I have is from you, Lord. I know it pleases you that
I bring my desires to you so would you provide those
finances that we need for those bills, for that car, for school or maybe you know someone who
is in want and you pray that. Just go through it line
by line and take a Psalm and go through it line by line,
talk to God about whatever comes to mind because I
think most of the time what will come to mind is
whatever is in that passage. If something comes to mind
that really isn't in that text, well the Bible tells
us we're to pray about everything anyway so
everything that comes to mind is something we ought to
turn into prayer and ought to pray about anyway. You come to a verse you don't
understand, fine, skip it. Go to the next verse. Maybe you understand the
next verse perfectly but it just doesn't prompt
anything to pray about. Fine, skip the whole section. There's nothing that says
you have to pray over every verse. Nothing says you have to finish the Psalm. So whether you have four
hours or four minutes, this works. You can do that with the
Psalms, I think next after that it's easiest in the New
Testament letters because there's so much compressed, almost
every verse there can prompt something to pray about. You can even do this in a
narrative but in this case you sort of back up and
get the big picture. What's the big idea? Often in a narrative there's
one main punchline there. Maybe that's all you
would pray about, not so much all the details
leading up to it though, any detail that prompts
something to pray about should be prayed for. But once having done this,
I think anybody can do this. And so I would encourage anyone
who's watching this as soon as this is over
to actually try it. Just take a Psalm, just
talk to God about whatever comes to mind, and once
someone has tried that, they don't need any notes
to remember how to do that again, they don't need
to watch this again, they will have it down. It's like riding a bicycle,
you never forget how. And I can highly recommend
this because having done this almost every day of
my life, since the first of March, 1985, I can
testify there's nothing in all my devotional life
that more quickly and consistently kindles
my consistently cold heart like praying the Bible. When I wake up I almost
never feel like praying. Anytime, I rarely feel like praying. And that's normal. But God said to Jeremiah,
is not my word like a hammer and a fire? A hammer that breaks hard hearts, a fire that melts cold hearts. You go to prayer, your heart is cold? Well, that's pretty
normal but you can take the fire of God's word and
plunge it into your cold heart, and pretty soon, you begin
to feel like praying. - [Narrator] Thanks for watching. You can submit your questions
by email, Twitter or in the comments section below. And don't forget to
subscribe to find out the answer to next week's question. We'll be giving away three
copies of Dr. Whitney's book: "Praying the Bible" Go to the link in the
description below to find out how you can enter.
