How to Pray With Scripture: Steps, Examples and Psalms for Each Need

To pray with Scripture is to read a short passage slowly and then speak to God in its words: thanking him for what it says about him, confessing what it exposes, and asking for what it promises or commands. Most of us start with the Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer or one of Paul’s prayers for the churches.

1. Choose a short passage. A psalm, the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13) or one of Paul’s prayers for the churches (Ephesians 1:16–19 and 3:14–21, Philippians 1:9–11, Colossians 1:9–12) is already addressed to God, so we can pray it almost as it stands. A promise or a command has to be turned into a prayer first. A few verses are enough for one sitting.
2. Read the chapter around it. Find out who is speaking, to whom, and why, because that is how we learn whether a verse is a promise to every believer, a promise to one person or nation, or a record of what someone did.
3. Read it slowly, more than once, and aloud if possible. When a phrase stands out, stay with it a while before you move on.
4. Turn each line into words addressed to God. Four questions cover most verses: What does it teach? What does it give me to thank God for? What does it show me to confess? What does it tell me to ask for?
5. Put a name into it. When you pray a passage for someone else, put that person’s name where the text says “you” or “I.”
6. Write it down or learn it by heart. As the psalmist wrote, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11).

Proverbs 3:5–6 shows how the fourth step works. The verses read: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Taken line by line, they become a prayer:

Lord, you ask me to trust you with my whole heart. Thank you that you know the way when I do not. I confess that I have been leaning on my own plans for [the decision]. I acknowledge you in it now. Direct my path. Amen.

Each example below gives a verse in the King James Version and one way to pray it. The prayers are meant as examples rather than set texts, and wherever you see square brackets you can put in a name or your own situation.

For trust: Psalm 23

We can pray Psalm 23 one line at a time: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:1–3).

Lord, you are my shepherd, so I will not lack what I need. Make me lie down where I have been running. Lead me beside still waters today, restore my soul, and keep me on the right path for your name’s sake. Amen.

When afraid

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10).

God, you say, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee.” I am afraid of [what is coming]. Be with me in it. Strengthen me, help me, and hold me up when I cannot stand. Amen.

When anxious

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). In older English “careful” meant full of care, which is to say anxious.

Father, I bring you [the worry], and I thank you for [what you have already given]. I leave the request with you. Keep my heart and mind in your peace, which passes all understanding. Amen.

Under temptation

Paul writes that “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape” (1 Corinthians 10:13). The Lord’s Prayer asks, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).

Lord Jesus, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. You promise a way to escape. Show it to me now, and give me the will to take it. Amen.

After sin

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). David’s prayer of repentance asks, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

Father, I confess [the sin]. You are faithful and just to forgive it. Cleanse me, create a clean heart in me, and renew a right spirit within me. Amen.

When forgiving someone is hard

The Lord’s Prayer says, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), and Paul writes, “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13).

Lord, you have forgiven me more than I can count. I am still holding [what was done] against [name]. Help me to forgive as you forgave me, and to stop going over it in my mind. Amen.

In sickness

“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him” (James 5:14). “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15).

Lord, [name] is sick. Your word tells the sick to call the elders of the church, so give [him or her] the humility to ask for their prayers. Raise [him or her] up, bless the doctors and the medicine, and give peace while we wait. Amen.

In financial need

“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Paul wrote this to a church that had just sent him gifts (Philippians 4:18).

God, you know what we owe and what we have. Supply what we need, give us wisdom with what is in our hands, and make us generous when we are able. Amen.

In thanks and praise

We can pray Psalm 103 nearly as it is written: “Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103:1–2). The verses that follow go on to list those benefits, and we can add the particular ones God has given us that day.

How to pray Scripture over someone

Paul’s prayers for the churches are the plainest models for intercessory prayer, because he wrote them as prayers for other people. In Ephesians 3:16–17 he asks God “that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” With a name in place of “you,” it becomes:

Father, grant [name], according to the riches of your glory, to be strengthened with might by your Spirit in the inner man, and let Christ dwell in [his or her] heart by faith. Amen.

His other prayers can be prayed the same way. In Colossians 1:9 he asks that believers “might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,” and in Philippians 1:9 he prays “that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment.”

The priestly blessing that God gave Aaron and his sons in Numbers 6 is one we can say over a child or a friend, adding their name:

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Numbers 6:24–26

Jesus on the cross. Matthew and Mark tell us that he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34), the first line of Psalm 22. Luke gives his last words as “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), which echo Psalm 31:5, “Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” Yet in Gethsemane the night before, he had prayed in his own words: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39).

Nehemiah. Nehemiah was cupbearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 1:11; 2:1) and was later appointed governor of Judah (Nehemiah 5:14). When he heard that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down, he fasted and prayed, and in his prayer he reminded God of what God had told Moses: “Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses” (Nehemiah 1:8). Then he repeated God’s warning that Israel would be scattered, and his promise to gather the people again if they turned back to him, which is close to the promise in Deuteronomy 30:3–4.

Daniel. Daniel “understood by books” that Jeremiah had prophesied seventy years of desolation for Jerusalem, and then “set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes” (Daniel 9:2–3).

The church in Jerusalem. When the council let Peter and John go, the believers prayed together, and in their prayer they quoted Psalm 2: “Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?” (Acts 4:25).

The Psalms themselves. Several psalms, among them Psalms 78, 105, 106 and 136, take the history of the Exodus and tell it again as praise.

In the New Testament Paul keeps the word and prayer side by side. He tells the Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16), and in Ephesians, straight after “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” he goes on, “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17–18).

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church lists psalms by theme under the heading “Selections of Psalms” (p. 344), and here are some of its groupings:

Need or time	Psalms
Morning	3, 5, 63
Evening	4, 31:1–6, 91, 134
Trust	37
God’s goodness	23, 34, 65
God’s deliverance	25, 46, 77, 86, 90
God’s providence	139, 145
Penitence	6, 38, 42:1–7, 51, 102
Intercession	80, 81
Praise	19, 24, 103, 148, 149, 150
Thanksgiving	30, 107, 115, 126, 147
The Word of God	119:1–32 and 119:105–144

The same book also divides all 150 psalms into portions for morning and evening prayer over thirty days, so that anyone who keeps to it reads the whole Psalter in a month.

Lectio divina and other traditional ways to pray the Bible

Catholics call this slow, prayerful reading of Scripture lectio divina, “divine reading.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church names it as a form of meditation (paragraph 2708). It asks that prayer go along with the reading of Scripture, so that God and man may speak together, and it borrows Ambrose’s words for it: “we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles” (paragraph 2653).

The Catechism also quotes a formula (paragraph 2654) from Guigo II, a Carthusian monk who was prior of the Grande Chartreuse until 1180. In his book known as the Ladder of Monks, Guigo sets out four steps: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation.

Martin Luther described his own method in 1535, in a booklet called A Simple Way to Pray, written for his barber, Peter Beskendorf, who had asked him how to pray. Luther let the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed guide his prayer. He took each commandment in four parts, which he called “a garland of four strands”: first as instruction, then as a thanksgiving, a confession and a prayer. The four questions in the steps above follow his pattern.

The Book of Common Prayer’s collect for the Second Sunday in Advent is itself a prayer about reading Scripture, and we can say it before we read:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Second Sunday in Advent, p. 92

For a shorter prayer before reading, there is Psalm 119:18: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”

Taking a verse out of context. Jeremiah 29:11 reads like a personal promise: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” But in Jeremiah it is addressed “unto all that are carried away captives” to Babylon (Jeremiah 29:4), and the verse just before it promises their return “after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon” (Jeremiah 29:10). When we read the whole chapter, we learn what a promise first meant before we apply it to a new situation.

Treating Scripture as a formula. Jesus warned, “when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7). The confidence the New Testament gives us is “that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (1 John 5:14), and in Gethsemane Jesus himself added, “nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39).

Aiming a verse at someone else. When a passage warns, we can pray it first for ourselves, in the words of Psalm 139:23–24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Praying only the comforting parts. The Psalter keeps laments such as Psalm 22 and confessions such as Psalm 51 right alongside its praise.

The Bible gives us examples of both and never ranks one above the other: Jesus prayed his own words in Gethsemane and a psalm on the cross. What Scripture gives us is words for joy, grief, anger, guilt and thanks, and it keeps our prayers close to what God has said about himself. A prayer in our own words is still prayer, and Paul tells us that when “we know not what we should pray for as we ought,” the Spirit “maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).

Nor does a prayer grow stronger just because it is made of Bible verses. When James writes that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16), and tells anyone who asks God for something to “ask in faith, nothing wavering” (James 1:6), he is speaking of the person praying rather than the words they choose.

We believe that the Spirit inspired Scripture, for “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). Jesus promised that the Comforter, “which is the Holy Ghost,” would “bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26), and that “the Spirit of truth” would “guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). And Paul adds that the Spirit helps us pray when we do not know what to ask (Romans 8:26).

After his resurrection Jesus explained the Scriptures himself. On the road to Emmaus he “expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27), and later that evening, when he was with the eleven in Jerusalem, Luke tells us, “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

Children can start with one short verse, such as “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1), and make it their own prayer. We can teach them the Lord’s Prayer a line at a time and explain each line in ordinary words, so that “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11) becomes a request for what the family needs today. And at bedtime we can say the blessing in Numbers 6:24–26 over them.

New believers can learn the steps above with a psalm or one of Paul’s prayers. In a group, one person can read a psalm aloud and each of the others pray one sentence in response. It helps to tell them who wrote a passage, and why, so that they use it rightly.

---

• Bible verses about prayer
• Scriptures to pray over your children
• The armor of God