Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
168 | Liturgical Prayers: Are Written Prayers Biblical or Just Empty Tradition?
428 Plays32 minutes ago
Are written prayers biblical or just empty tradition? If you've ever felt like praying someone else's words isn't "sincere" or questioned whether liturgical prayers belong in the Christian life, this episode will challenge your assumptions and open up a rich tradition of faith. Did Jesus forbid scripted prayers in Matthew 6:6–7? Many Christians assume prayer must always be spontaneous. But throughout both Jewish and early Christian worship, written prayers were a normal part of community life.
In this episode, we look at the history of liturgical prayer and why Acts 2:42 says the early believers devoted themselves to “the prayers.” We’ll also talk about how written prayers can strengthen—not replace—your personal conversations with God. We will also explore the beauty and biblical foundation of liturgical prayers, from the Psalms (which are themselves written prayers) to the Book of Common Prayer and prayers written by early church fathers like Polycarp. Many American evangelicals dismiss written prayers as "ritualistic" or empty tradition, but Scripture shows us that God gave us the Psalms to pray, Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer to pray, and faithful Christians throughout history have used written prayers to train themselves in adoration, confession, and thanksgiving—not just requests. I also share a few favorite historic prayer resources and simple ways to turn Scripture into your own prayers.
Shop Prayer Resources
⦿ Every Woman a Theologian Shop: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/shop
Our Spring Shop is live and filled with new prayer-focused resources including the Praying the Psalms Scripture Guide and Not-So-Quiet Time: Psalms Volume 1, a multisensory guide that you can use alone or as a family discipleship tool.
Watch the full Verity Podcast Prayer Series: https://www.youtube.com/@veritypodcast
Subscribe to Verity Podcast: https://apple.co/veritypodcast
Verity Podcast is an Every Woman a Theologian company. We believe every woman should be a theologian—every woman a student of the heart of God.
Order Every Woman a Theologian: https://tsfqr.com/EWATbook
New Release: Not-So-Quiet Time: The Book of Psalms Volume 1 https://tsfqr.com/psalms
Follow along:
Substack: https://phyliciamasonheimer.substack.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/phyliciamasonheimer
EWAT Instagram: https://instagram.com/everywomanatheologian
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode Eight
00:00:00
Speaker
This is not empty ritual if the heart is postured towards Christ, towards God. And imagine how it would transform you if you go from not praying at all because you don't feel like it to praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day and allowing that to move you to worship. How would that transform your heart?
Focus on Scripted Prayers
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello, friends, and welcome back to Verity Podcast. We're in episode eight of our prayer series, and today we're talking about praying scripted prayers. I've mentioned this in earlier episodes of this series that my predominant audience is the evangelical American church. And so as I talk about this topic in this particular episode, I have those listeners in view.
00:00:48
Speaker
If you are part of a liturgical church tradition, so Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, this particular topic is kind of a given for you.
00:01:02
Speaker
You are already praying scripted prayers, so you might be surprised that I even have to talk about this. But for my evangelical audience, this is actually a topic of much dispute. And so I want to talk about this to those of you who either grew up in a church that did not use scripted prayers or are currently in one that does not use scripted prayers or have been told that to use scripted pre-written prayers is somehow less acceptable to God or isn't sincere or is
00:01:37
Speaker
Catholic, whatever the phrase that was used, I hope that by the end of this episode, you have some things to chew on and some things to think about in regard to the history of written and repeated prayers by the congregation or even by individuals in their personal walk with God, and that maybe it will change your perspective on the power and importance of praying scripted
Upcoming Resources from Every Woman a Theologian
00:02:00
Speaker
prayers.
00:02:00
Speaker
As usual, I have some book recommendations for you that I will be putting on my Amazon list of prayer books that you can refer to if you'd like to have some books to check out on this topic. And as an aside, we have coming up with Every Woman the Theologian on March 12th, our brand new spring launch. And this includes a variety of products centered on the topic of prayer. And these are limited edition products. So whenever we do a launch at Every Woman a Theologian, these products kind of stay in the shop till they sell out.
00:02:35
Speaker
And then we restock the most popular items. So when this episode comes out, that launch will be live. And we will have a link in the show notes for you to shop while those items are still in stock. Just so you know, Every Woman a Theologian is supported by the sales from our shop. We do not fundraise. We do not receive donations. So by shopping with us, by buying our Bible studies, um our new guide to praying the Psalms, our guide to reading through the Psalms, our not-so-quiet-time visual guide, any of the products that we create and we release—
00:03:12
Speaker
When you shop from us, you are providing for our team and providing for the expenses of things like this podcast. We actually don't make a ton of money on YouTube. So through things like buying through the shop, you are actually supporting every member of our team as well as the Mason Heimer family and allowing us to put that money back into product creation so we can create more Bible studies and more resources for you.
00:03:39
Speaker
So thank you, as always, for shopping with every woman a theologian. We hope you enjoy this launch. Now, let's dive into this topic of scripted prayers.
Debate on Scripted Prayers in Evangelical Circles
00:03:48
Speaker
I think so many Christians in the evangelical American church are fearful of praying scripted prayers for two main reasons. Number one, they've been told that it is rote dead religion.
00:04:04
Speaker
that's That's the first reason. That if you are praying something that's pre-written or reading it corporately, reading it aloud, and somebody else wrote it then it's not sincere, that the words don't actually mean anything, and you're just going through the motions.
00:04:22
Speaker
The second reason is that we've been told, and i talked about this in episode seven of this series, we've been told that unless we come up with words on our own and they're extemporaneous, they're they're they're just being spoken by us of our own emotion, our own intellect on the spot, then it's not a true heartfelt prayer.
00:04:45
Speaker
And there's problems with both of these viewpoints. Number one, yes, reading something over and over and and just saying it for the sake of saying it, it can become rote. It can become ritual. And that can become empty if your heart is not invested in it. If you are not genuinely putting your your mind, your soul, and your emotions into what you are saying.
00:05:14
Speaker
And secondly, when we believe that we only pray if we feel like praying, we're coming to the practice of prayer with this this emotion-driven attitude, this feelings-driven attitude. And this really reflects a change in how the church went about prayer personal devotion and prayer after the Reformation. So there were some good things, many good things about the Reformation, which is the break that Martin Luther led from the Roman Catholic Church that led to the Protestant and evangelical denominations. Many good things came out of that.
00:05:54
Speaker
One of those is an emphasis on personal devotion, which existed in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as well, but was magnified through the Reformation. This personal devotion is really important. It's it's beautiful. it's It's an emphasis on ah the free gift of grace and that relationship with God that we have access to through Jesus Christ.
00:06:15
Speaker
But as the years unfolded, as the centuries unfolded, the impact of the Enlightenment, the impact of changing views on the person and on faith by the 20th century led to this treatment of faith as a solely personal, um individualistic pursuit. And And in the 19th century, there was heavy emphasis among evangelicals on missions movements. So there was a lot of focus on intercession and praying for other people. As we come into the 20th century, it becomes increasingly individual. And the concept of the quiet time emerges. So the the quiet time is first mentioned, is phrasing. in the 1950s and then it expands under Billy Graham and by the time we get to the 60s and 70s and 80s it's just a universally accepted idea that we as evangelical Christians should have this quiet time with God that's very individual it's very personal and it's very emotion-led so
00:07:19
Speaker
With all of this history in view, you have evangelicals today in 2026 who buck at the idea of praying a scripted prayer because there are decades of of this resistance to praying something, one, that someone else wrote, two, that they're told is just empty ritual, and three, that requires discipline instead of feelings.
00:07:48
Speaker
I'm not in any way saying that we should pray prayers out of empty ritual or do it because someone told us we should. But as I talked about in the previous episode, American Christians have a problem with discipline. And they believe a lie that if they don't feel like praying, they simply shouldn't pray.
00:08:09
Speaker
They also believe that if they can't come up with the words, the right words to pray, that they just shouldn't pray or they're not good at prayer. Forgetting that prayer is is the fundamental basis of our our communion with God. This is a privilege that Christ bought for us.
00:08:27
Speaker
And so looking at how previous Christians prayed, And reading their prayers actually gives us a vocabulary and a model to use when we ourselves are praying.
00:08:40
Speaker
And by choosing to to pray when we don't feel like praying, by showing up to that practice, and even praying the words of other believers that came before us, we not only are united corporately with our predecessors in the faith, but we're also given words that we would not otherwise have.
00:09:01
Speaker
So I wanted to confront those two lies right out of the gate, that praying scripted prayers is empty ritual. It doesn't have to be. that really depends on your heart motivation. And two, that you shouldn't pray if you don't feel like praying, that that prayer should be emotion-led or feeling-led when in fact prayer is commanded.
Historical Origins of Scripted Prayers
00:09:21
Speaker
And the way that prayer was practiced,
00:09:24
Speaker
among the Jews, the early church, the medieval church, and really the whole church up through the Reformation until we get to the 20th century, um except for in liturgical churches, which have continued it, was communal, corporate, scripted prayer.
00:09:41
Speaker
So, of course, you would pray on your own and pray naturally throughout the day. But the baseline was scripted prayer, especially during Sunday services. And we're going to actually look at a variety of books that hold some of those prayers and show us what they looked like throughout history. But first, let's do a quick history lesson on how scripted prayers were used.
00:10:06
Speaker
If you want to know where it came from, but often the accusation among evangelicals is it's it's Romish or it's it's Catholic. um And the truth of the matter is, it goes way further back than the Catholic Church. It goes back to the Jewish spiritual practices that Jesus himself submitted to and engaged with and fulfilled.
00:10:27
Speaker
So scripted prayers began... in the Jewish tradition of praying during the sacrifices. So there was a morning sacrifice, an afternoon sacrifice, and then there was an evening prayer in the tabernacle and then eventually in the temple. Oftentimes, psalms were prayed during these sacrifices. And so we see before the temple was destroyed in 70 AD that these prayers would accompany the sacrifices. And so the priests would be praying
00:11:01
Speaker
scripture. So they're praying scripture as they would go about these sacrifices. They also would pray blessings. So the blessings for specific things. If you've ever attended a Passover, you may be familiar with some of the prayers that are prayed during the Passover meal. There were specific blessings, the scripted blessings, there were scripted um prayers prayed during the sacrifices. So when the when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the second temple, the Jewish Mishnah, which is in a record of material ah known as the oral Torah, so this was after the temple was destroyed, this details the continuation of the prayers and rituals that surrounded temple worship.
00:11:48
Speaker
This records that there were specific traditions, liturgies, blessings, and prayers that were then carried over after the temple was destroyed into the Jewish synagogues. This gave the Jewish prayers a structure. The Mishnah gave them a structure, an outline of those contents.
00:12:08
Speaker
So what happened in a Jewish synagogue? What was going on um when when the Jews would gather to worship? So they would read from the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, um usually in Hebrew, sometimes with an Aramaic translation. um They would then read from the prophets, and then they would teach. So they would teach from the prophets. We actually see this happening When Jesus goes into the synagogue and he teaches from Isaiah and says, today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. The reading and teaching were done by someone who had authority in the community. So this would be a rabbi or a priest. There would be certain prayers and benedictions that would also be given during this synagogue meeting.
00:12:56
Speaker
This was the setting that the apostles and the early disciples were familiar with, that Jesus himself was familiar with. There was a liturgical process for how that service, if you will, that gathering would go.
00:13:13
Speaker
And the prayers and blessings were repeated. They were based on scripture and then they were recited so that people knew them together. Even the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus himself gave, is something that was memorized and repeated by the early church. And so if we fast forward just a little into the first century, we can look at a document called the Didache, which is a document written to the early church outlining their practices. And this is free. You can read the translation into English free online. This is what it says about prayer practices written in the first century to the church.
00:13:49
Speaker
Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week, but fast on the fourth day And the preparation, Friday. So he's talking to Christians, saying there to fast on the fourth day and on Friday. Neither pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel, thus pray.
00:14:07
Speaker
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debt, as we also forgive our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the power and the glory forever.
00:14:25
Speaker
Thrice in the day, thus pray. So the Didache is assigning to first century Christians to pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day. That is a scripted, scripture-based prayer.
00:14:37
Speaker
It's a scripted prayer based on what Jesus said that is to be prayed three times a day. That's a liturgy. That's a ritual. And this is what early Christians were doing in the first century.
00:14:49
Speaker
century. On top of this, they actually had assigned fast days in the first century, including fasting on Fridays, which is something that Roman Catholics do. So this is important for evangelicals to understand because many evangelicals, because they're so ignorant of church history, at no fault of their own because evangelical churches don't teach it,
00:15:09
Speaker
We will often just assume, well, if something has any kind of ritual, any kind of scripted nature to it, if I'm not able to operate in my full, you know, American individuality, then it must be Roman Catholic or it must be Eastern Orthodox. And that is that's wrong.
Influence of Jewish Practices on Christian Prayers
00:15:27
Speaker
And so I'll have nothing to do with it.
00:15:29
Speaker
But as you're going to see, not only was the early church in the first century operating according to liturgy that was taken from the Jewish synagogue and then followed in a messianic context, the first century Christians were three times a day encouraged to pray the same prayer. This is not empty ritual if the heart is postured towards Christ, towards God.
00:15:51
Speaker
And imagine how it would transform you if you go from not praying at all because you don't feel like it to praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day and allowing that to move you to worship. How would that transform your heart? So it doesn't end there. We have the Didache, but then we also have Justin Martyr.
00:16:09
Speaker
Justin Martyr um lived and ministered sometime between around 150 to 180 AD. And his most famous document is called his Apology. And if you go to chapter 65 of his Apology, he's talking about the sacraments and the Eucharist. And so the section I want to read you is talking about the administration of the sacraments.
00:16:30
Speaker
What this is, is this is how a Christian church service would have operated in 150 to 180 AD. This is what it would have looked like. And so he's describing what they do in a church service this early in Christian church history.
00:16:49
Speaker
So here's what he says. But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled. So this is the gathering of the church. In order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized. So he's talking about bringing someone who's baptized into the gathering, the Christian synagogue, also known as the church,
00:17:15
Speaker
to offer prayers in common for them, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation.
00:17:33
Speaker
"'Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren, the bishop, bread and a cup of wine mixed with water, and he taking them gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at his hands.' And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying amen. This word amen answers in the Hebrew language, so be it.
00:18:02
Speaker
And when the president has given thanks and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced. And to those who are absent, they carry away a portion.
00:18:17
Speaker
end quote This looks very similar to if you were to attend a Catholic Mass to a Eucharistic Mass. eucharuristic mass um It also looks very similar to your participation in communion, Eucharist, at liturgical churches. it This is the model that has carried forward throughout the past 2,000 years of church history in liturgical church settings. Now, evangelicalism has come to the point that it is in the ways that we do communion, which are rather stripped down as a general rule in America, um through a succession of events, including the Reformation and then Calvin's impact, the second wave of the Reformation, and then, of course, bringing that over to America, the Puritan impact, and the spread of Methodism and Baptist influence and eventually evangelicalism as we see it impacted by Billy Graham, the seeker-friendly movement, to today.
00:19:24
Speaker
So there's a progression of decisions and changes that were made that led to how we go about liturgy in modern American evangelicalism that has led to the differences between it and liturgical church settings.
00:19:42
Speaker
But this is what it looked like in the first and second century AD. And what we can see here is a very similar structure to what was happening in the synagogue among the Jews, where Jesus would have been teaching, where he would have been learning when he was younger and hearing the scriptures taught.
Role of Historical Prayers Today
00:20:07
Speaker
And this makes sense because when the apostles followed Jesus and then carried forward the gospel, originally they were preaching to the Jewish people the fulfillment of the messianic hope.
00:20:20
Speaker
And then when the Christians began to be persecuted by the Jews, and then the Romans recognized that Christians were not a Jewish sect, but a completely different religion, they were then persecuted by the Romans as well, there came this separation between the Jewish synagogue, like the Christians within the Jewish synagogue, to a completely separate practice of these early church gatherings. And these early church gatherings were not without hierarchy. They were not without liturgy. They took all of that from the Jewish synagogue and they continued it in a Christian setting, which is why you see this in the first and second century. And
00:20:59
Speaker
My point here in sharing all this with you is that coming to prayer in scripted prayers as if they're inherently bad, as if as if praying something that was pre-written is somehow lesser than praying extemporaneously, is a woeful departure from what we see in Christian history. And it's more reflective of American individuality than it is of how Christians have practiced prayer throughout all of the years before now.
00:21:30
Speaker
And so i I think what frustrates me, because I'm obviously a little frustrated here, what frustrates me about this is that the fact of the matter is most American Christians aren't praying.
00:21:40
Speaker
They aren't. And so if you need help understanding how to pray, the vocabulary of prayer, you need a discipline of prayer, which is better? You wait till you feel like praying to pray, or you work from the prayers of the saints who came before you. You read what they prayed. You pray scripture, which we're going to talk about at the end of this episode.
00:22:03
Speaker
It would be better to pray from something that gives you the words for what's going on in your soul than to not pray at all. And you have an example in the Jewish synagogues and the early church and the medieval church and the Reformation church all the way up to the modern church to follow.
00:22:26
Speaker
So what I'm going to do now is I want to look at some examples of scripted prayers. And then we're going to talk about how to write your own scripted prayers based on scripture itself. So I have a variety of books here. I have um The Heart and Pilgrimage, A Treasury of Christian Devotionals on the Christian Life by Leland Riken. This is one of my absolute favorite devotionals. It has classic um Christian writings from Augustine to Florence Nightingale, John Don, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther, Andrew Murray, Thomas Akempis, Samuel Johnson. There's so many great pieces in this devotional. um But I want to read you a morning prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer is an Anglican text. It was actually very controversial when it came out because it was first compiled by Thomas Cranmer, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, put in place by Henry VIII when he broke from the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England was founded. Now, there are some sketchy circumstances around the original opening of the Church of England in regard to Henry VIII's motivations, but God uses political circumstances to further the cause of his church and of the gospel. And out of that break, Thomas Cranmer wrote this
00:23:48
Speaker
English book of prayer. So it was based on the manual of prayers that the Catholics used. I have one of those right here. um But he wrote it in English. So it was very similar structure to what the Catholics were using. He wrote it in English instead of Latin. So it was very controversial to both the prans Protestants and the Catholics at that time.
00:24:11
Speaker
because neither were happy with it. Protestants thought it was too much like Roman Catholicism. The Catholics thought it was heretical because it was in English. And so that initial Book of Common Prayer by Cranmer was developed. And so the 1622 version, I believe, um that was edited after Cranmer's death is the the basis of the one that Anglicans still use today. And so the Book of Common Prayer gives you these prayers based on scripture that you can pray to the Lord both individually and corporately. So I'm going to read you one of these prayers, a portion of one of these prayers, and then um a little of what Reagan has to say about this.
00:24:56
Speaker
Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live, who pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent, and unfaindly believe his holy gospel, grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do at this present, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that ah at the last we may come to his eternal joy through Jesus Christ our Lord.
00:25:23
Speaker
We praise thee, we bless thee, We worship thee. We glorify thee. We give thanks to thee for thy great glory. O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father almighty. Now you could drop the these and thousand. and You could say you instead.
00:25:39
Speaker
But every line of that prayer has its source in the Bible. It's simply written in a poetic way. It's simply written, taking those scriptures and putting them together so you can pray those words to the Lord.
00:25:55
Speaker
Sometimes having someone else's words that you can then pray helps you cement those realities, those truths of scripture in your heart. And again, you could pray this completely ritualistically. You could just check your mind and heart out and not engage. But my guess is that most people who read this will be impacted because it's the truth of scripture written with human creation.
00:26:22
Speaker
to pray back to the Lord. And it blesses him. it It adores him. It worships him. It glorifies him. And it's far more focused on the goodness of God and the truth of who God is than most of modern evangelical rituals and worship songs are.
00:26:37
Speaker
So this is one example from the Book of Common Prayer. And what Reichen says here is this. He says, The primary subject matter of this prayerful meditation is a confession and forgiveness of sin. This is the great priority in life, and it is always good to renew our commitment to this truth.
00:26:54
Speaker
Praying this prayer shows us how to be a true penitent, but the prayer has many other dimensions of the Christian faith radiating outward from the core of sin and forgiveness. As we claim the thoughts of the prayer for ourselves, we commit ourselves to live a godly, righteous, and sober life.
00:27:08
Speaker
We also contemplate how at the last we may come to God's eternal joy. Overshadowing the whole prayer is a pervasive praise of God for his
Turning Scriptures into Personal Prayers
00:27:16
Speaker
greatness. If you remember from earlier episodes, I've talked about how there's a tendency for us to pray request-based prayer. And that's why we're so bored when we pray. We only ever pray requests instead of adoration. But a lot of people don't know how to pray to God through adoration, confession, and thanksgiving. So having a scripted prayer written by someone who followed God before us gives us the words to do that.
00:27:44
Speaker
I also want to show you this book. This is called a Cloud of Witnesses, a Treasury of Prayers and Petitions Through the Ages. It's one of my absolute favorite books. um It's compiled by Jonathan Arnold from University of Oxford and Zachariah Carter of Southern Seminary.
00:27:59
Speaker
So you've got one person across the pond and one person in um America. But what's cool about this one is that there's a list of prayers and they're divided by early church, medieval church, Reformation church, and modern church. Modern church leading up to the year 1900. So not past that. um It also has a list of prayers for mercy, prayer after a sermon, prayer um for faith, for protection, and praise of the Trinity. So you can actually find specific prayers to pray um based on topic as well.
00:28:33
Speaker
So let's look at a prayer from Polycarp, prayer of intercession. Polycarp lived um in the first century. He was a disciple of the apostle John.
00:28:45
Speaker
Here's what he says. May God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal high priest, build you up in faith and truth and in all meekness, without anger, with patience and long-suffering and tolerance and self-control. May he grant you an inheritance among his saints. And may he grant that to us also and to all who will believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead.
00:29:09
Speaker
Polycarp was martyred for his faith at the end of his life. And when we read this, we read the words of someone who wrote this 2,000 years ago, who went to his death for Jesus.
00:29:25
Speaker
And we can be inspired and uplifted by these words. We can find the words to pray that we didn't have, while also learning from someone who faithfully walked with the Lord.
00:29:37
Speaker
How beautiful is that? This is not ritualistic. this is This is a practice of learning, of expanding our vocabulary, of learning how to pray from someone who came ahead of us.
00:29:50
Speaker
Another book I love is the Christian Standard Bible Psalms in 30 Days series. And what I love about this is that it actually follows very closely the Jewish hours of prayer, which carried over to the liturgy of the hours in the Christian church. The Christian hours of prayer were based on the Jewish ones and then expanded under the monastic tradition.
00:30:11
Speaker
So Jewish hours of prayer would have been 9 a.m., afternoon, 3 p.m., and then evening, The liturgy of the hours was 6 a.m., 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m., sometimes in the middle of the night. So expanded on. And typically happen is in the Jewish prayer times, you're praying psalms. Same goes for the Christian prayer times, often praying the psalms at these hours. That's what the liturgy of the hours was about. So this particular book actually gives you the day. So it'll say day
00:30:46
Speaker
two, morning prayer, midday prayer, and evening prayer. And it divides it into the call to prayer, confession of faith, the canticle, morning psalms that you read, and then the Lord's prayer.
00:30:59
Speaker
so you can take this, you can just read it, or you can pray it. And I love to pray the psalms. And that is one reason that I wrote our brand new Praying the Psalms scripture guide.
00:31:14
Speaker
This is coming out the day that this episode launches, and it is a guide for turning the Psalms into personal prayers to the Lord. And I'm going to show you how to do that with this book.
00:31:26
Speaker
So in this particular section, this day two section is talking about um Psalm 10. ten So it's looking at Psalm 10 and Psalm 9. So it's quite easy to pray the Psalms and to turn them into prayers because they are written as songs or prayers already. You can also do this with other scriptures. So for instance, I have here 1 Thessalonians 2.4 and I can turn this to a prayer. So I'm going to actually show you how to do this as we transition into my quick little workshop on praying scripture.
00:32:01
Speaker
So if I look at Psalm 9, it says, I will thank the Lord with all my heart. I will declare all your wondrous works. I will rejoice and boast about you. i will sing about your name most high. This is essentially, it's already in the first person. You can literally pray this psalm as you read It doesn't take much adjustment to turn it to a prayer. But as you go further in, there might be parts that seem older or maybe irrelevant to your life, but you can still use these to pray to the Lord. He goes on
00:32:41
Speaker
goes on to say but the lord sits enthroned forever He has established his throne for judgment. He is a refuge for the persecuted and a refuge in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you because you have not abandoned those who seek you, Lord.
00:32:54
Speaker
So if I'm reading this psalm, I can read that, study it, do my Bible study, but I don't want to stop there because I want to pursue that communion with God. I want to pursue a a prayer life with him that is going deeper and applying these scriptures through that intimacy. So what I would probably do is i' would handwrite this because I like to handwrite my prayers for focus. I would take this and I would turn it into a prayer by doing something like this.
00:33:20
Speaker
Lord, I thank you with all my heart. Your wondrous works are always in front of me. I rejoice and I tell other people about you and I'll even sing hymns to you. I feel surrounded by enemies, people who who who want to misrepresent me and slander me.
00:33:37
Speaker
Lord, you are going to uphold my just cause. I don't have to get my own justice because you are the judge. You are the righteous judge, not me. You are in control of the nations. You know who's rising and falling. I don't have to be afraid of war. i don't have to be afraid of the news because you are on the throne.
00:33:58
Speaker
You are on the throne forever and you judge the world with righteousness. I can run to you when I feel persecuted. You are my safe place in times of trouble. I know that I can trust in you because you will never abandon me when I seek you, Lord.
00:34:14
Speaker
Amen. So I took the whole first half of Psalm 9 and reframed it in my own words and prayed that to the Lord. I now have a scripted prayer that I can pray when I'm struggling with the news or with my enemies.
00:34:30
Speaker
And it's completely based on the truth of scripture. This is what most of these older prayers by people in history were doing. This is what the Book of Common Prayer was doing.
00:34:41
Speaker
In fact, you can look in this manual of prayers, for the tempted and afflicted. O God, who justifies the ungodly, and willest not the death of a sinner, we humbly entreat thy majesty to protect thy servants, who trust in thy mercy with thy heavenly assistance, and preserve them by thy continual protection, that they may constantly serve thee, and by no temptation be separated from thee.
00:35:05
Speaker
So when we turn to scripture and allow it to guide our prayers, we are again training in ourselves the discipline of praying, the discipline of being in scripture, the discipline of showing up and seeking the Lord's face. And out of this practice flows the emotion and eventually the ability to pray extemporaneously. Because prayer is both a discipline and a freedom.
00:35:34
Speaker
When we see it only as a freedom, only as something that we do when we feel like it, only something that we do when we're particularly passionate or upset or overwhelmed, we can tend to simply not pray when things are just going well for us.
00:35:48
Speaker
But we miss out on the thanksgiving and adoration and confession that make up a part of that intimacy. And this is why I love praying scripted prayers so much and turning scripture to prayer so much. Let's do another one. This is a New Testament passage, 1 Thessalonians 2.4. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. So let's say I'm struggling with people pleasing.
00:36:15
Speaker
I might turn to this verse. I might say, Lord, you have approved me. You have entrusted me with the gospel. I speak because you approved me. And I speak out of that approval. I speak because I have a gospel to share.
00:36:32
Speaker
I don't speak to please people, to make them happy with me, but to please you, Lord, because you test my heart and you see me and you see if there's any wicked way in me.
00:36:42
Speaker
Amen. So you see how I took that verse and I turned it into a prayer to the Lord. But also, as you memorize scriptures, you will start to see that other passages come to mind as you are engaging with one particular passage. And you can weave multiple scriptures from across the Bible into one
Resources for Praying Scriptures
00:37:01
Speaker
prayer.
00:37:01
Speaker
Now, you can keep these prayers and repray them, or you can just pray them once and just do this practice every day. But I have found this is an excellent practice for people with ADHD who struggle with focus and who struggle with sitting with scriptures and studying them by by handwriting, no phone in sight, you can actually engage with the text and pray the text in a way that keeps your mind fixed on Jesus and fixed on what you're praying.
00:37:29
Speaker
I just hope that those who are listening to this episode, those who are American evangelicals, or maybe you're from another country and and you are you are just happen to struggle with this too. I'm picking on Americans because I'm American. This is my context. This is the problem I see. I'm sure other people struggle with this too. But if you are listening to this episode, I hope this encourages you that when we refuse to take advantage of the the history of the people who came before us, the rich and beautiful words that they wrote about our mutual Savior, we miss out on the inspiration and the vocabulary and in the truths of Scripture that they engaged with that could help us in our own spiritual lives. And most of all, we can imitate them in how they prayed the Scriptures by praying the Scriptures ourselves and taking these passages and turning them to a prayer to the Lord.
00:38:26
Speaker
If you want help with this, I so encourage you to hop over to my website, to this new launch, feliciamasonheimer.com, and grab that guide to praying the Psalms. We have two guides, actually. We have a brand new Not So Quiet Time Guide, which is a multi-sensory guide to the Psalms. It'll take you through Psalms 1 through 39, I believe, and each page of it is an art piece, a worship song, the psalm itself with a memory verse that you can read every day. So you can read the psalm, look at this relevant art piece, listen to a relevant worship song, And you can engage with the text that way. Then if you grab the the praying scripture guide, you can take that psalm and you can learn how to turn it into a prayer by identifying the principle about God, applying it to your life, and then writing it as a prayer. And I walk you through how to do it in that
Listener Engagement and Contact Information
00:39:17
Speaker
guide. you can do you can buy both guides together or you can get them separately. Either way, I highly encourage you to check out what we have in the launch. We have brand new stickers. We have brand new
00:39:28
Speaker
um non-toxic candles in our hospitality line. And we're so grateful when you shop with us at Every Woman a Theologian because it helps us to provide for the expenses of creating new studies and new products because we're already working on some new ones for our summer launch.
00:39:45
Speaker
As always, thank you so much for subscribing in iTunes and YouTube. Thank you for listening and engaging with Verity Podcast. I read through all of your comments, even if I can't reply right away, read through your emails. And so if you have question about this topic or any of the other topics in our prayer series, please feel free to email us at felicia at feliciamasonheimer.com. And I will see you next time on Verity Podcast.