So in the last session, we talked about intercession and creating a prayer list,
and I mentioned the usefulness of praying scripture for petition as well as intercession.
And some of you might have gone to your Bible and you're like,
I don't know how to pray half of this stuff.
Like, how do I pray, go up thou bald head and these kind of random scriptures?
Well, don't pray those scriptures,
unless the Lord's really specifically asking you to, which I doubt it.
So I want to give you a list of scriptures that I love to pray.
These are prayers that I'm praying on a daily basis, on a weekly basis,
and it's part of my prayer language now.
When I'm praying for somebody at the front of church,
there's just scripture that comes out of me, and I don't intend that,
but the more that I'm praying God's language, the more it becomes my language.
So why should we pray scripture?
First of all, it's the language of God.
It's how he thinks.
It's how he speaks.
And thankfully, the Bible is full of prayers, right?
Like there's the Psalms, there's the Proverbs,
there's prayers throughout the New Testament.
Jesus even prayed prayers that his disciples recorded for us,
which I'm so grateful for.
And the Holy Spirit inspired these prayers.
That's what's so amazing to me about them,
is that they're actually intended for us to steal, right?
Like he wrote them down so that we would pray them.
He's like, this is how you should pray, right?
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray,
he prayed in front of them.
He said, when you pray, pray this,
our Father who art in heaven,
and we're going to talk about the Lord's prayer in a little bit.
Well, I love what my friend Zach Acosta says.
He says that biblical prayers are like blank signed checks from the Lord,
and we just write in the amount and who it's for,
and we can take those prayers to the bank, right?
Like we don't have to worry about
whether or not those prayers are going to be answered,
because these are prayers that the Holy Spirit inspired people to pray,
and that the Holy Spirit decided to canonize in Scripture
for us to read and to learn.
I love 2 Timothy 3.16.
I alluded to this earlier.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
all Scripture,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness.
We're learning how to pray.
That's an instruction in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete, or the woman of God,
thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Do you want to be thoroughly equipped in the place of prayer?
Me too.
That's why I pray Scripture.
Jesus even said, John 15.7,
if you abide in me and my words abide in you,
you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you.
That's why I love red letter Bibles,
because I'm like, oh, I just got all of my prayer list right here.
I'm going to pray all of these things that Jesus said,
because that's how his word abides in us.
So when we see this connection between God's words
and our prayers being answered,
that should convince us that we should be praying God's words.
We should be praying the words of Jesus.
We should be praying the prayers of the apostles.
We should be praying the Psalms.
So I'm going to give you a short list of my favorite scriptures to pray.
And I want to encourage you to begin praying these prayers regularly.
Maybe you could pick one a week.
So you can take this first one
and you're going to pray it for yourself and those on your prayer list.
And you could even do some biblical meditation on it piece by piece,
which would be really helpful for you to read it,
write it, say it, sing it, pray it, play it.
And then use that as the source for your intercessory prayer
and your petition prayer for the people on your prayer list.
And what's going to happen is your arsenal in the place of prayer
is going to begin to grow and change and shift and become more powerful.
When I pray for others,
I actually find that the majority of the language that I use
is quotations for these and other biblical prayers.
These scriptures that I'm going to give you
come out of my mouth without me even thinking about it all the time.
When I'm praying for myself, when I'm driving in the car,
when I'm praying for somebody else.
So the first one, this is my favorite biblical prayer.
It's called an apostolic prayer because Paul the apostle prayed it.
And it's in Ephesians chapter one, verses 17 through 19.
Let me read it to you.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory,
I love praying father of glory.
I love to address him as the father of glory,
may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him,
him being Jesus, that the eyes of your understanding or,
or the eyes of your heart, the eyes of your spirit being enlightened,
full of light, right?
Like light shining into your heart that you would know three things.
The hope of his calling, his calling.
Isn't that crazy?
Jesus has a calling and he.
He wants us to find our hope in it.
And that's gonna happen as we pray this prayer.
The second thing, what are the riches of the glory
of His inheritance in the saints?
Did you know that Christ has an inheritance in you?
You're the saints, and He's gonna reveal
the treasure that He's hidden in you as a jar of clay
as you pray this prayer.
And the third thing He wants us to know
with our eyes enlightened, the eyes of our hearts,
is what is the exceeding greatness of His power
toward us who believe?
That's you, you believe, so this is power toward you.
According to the working of His mighty power.
And that is, that's the Greek word dunamis,
which means miraculous, explosive power of God.
So you can use this scripture to pray
for the revelation of Jesus's beauty,
that you would see Jesus more clearly
so that you can walk in your calling
and destiny by God's power.
That is like an awesome prayer,
and I might not even pray all of it in one setting.
I might just pray one bit, like,
Lord, enlighten the eyes of my heart
to know the exceeding greatness of Your power toward me
when I'm believing in You.
Show me the mighty power at work within me,
the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
God, would You reveal that to me?
I'm praying this scripture,
and I'm praying it for somebody else.
Lord, would You give them a spirit of wisdom
so that they would see Jesus more clearly?
Lord, would You give this person a spirit of revelation,
open their spiritual eyes with the revelation?
See, I could go off on this scripture for hours
and never exhaust the excitement of praying it.
The next one is also in Ephesians that Paul wrote.
This is Ephesians chapter three,
and it's verses 14 through 19.
Let me read it to you.
For this reason, I bow my knees
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
that He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory,
His heavenly bank account, the riches of glory,
to be strengthened.
Man, I would love to be strengthened.
With what?
With might through His spirit in the inner man,
or the inner person.
Whoa, so I'm about to do something great
if Paul is praying that I would be strengthened
with might through His spirit in my inner man
from God's riches of glory,
from His heavenly storehouses, His bank account.
I don't even know what he would put in his bank account
when the streets are already made of gold.
What is he strengthening me?
What kind of power is he using to strengthen me?
And this is why, verse 17,
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend,
so he's giving us strength to comprehend,
with all the saints,
what is the width and length and depth and height
to know the love of Christ,
which passes knowledge that you may be filled
with the fullness of God.
So what are we praying here?
We're asking the Holy Spirit,
we're asking the Father, by the Holy Spirit,
to put strength and might and power in our inner man
so that we can comprehend the love of Christ,
all the dimensions, the height, the width, the length,
every aspect, the manifold love of Christ toward us.
He wants us to be strengthened.
It takes strength to comprehend God's love.
Did you know that?
You actually have to be strengthened internally
in your spirit man to comprehend Christ's love for you.
And what is great about this is it actually causes us
to experience more of the fullness of God.
So as we comprehend his love,
we experience more of his fullness.
And I love that this, in verse 19,
it says it passes knowledge.
So this is more about knowing something
and it's more about experiencing something.
As you pray this scripture,
you're gonna experience God's love for you.
As you pray this scripture for someone else,
you're gonna experience God's love for them.
And he says in the same way
that the Father has loved Jesus, he has loved me.
And as I pray this scripture,
I'm gonna begin to comprehend that in an experiential way.
So there's a couple more that I wanna give to you.
Philippians chapter one.
Paul wrote this scripture as well.
Paul prays really good.
So the Holy Spirit really helped him a lot.
So I like taking Paul's prayers.
Philippians one, nine through 11.
This I pray that your love may abound,
still more and more.
Abound, still more and more,
in the knowledge and all discernment.
Wow, so love increasing in my heart
actually makes me more discerning.
I actually become more aware.
I actually increase in knowledge
by love overflowing in my heart.
That you may approve the things that are excellent,
that you may be sincere.
I love that word sincere.
It means nothing hidden.
The word sincere means everything's out in the light.
I'm not trying to hold anything back.
I'm worshiping God in spirit.
and truth, and where the light shines, God's power flows.
So I love that as love abounds in my heart,
it actually equips me to be sincere
and without offense to the day of Christ.
Being filled with the fruits of righteousness,
the fruits of righteousness, well, I want all of those,
you know, whatever they are, by Jesus Christ
to the glory and praise of God.
So you're praying with a scripture
for God's love to abound in you
by the knowledge of God,
resulting in righteousness in your life.
That is such a good prayer to pray for yourself,
for your loved ones, for people around you.
The next one is Colossians 1.
An easy way to remember this, Ephesians,
Colossians, and Philippians, all in the first chapter
have incredible apostolic prayers
that Paul wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit,
his inspiration.
Colossians 1, verse nine,
for this reason, since the day we heard of you,
we do not cease to pray for you.
Wow, I would like to pray that way.
I don't wanna cease.
I wanna pray for this person or these family members daily
and ask that you may be filled
with the knowledge of his will.
Have you ever struggled to know what is God's will?
Like, what is God wanting me to do in this situation?
What kind of decisions?
Well, you can pray that God would continually fill you
with the knowledge of his will
so that you actually begin to walk out
in alignment with his will.
And then it says, the knowledge of his will
in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
I want all of those things.
I wanna have the knowledge of his will,
I wanna have wisdom,
and I wanna have spiritual understandings.
Why?
So that, verse 10, you may walk worthy of the Lord,
fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work
and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Oh my goodness.
If there's one verse in the Bible that I want to be,
I want to be that.
I wanna be worthy of the Lord.
I wanna fully please him.
Do you know that you can bring pleasure to God,
emotional delight to his heart
in the way that you pray,
in the way that you live your life,
as you're filled with the knowledge of his will?
I wanna do that.
Holy Spirit, help us to please Jesus.
Help us to be fruitful in every good work.
Verse 11, strengthen with all might, not some might,
according to his glorious power for all patience
and long-suffering with joy,
giving thanks to the Father,
who's qualified us to be partakers
of the inheritance of the saints in light.
That prayer is jam-packed.
You could pray that prayer for your whole 15 minutes,
and you probably still wouldn't get through all of it.
There's so many things,
and you don't have to pray this whole scripture
in one sitting, just like I did.
You can just take one piece,
and God, would you help me to be fully pleasing in you?
Fill me with the knowledge of your will.
The next few prayers here are the prayers of Jesus.
He said, if my word abides in you,
you'll ask whatever you wish, and it'll be done for you.
Well, of course I wanna pray his prayers,
because it's gonna cause his word to abide in my heart.
John 17, this is called the High Priestly Prayer.
I'm not gonna read the whole chapter,
but I would really encourage you
to do some biblical meditation on this chapter.
Just take it verse by verse.
Read it, write it, say it, sing it, pray it, play it.
John 17, 11.
Jesus says to the Father, I am no longer in the world,
but these, that's you and I, are in the world,
and I come to you.
Holy Father, keep through your name
those whom you have given me,
so that they may be one as we are.
I pray this all the time.
Lord, would you keep me in your name?
Or would you keep this person in your name?
Would you unify our staff team at church?
Make us one as you are one.
So this is a prayer for unity,
and it's a prayer to be kept in Jesus' name.
Later on in verse 15, he says,
I do not pray that you should take them out of the world,
but that you should keep them from the evil one.
I pray that prayer all the time.
Lord, would you keep this person from the evil one?
Missionaries that are being sent out,
people that are going on trips.
John 17, 17.
Sanctify them by your truth.
Your word is truth.
Oh my gosh.
I pray this so much.
Lord, would you sanctify me with your word?
Sanctify me body, soul, and spirit,
so that I can be made complete and blameless
before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, use your word, use your truth to sanctify me.
I know that when I know the truth, it sets me free.
And then verses 21 through 26,
that they may all be one as you, Father, are in me,
and I in you, that they may be one in us,
so that the world may believe that you sent me.
And the rest of that passage is really good as well,
but it's all about the church being unified
so that we would be a witness to the world,
a loving witness.
When the church operates in unity,
the world actually gets the gospel preached to them.
It just happens to them naturally.
And then this last one, we all know this one,
it's the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6, 9.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever, amen.
I encourage you to pray this prayer often.
Memorize this prayer.
This prayer is kind of a prayer format,
and you can move through it piece by piece.
So, thank you so much.
I hope you have fun praying these scriptures with the Lord,
and I'll see you in the next session.
♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪