Persevering Prayer: Series Overview
Perseverance
This will be a series of posts covering different prayers that have been influential, consistent, and like the title says, persevering in my life. Prayer is a lifelong continual practice. We often call it our “prayer life” in reference to its continuation. The Bible speaks on the persevering nature of prayer in the lives of Christians numerous times. For example, Jesus tells his disciples a parable “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1-8). Paul says to the Thessalonians, “pray without ceasing.” The Bible contains so many passages that translate directly into our prayers. This is what this series is all about. Pastors and teachers refer to this as, “praying the Scriptures.” They will say something along the lines of “If you want to make sure your prayers are according to God’s Will, pray the Scriptures.” These prayers come from different passages that I’ve loved, growing up in the faith, and others that I’ve found over the years. These have been instrumental in my love of the Scriptures.
Store Them
These are prayers that may come up from a situation, after sinning for example. “Have Mercy on Me, O God according to your steadfast love. According to the abundance of Your mercy, blot out my transgressions. Against You and You only have I done evil in your sight.” I recommend the memorization of these passages to become acquainted with them in your mind and love them in your heart. The prayer that I just quoted was from Psalm 51, but I mixed different translations because I don’t that one word for word. It’s less about saying the exact words from memory and more about having the meaning of the prayer be true and from your heart. We don’t want it to be only memorized but also felt in your heart. I think the more accurate the better, but that’s not the point of the memorization. If we believe that the memorization will somehow make our prayer more effective (I’ve felt this before), then we are memorizing for the wrong reasons. When we pray these things, we know that God already knows what we need before we even ask ( ). But our prayer life is about being obedient to Christ and growing in knowledge and love of Him. It’s not about the stuff we need but about the God we are coming to for it.
Heart and Mind Aligned
Other passages I do have down word for word and benefit from praying those based on a specific one. For me, I prefer memorizing in the English Standard Version. The method of translation provides concise and accurate phrasing according to the original manuscripts. I was using the New American Standard Bible translation, which I love to read, but have benefited from the shorter phrasing of the ESV in memory. The exact wording can help us turn passages to prayers that may not be written directly as prayers, as Psalm 51 is. For example, Isaiah 41:10 in the ESV says, “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” So this one would benefit from the exact wording to me in that it would help turn the exact wording to a prayer. In this case, “Lord keep me from fear. I trust that You are with me. Do not allow me to feel dismayed. Give me strength. Help me please. Uphold me with Your righteousness.” There are no hard and fast rules to which verses you learn to pray word for word and which ones you have a more loose mixing of translations retaining the purpose of it. Those are just two examples of prayers that I take each approach with. I hope you enjoy this series and it encourages you to pray and not lose heart.