To pray the Scripture is to be a Christian. Just as Scripture was part of Jesus’ life as a Jew, there is no way for us to live faithful lives without the Bible. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is asked by a scribe which of the commandments is the greatest.

Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one (Mark 12:29). You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (12:30). The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (12:31).

And so we are to love God’s Word, with all that we are.
And so we are to pray God’s Word, with all that we are.

We are asked to pray the Scripture through careful reading and study. This is true not only for pastors who preach, but for all of us who believe that the Word of God is living and active. We are to read the Bible regularly, daily. We are to think about what we have read, use study guides and commentaries and the notes at the bottom of the page. And so we pray with our minds.

We pray the Scripture in our worship life. If your congregation uses the Book of Common Worship, everything from the Preparation for Worship and Call to Worship through the Charge and Benediction use biblical passages. These range from the explicit, like this call to worship:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you.”
(2 Thes. 3:18),

to the familiar but not exact, such as this invitation
to the Lord’s Supper based on parts of Luke’s Gospel
(Luke 13:29; 24:30, 31):

Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God!
They will come from east and west, and from north
and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God.

A new resource is being developed that examines the entire Bible, the Book of Confessions, and even the new catechisms to find ways in which Scripture so naturally contributes to our liturgy. Consider this as an Opening
for the Prayers of the People on Pentecost:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit,
because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according
to the will of God. (Rom. 8:26–27)

Our worship life reveals what we believe and points to whom we pray. For many centuries—before the invention of the printing press, the publication of the Bible in common languages of the people, and the growth of literacy—the only way most people learned any Scripture was by hearing it in worship. Many of them would, as Mary did, take the Word and ponder it, from day to day and week to week. People would take the few words they knew and say them over and over again, whether it was the Lord’s Prayer or the words by which Gabriel told Mary of God’s plan, words that Roman Catholics call the Hail Mary. Other words came from Scripture and were found to have meaning worth repeating again and again in a new way, so that the prayers of the tax collector and the blind man Bartimaeus came to be “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” known to millions of people as the Jesus Prayer. This is how the Word took root, and this is how it came to bear fruit.

Steve Shussett is Associate for Spiritual Formation. Contact him at (888) 728-7228, ext. 5157, or send him an e-mail.