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Renewing your faith through prayer and physical acts (Neh 8.6)
How do you keep your faith consistent? How do you avoid complacency that comes to us all and can make us feel like a failure? Ezra and the people of Israel have an idea: taking the reading of scripture seriously through prayer and physical acts and gestures.
read moreThere are hundreds of prayers in the scriptures of Jews and Christians. They are incredibly rich and diverse, and make many modern prayers seem dull and lifeless. They are exciting, difficult, funny, and even disturbing. We’re using them to shake up our own prayers and:
- Understand the purpose of prayer
- Discover new styles and ways of praying (that are not really new at all).
- Become more confident in where, what, how, and when to pray.
- Enrich prayer in ways you may never have thought possible.
Podcast – Prayer and the Surprising Acts of God (Ezra 1.3)
Resources Praying Through the Bible website Praying Through the Bible (Vol 1): Genesis-Joshua (Paperback| Kindle| iBook) Praying Through the Bible (Vol 2): Judges-2 Samuel (Paperback| Kindle| iBook) Praying Through the Bible (Vol 3): 1 Kings–2 Chronicles...
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Pray Continually and Do Your Job (New 6.9, 14)
What does a “life of prayer” mean? What does Paul mean when he wrote “pray continually”? Nehemiah’s story presents an excellent example of one way to use prayer in our lives.
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The benefits of joining the Praying Through the Bible project
The Goal The goal of the Praying through the Bible project is to explore ways to help people pray with more confidence, engagement, and effectiveness by studying every mention of prayer in the scriptures of Jews and Christians. A lot of us pray. A lot of...
read moreA new era for Praying Through the Bible—more for you and chance to contribute
As little as $2 a month is enough, and you can start or stop any month (no yearly fees or payments). For that, you get access to every detail of every post, include all previous posts (almost 200). I’ll also send you an eBook copy of my new book, Enriching Your Prayer: How to Study the Prayers of the Bible.
Higher tiers of support get more: access to podcasts, free books, discounts, access to early books, drafts, and the opportunity to contribute.
If you don’t want to (or can’t) be a Patron, there will always be some posts that are permanently free (including new ones occasionally), along with other free stuff.
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Praying about your past (Neh 5.19)
This is such a short, simple prayer—yet one we all hope we could pray at the end of our lives. Nehemiah stands as one of the better examples of a faithful believer, and this prayer can serve as a goal for us.
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Are you aware of how you treat people who are different? (Neh 5.12-13)
The last prayer passage dealt with outside pressures and crises. This one addresses some internal problems having to do with the rich taking advantage of the poor. In a modern Western society that has no abject poverty, what can we learn from this prayer?
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Podcast: Praising God with Music (Exod 15.21)
This prayer is offered by Miriam and the women of Israel, after God delivered them from the Egyptians through the Red Sea. Prayers are often set to music—the entire book of Psalms is a hymnbook of lyrics for which we no longer have the music. Miriam’s prayer-hymn, and the one by Moses and the men before it, offer us some ideas as to how we can use music in our prayer practice, too.
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Is your passion the same thing as God’s will? (Neh 4.9)
When we are passionate about something, we don’t want to wait around for it. We want to move ahead, make plans, take action. For a believer, there is a time to do that, rather than “waiting on the Lord.” But our “passion” should not be the driving force of our actions. Prayer should play a significant part of anything we do, and Nehemiah’s prayer here shows us the right way.
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Get a free copy of Enriching Your Prayers—the Praying Through the Bible introductory volume
Based on the original introductions in the full Praying Through the Bible volumes 1, 2, and 3, this book expands on that material, offering more details and more examples, as well as a longer section on McDowell’s approach to studying the prayers of the Bible.
read moreWant a free book on prayer?
Join Markus’ Readers Group.
Also available as individual volumes for each biblical book.
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