PRAYER AND THE BIBLE
by Kay Murdy 
Copyright © 2011 Kay Murdy

RETURN TO MAIN DIRECTORY

Prayer Before Studying the Bible
Shine within my heart, loving God, the pure light of your divine word, and open the eyes of my mind that I may understand your teachings. Instill in me a reverence for the commandments, so that having conquered sinful desires I may pursue a spiritual way of life, thinking and doing all those things that are pleasing to you. For you, Christ my Lord, are my light, and to you I give glory together with your Father and your Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Reading the Bible prayerfully develops our relationship with God. We become aware of God's love for us. We experience peace, joy and wonder at the mighty power of God. We sense our own sinfulness before God's perfection. We learn to approach God with faith and trust. When the disciples observed Jesus at prayer they asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." Jesus taught them to pray to God who is Abba Father of us all. He taught them simplicity in prayer by seeking God's will and kingdom,  recognizing their daily needs, asking for forgiveness, and persevering in times of trial  (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4). God wants to communicate with us, and it is our desire to communicate with God. The basic attitude of prayer is listening. We will use a simple method of praying Scripture:

PAUSE -- PONDER -- PERSONALIZE -- PRAY

PAUSE
The Psalmist tells us, "Be still and know that I am God!" (Psalm 46). We cannot rush into prayer. We must spend a few minutes quieting ourselves and sit like a "weaned child upon God's lap" (Psalm 131). It may be helpful to find a comfortable position, close your eyes and become aware of your breathing without trying to control it. Repeat a simple mantra such as "Jesus is Lord," or the Jesus Prayer, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior."  God is present as a Person through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is praying in us, through us, with and for us. Ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to listen to God's Word speaking to you.

PONDER
Select a passage and read it twice. The first time, try to get a sense of the passage as a whole. It may be helpful to read the footnotes or a commentary if something seems obscure. The second time, read to "listen" as a lover listens to the beloved. Do not look for implications, lessons, profound thoughts or conclusions or resolutions. Do not read for information. This is a time for formation, and eventually transformation. Let us use Psalm 139:1-6 as an example:

1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Now read it again slowly. Linger on the words or phrases that have a special meaning to you. Cherish these words. Turn them over in your heart and let them speak to you. You may feel God's healing, strength, love and peace. You may be moved to respond in some way.

PERSONALIZE
Many people who are serious about their spiritual growth keep some sort of journal of their prayer experiences. The journal is your book of self-knowledge. A journal is a place where you can:
* Write the words you find hard to say out loud
* Access your own inner wisdom
* Discover who you are
* Release stress and negative emotions
* Examine your wounds, and by writing about them, heal them.
* Make sense of your spiritual journey

Don't be concerned about doing it right. It is impossible to do it wrong! Just begin to jot down your response to the word spoken to you in the scripture. Read Psalm 139 again.

• What thoughts or emotions did you experience?
• Do you realize how much God loves you?
• Do you understand how God has been with you through all your joys and struggles?
• Can you give thanks for such wondrous love?

Perhaps this will take the form as a a meditation, a letter or even a poem to the Lord. Feel free to experiment. Creativity is the work of God. It may be a concrete response such as: "God loves me in spite of all my imperfections and in all the difficult situations I face. I need to stop being so negative about myself. I need to appreciate God's love shown to me by my family and friends." Writing helps you get in touch with things to help you grow in your relationship with God and others.

PRAY
Prayer is lifting the mind and heart to God. Prayer is being for God and allowing God be for you. Speak to God dwelling within you. Pray the passage of scripture slowly and attentively. Do not hurry, just linger with each word. Pause and repeat those words or phrases which speak to you. Using all your senses, respond with gratitude and love: "Thank you for being present to me at this moment in all my senses. I can see you in the colors around me. I can hear you in the traffic going by and in the song of the birds. I can touch you in my loved ones. I sense your fragrance in the flowers and breeze. I taste you in my longing to be with you. Thank you for speaking to me through your Word. Help me to do all those things I need to do in order to conform my life to your Son." Do not be discouraged if nothing seems to be happening. Sometimes God allows us to feel dry and empty so as to sharpen our desire and hunger even in the seeming absence of God's presence. God accepts us with all our limitations, even our inability to pray at times. A humble attitude is a sign of real prayer from the heart. Remember Paul's words:

"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. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:26-28).

When we read sacred scripture we approach it on two levels: 1) The Content level and 2) The faith level. Placing the text in the literary, historical, social, cultural, political, economic, religious world in which it was written gives us a framework for study. This helps us avoid a narrow, fundamentalist view of only one literal meaning of the text. Knowledge is important for our understanding of God's word; however, one can be abstract and theoretical in relation to God and not be a person of faith. We can be doctrinally correct and spiritually dead. An accumulation of facts does not confer on a person the goodness or wisdom esteemed in the Bible. Christianity is a "way" not just an academic discipline.

The person in search of spiritual growth needs to go beyond information to formation and eventually transformation. Formative reading gives us a meaningful way to understand our human experience. In formative reading, we have a conversation with the word of God. We connect our story with our longings and hopes, exiles and homecomings with the Biblical story. Though separated by time and distance, the Biblical world is our world, the stories experienced by our ancestors are our stories.

To read scripture as God's word to us is not so much a matter of technique than it is God's grace. Understanding does not come through human effort alone. It is the work of the Spirit who inspired the sacred authors to see God's hand at work in every event in history. It is the same Spirit who inspires our understanding of these words. The word "inspire" is derived from the Latin words "to breath into." God breathed life into Adam. Jesus breathed the Spirit upon the Apostles. The Spirit breaths divine inspiration into us.

CONVERSATION WITH GOD'S WORD
Spiritual writers have called prayer "a conversation with God's Word," and Scripture can give us the subject matter for this dialogue. At times we may quietly meditate on a verse of Scripture. At other times God may seem to withdraw from us in order to lead us in our search for God. We cannot force God's grace, but we can ask for it. Hence a moment of prayer before we read is all important, like Samuel who prayed: "Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening" (1 Sm 3:10). Sometimes, our prayer is more like, "I'm speaking, Lord. Are you listening?"  

At the mountain of the transfiguration God said: "This is my beloved Son, listen to him" (Lk 9:35). When we open the Scriptures we must listen to Jesus who is speaking to us personally: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). Jesus speaks and we must listen. It has been pointed out that the words "silent" and "listen" have the same letters. Silence allows God's word to be heard  ̶  like Elijah on the mountaintop (1 Kings 19:11-12). God wasn't in the earthquake or the storm, but in the still, small voice of the wind  ̶  the breath of the Spirit inspiring him and us.

When we read God's word, we can put ourselves in the story. Perhaps I am the widow pleading for the life of her son. I may be the leper, an outcast, begging Jesus for healing. I may be the woman at the well thirsting for life-giving water, "Sir, give me this water so I shall never grow thirsty again" (John 4:15). I may be Peter on the mountain, awestruck by the beauty and glory of Christ, "Master, how good it is for us to be here" (Mk 9:5). We can put the words of blind Bartimaeus on our lips: "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me" (Mark 10:47). Our reading invites us to have faith, to love and be healed and reconciled with God and one another.

Jesus reveals God's compassion to us when we are blind, deaf or afflicted. He raises us to life when we feel dead. He preaches the good news to us when we feel empty, poor, lost and when we sin. The word of God is not just words printed on paper, a doctrine to be argued or debated. God's word is a person, "the word made flesh." God did not just go through the motions in declaring his love and faithfulness: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (John 3:16).

After the resurrection, Jesus told his followers that when he returned to the Father, "the Spirit would guide them to all truth" (John 16:13). So when we read scripture we pray, "Come Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful ones! Fill my heart, breath your life into me. Enkindle the fire of your love in me." As we read God's word, sometimes the words are enkindled by a divine spark and our hearts burn within us (Luke 24:32). Other times the words are more like dying embers and our hearts grow cold. If our hearts are to burn with love as did the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus as Jesus spoke to them and explained the scriptures, we must be touched by the one who speaks to us through the sacred word. 

Sometimes we have a sense of the power of God's word as described in Jeremiah: "Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, like a hammer shattering rocks?" (Jer 23:29). At other times God's word is like a surgeon's scalpel cutting into our innermost being: "Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart" (Heb 4:12). Again, God's word might come to us our dry souls as rain that "waters the earth, making it fertile and fruitful." God told the prophet Isaiah, "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but shall do my will and achieve the end for which I sent it" (Is 55:10,11). As we read the Bible our aim should be to experience God. Whether as fire, hammer, sword, or rain on a dry desert, we should open our hearts to God, hear God speak to us, and be transformed by it. 

transformed by god's word

What is necessary for us to be transformed by God's Word? The Biblical image is to "eat the word." God told the prophet Ezekiel: "Son of Man, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 3:1-2). Eight centuries before the coming of Christ the prophet Amos said: "There is a famine upon the land: not a famine of bread, or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord" (Amos 8:11). Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst" (John 6:35). Jesus is the "Word that became flesh," who yearns for us to "consume" him, to have "communion" with him in the Eucharist and in the word so that we "may have life to the full" (John 10:10).

There is a correlation between consuming food and the transforming power of God's Word, not merely reading it but seeking to become one with it. When we find God's word so sweet to the taste that, like food, it becomes part of our being, then we are eligible, like Elijah, to speak the words to the "house of Israel." 

The Document on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) describes God's Word as having a Eucharistic character when it says: "The church venerates the divine scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord (and) unceasingly offers to the faithful the bread of life from the one table of God's Word and of Christ's body" (#21).  Only when we come to the banquet table with hunger for God's Word are we ready to receive Jesus who feeds us with the "Bread of Life."

QUESTION: Do I hunger for God's Word in the Scriptures? Do I hunger for Christ in the Sacrament?

praying THE PSALMS
The prayer book of the Bible is the Psalms. From the beginning the Psalms shaped the prayer life of the Hebrew people and later became the prayers of the Church. The Psalms were prayers used by Jesus, Mary and Joseph in their home in Nazareth. The Psalms can be our prayers too. The Psalmist writes of our longing for God: As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My being thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go and see the face of God? (Ps 42:2-3). God is a God who both reveals and conceals. Moses experienced a God whose majesty and transcendence surpassed any attempt to control or command God. Yet Moses enjoyed an intimacy with God never before experienced. As God's word was revealed to him on the mountaintop, God's glory shined on Moses' face (Ex 34:29). To see God face to face would be an unimaginable experience. Yet we have received even greater privileges than Moses. God has chosen to be revealed in our midst through Jesus and his sacred word.

Read Psalm 23 slowly and prayerfully
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. In green pastures you let me graze; to safe waters you lead me; you restore my strength. You guide me along the right path for the sake of your name. Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage. You set a table before me as my enemies watch; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come (Psalm 23:1-6).

What did you experience as you read this Psalm? Emptiness? Fear? Peace? Hope, Encouragement? Read the Psalm again, pausing as you come upon a word or phrase that is meaningful to you. What new thoughts or inspiration came to you as you reread the Psalm? Read the Psalm a third time and allow God to speak to you in prayer. In what ways is this Psalm God's revelation for you?

THIS CONCLUDES OUR HOME BIBLE STUDY. DO YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS? 
MAIL TO KAY murdyk@netscape.net

YOU MAY CONTINUE READING FROM THE TABLE OF CONTENTS OR GO TO ANY OTHER PAGE OF DAILY WORD OF LIFE LISTED BELOW