Praying through the Bible
Blog Post, December 29, 2021, by Jay Harris
If you take on the challenge of reading through the Bible, consider praying through the Bible. A practical way to move into this is by underlining or highlighting the passages where God is speaking to you. Make notes in the margin of your Bible, and in this way, you will make your Bible your own personal study and devotional Bible. Keeping a journal will help you track of your own growth as a disciple of Jesus Christ. There will be times when your experience of reading the Bible is as dry as a desert. Understand that God honors the discipline we bring. Sometimes seeds are planted even when we are not aware of them. Journaling is a way to connect seed-moments, moments of growth, and harvest moments that yield significant fruit in our lives.
You will want to begin and end each day’s scripture reading with prayer. Before you read, pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to you through what you read. End your scripture reading time with prayer. In this concluding prayer you will want to pray a prayer based on what you read in scripture.
As I wrote the Layered Bible Journey, I chose to write a prayer for each day’s reading. I did this for my own engagement with God through the scripture, and I also did this for the benefit of those using the book to read through the Bible. The prayer is not intended to serve as a substitute for the reader’s own praying, but rather to aid readers in beginning their own prayerful reflection. The form of prayer that I chose to accompany each day’s reading assignment is known as a collect.
A collect is intended to collect or gather one’s thoughts and intentions into a prayer. It has a single focus, made up of five parts: 1) an address to God using one of God’s names, 2) a description of one of God’s attributes or actions in the world, 3) a request, or petition, based on that action, 4) a description of what it looks like when the request is fulfilled, and 5) a concluding praise of the One through whom the request will be fulfilled. (Neil M. Alexander, ed., The United Methodist Book of Worship (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1992), 447)
Using collects provides a way to pray through the Bible. Each day’s scripture passage presents one of God’s actions in the world. This divine action in the world invites us to form a petition, or request, based on that action. Our prayer is that God would do what God did again in our time, that God’s action would continue or deepen, or that God would allow us on this new occasion to join in what God has done or is doing.
Describing what it would look like when the request is fulfilled is so important. It is the “so that” of the prayer. It is the hoped-for outcome of the prayer. This part of the prayer provides a vision moment, a rallying point for living. It is meant to build a bridge of meaning, significance, and motivation to carry us over into action—our grateful response to God’s word. The hope is that each prayer for the day will inspire your own praying through the Bible.
Before writing the Layered Bible Journey, I had always been fond of the structure and simplicity of a collect, but I had never attempted to write one. Writing 357 collects was a new spiritual discipline that stretched me to say the least. It compelled me to apply what I read into a petition or request offered to God, complete with a vision of what the prayer would look like when the request is fulfilled.
If you choose to use the Layered Bible Journey, I hope that you will find the collect helpful—not as a replacement for your own praying, but as a means to prime the pump, so to speak. I hope that it will serve as a launching point for your own prayer each day as your read through the Bible.
