According to Your Word

 By: Joanne Viola

 

Like so many, I have struggled with prayer, which is  perhaps, why I am currently reading and writing about prayer. On those days when challenges mount and seem to overwhelm, it is His Word which will nourish our souls and guide us as we pray:

“My soul cleaves to the dust; Revive me according to Your word.” (Psalm 119:25, NASB)

What are the reasons it is wise and best to have our Bibles alongside of us as we pray? Why pray the Scriptures? Samuel Chadwick offers these insights from his book, “The Path of Prayer”:

• We receive instruction. “The Word of God quickens the soul and instructs it in prayer.” (page 21)
• We gain understanding. “We must search the Word, that we may know how to pray.” (page 21)
• We hear from God. “We take the Bible into the inner sanctuary, not that we may know what is its literary history, but that we may hear what the Lord our God will say unto us.” (page 24)
• We are kept rightly. “The Holy Spirit and the Holy Word are never at variance.” (page 25)

All of these are necessary reasons for having our Bibles close beside us in prayer. But no reason is as critical and needed as the deep work which God’s Word does in our own hearts as we read and pray:

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12,NASB)

“The soul in prayer comes to the Word that it may find God, and to the soul at prayer it is the infallible, sovereign, saving Word of God.”

(Samuel Chadwick, “The Path of Prayer”, page 23)

 

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