Scripture and Prayer

The Scriptures, read and prayed, are our primary and normative access to God as he reveals himself to us. The Scriptures are our listen post for learning the language of the soul, the ways God speaks to us; they also provide the vocabulary and grammar that are appropriate for us as we in our turn speak to God. Prayer detached from Scripture, from listening to God, disconnected from God's words to us, short circuits the relational language that is prayer.

-Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book

The interconnection of Scripture and prayer is phenomenal. Where else do we hear God's word. We talk and then want to hear a word from God. So, we see in Jesus and we read in the Scriptures and we hear proclaimed during the weekend at church. This is how God speaks.... all around us. Are we listening?

Naked Before God

"We are most ourselves when we pray." - Eugene Peterson, from (you guessed it) Eat This Book, page 104

We cannot hide anything from God. We come to God fully ourselves. Fully naked, baring all. Psalm 139 -- You search me and know me. You know my inmost thoughts... You know when I lie and when I wake up.

God reveals God's Self

The foundational presupposition of all prayer is that God reveals himself personally by means of language...... God creates the cosmos with words; he creates us with words; he calls to us, speaks to us, whispers to us using words. Then he gives us, his human creatures, the gift of language; we not only can hear and understand God as he speaks to us, we can speak to him --- respond, answer, converse, argue, question. We can pray. God is the initiator and guarantor of language both ways, as God speaks to us, we speak to God.

-Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, page 103-104


God speaks to us. We speak to God. How does God speak? Through Scripture, through other people, through traditions and liturgy, through our reason and experience. This this is the language that we speak.

Language used for God

Prayer is the language used in relation to God. It is the most universal of all languages, the lingua franca of the human heart. Prayer ranges from "sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26) to petitions and thanksgivings composed in lyric poetry and stately prose to "psalms and humans and spiritual songs" (Col 3:16) to the silence of a person present to God in attentive adoration (Psalm 62:1).

-- Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, page 103

Learning how to pray is like learning a language....but it is the language of our hearts. It is a matter of knowing ourselves and knowing God and the communication between. I love learning another language, but then I find it's actually the language of my heart.

The Revolution

We may think of prayer as stating our needs before God-- and this is an important of prayer. But it is a definition far too small. Prayer is a revolutionary act and may lead us where we did not expect to go and shape us in ways we had not anticipated. Prayer is not only a crying out for God's help, it is not only an invitation for God to intervene in our lives, it is also an offering up of all that we are, have and hope to become to the One who loves us.

-- Rueben P. Job from A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader

This is the quote that transformed my thoughts, prayers and life about prayer.