When The Saints Prayed

Nicholas Lewis November 27, 2024

When I was growing up in church youth group, I remember when we ended out the bible study with prayer requests. My youth group leader would draw a line straight down the middle of the white board and mark the left side with ‘Prayer Requests’ and the other side with “Prayer Praises”.

Upcoming tests, pets going to the vet, vacation trips, upcoming sporting events and plays, sometimes doctor visits, college plans post high-school, etc. The white board on the left was chock full. On the right side, there would be at least one Prayer Praise for good measure.

For a long time, my prayer journals were lists; things to thank God for and things to ask God for. It wasn’t long until prayer started to become tedious and boring – in other words, dull. Is this all there is to prayer? Maybe you feel stuck in a rut when it comes to your prayer life. You’ve heard about a hundred different acronyms for prayer, have prayed the Lord’s prayer many times over, and maybe you’ve even read book after book about how to revamp your prayer life.

But this sermon series is asking a very simply question. How did the saints pray in the Bible? After all, the Word of God should be the first place we go to learn what prayer looks like. And there are no shortages of prayers scattered throughout the Bible. You only need to take the time to look. You will find a rich treasury of prayers in Scripture – powerful outlines and examples of what prayer should look like. The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most well-known but there is so much more. There’s Paul’s deeply affectionate prayers in Ephesians. There are the lamentations of Jeremiah for a wayward country; the continued prayers of Nehemiah in building back the ancient walls of Jerusalem; the earnest prayers of Hannah for her future child; and of course, there’s the psalms of David and Korah, heart-felt prayers to God full of reflections on God’s character as well as spiritual maps by which to navigate complex emotions and difficult circumstances.

There is a lot to learn about prayer in the Word of God. All we have to do is dig in and see what we discover. I encourage you to take up and read along with us as we explore the time when the saints prayed.

Resources:

Recommended Books:

Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney
Pray Big by Alistair Begg