I have shared before on one method of praying through Scripture as a way to focus your attention during prayer and ground prayer in the soil of the Word. This has been a deeply fruitful and rewarding practice for me and I thought I would share a few verses that are personally meaningful that I use specifically in this way.

Hence I am beginning a Praying the Promises mini-series here on the blog. I have no idea how many of these I might do (though it will probably be at least three or four more…and maybe more depending on how they go!) but I am excited to share these verses. I pray they will either be directly helpful or at least provide a model to use other Scriptures in this way!

The verse I have chosen to begin with is a more recent addition to the verses I pray through like this: Isaiah 33:2. In the ESV, it reads:

O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you.
Be our arm every morning,
our salvation in the time of trouble.

 Why I pray this verse: I was reading through Isaiah for my Old Testament Introduction class last year when I stumbled across this verse. It stood out to me because of some difficulties my family was going through at that time. Without even knowing it, I was looking for a way to express the helplessness and lack of ability I was feeling in my circumstances.

What I love about this verse is that it is an excellent way to begin a specific prayer for help. Praying this verse at the beginning of a request for provision, strength, wisdom, or myriad other topics begins the prayer on a solid foot and helps segue into that next thought. Now, especially when I’m praying for my family, this is one of my go-to verses to begin a prayer with.

How I pray this verse: An example of what this might look like is: “O LORD, please be gracious to me. I wait for you. Please be my strength (in Hebrew, being someone’s “arm” is a metaphor for being their strength or deliverance) every morning, not just when I think that I need you, and be my salvation in the time of trouble. Lord, I’m struggling with…“

And that’s it! Now here’s where I put in my plug for Scripture memory. Can you pray this by looking it up in the Bible and praying after you find it? Of course! But how much better to know this or a verse like it intimately and be able to pray it wherever you go? And immediately in response to whatever circumstance comes your way!

I once heard someone define Scripture memory as “a way to give the Holy Spirit a vocabulary to speak to our heart.” While that’s true, I also believe Scripture memory is a way to give us a vocabulary to speak back to God.

So there you have it: the first verse in Praying the Promises.

What verse(s) do you use regularly in your times of prayer?