Christians pray for friends and loved ones who are ill. We ask for protection when we are traveling. We thank God for the food he provides, and we teach our children to pray before bed.
But many Christians take a more cavalier approach to prayer when it comes to the Bible. And our prayerlessness is telling.
Our actions reveal our hearts, and a resistance to (or forgetfulness about) praying before studying God’s word exposes at least three false beliefs about the Bible.
The Bible is Ordinary
In much of the global west, we have an abundance of access to the Bible—multiple translations, cheap physical copies, and free digital versions. As a result, many of us regard the Bible like any other paperback lying around the house.
Instead of a supernatural encounter with the God of the universe, we treat reading the Bible as ho-hum and ordinary. Bible reading becomes one of many daily tasks, like making our bed or drying the dishes.
If we consistently take up the Bible without prayer, we believe it is nothing special.
The Bible is Simple
The essential truths of the Scriptures are plain, but we often treat the Bible as a grade school grammar book. We give it ten minutes of our attention and try to harvest a lesson for the day.
If this book really is God’s word, and if we really have an invitation to the depths of God’s work and his desires for his people, then we cannot understand it on our own. Our minds are too finite, our hearts too fallen. We need God’s Spirit to teach us (John 14:26).
When we neglect prayer before we study the Bible, we believe God’s word—and maybe God himself—is easy, obvious, and elementary.
The Bible is Powerless
We who are Christians have already been changed through God’s word. To paraphrase Paul in Galatians, how could we think we would grow in some other way (Gal 3:1–3)?
We treat the Bible lightly—or don’t pick it up at all—and we wonder why we continue in the same selfish patterns year after year. We shrug at the long, Bible-lite plateau in our Christian growth and think, “Huh, that’s weird.”
God’s word is at work within believers (1 Thess 2:13). But casual, erratic encounters with the Bible—instead of regular, strengthening spiritual workouts—are like turning an exercise bike into a clothes hanger. We’re neglecting a powerful resource.
If we don’t pray when we open God’s word, we don’t believe God can use it to change us.
Repent and Believe
Because God is a loving father, he doesn’t withhold good things from us, even when we screw up. Occasionally forgetting to pray before reading the Bible is no reason for despair.
But if we consistently come to Scripture without talking to God, we are in dangerous territory. It may be pride or unbelief that is driving our silence.
God is generous and kind. He loves to forgive us and turn us around. We can—we must—bring even our prayerlessness to him.
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