Scripture memorization feeds every area of my Christian life, and that includes my prayer life. It says in Romans 8 that we don’t know what to pray for. We want to pray, but what do we pray for? And in Romans 8, Scripture says the Holy Spirit is given to help us in our prayer life.
In that passage, it says the Spirit himself intercedes for us. He prays on our behalf. Most Christians don’t think about that. They think about Jesus praying for them, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. He also is a teacher. He instructs us on how to pray, and the Scripture is the feeding system for our prayer life.
In the book of Psalms or the epistles, the apostle Paul says how he prays for the Ephesians, the Philippians, and the Colossians. And we can just pattern ourselves after that. And then whatever you’re working on right now—whatever verses, whatever chapter—it fills your mind with a sense of the beauty of the truth of God, and you want to speak it back.
So I think a good quiet time is when the Lord is speaking to us by his word and his Spirit, and us speaking back to him what we are hearing in his word by the Spirit. So Scripture memorization definitely feeds our prayer lives.
This is a guest article by Andy Davis of How to Memorize Scripture for Life: From One Verse to Entire Books. This post originally appeared on crossway.org; used with permission.
Andrew M. Davis (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Durham, North Carolina, and the founder of Two Journeys Ministry. He is also a visiting professor of church history at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a council member of the Gospel Coalition, and a former trustee of the International Mission Board. He is the author of several books, including The Power of Christian Contentment. He and his wife, Christi, reside in Bahama, North Carolina, and have five children and three grandchildren. For more resources from Andy, visit twojourneys.org.
