🌱 Practical Theology — Unit 5: Prayer II — Scripture, the Psalms, Corporate Prayer & Fasting

Introduction: Learning to Pray from the Scriptures and the Church

In the last unit we learned what prayer is, how the Lord Jesus taught us to pray, and the many kinds of prayer the Bible gives us. Now we go further. We will learn to pray by watching how the saints of Scripture prayed; we will sit at the feet of the Psalms, a whole book of prayers; we will learn to pray together as a church; and we will see how prayer is joined to fasting. Much of what follows draws on the prayer course taught at our church by Dr. Ted Rogers.

I. Prayer in Scripture: The Fingerprint of the Soul

One of the fascinating things about prayer is that the way a person prays reveals a great deal about who they are. An individual's manner of praying is almost like a fingerprint of the soul. Consider the Apostle Peter. In the Gospels we meet impetuous Peter, and notice where his requests center: he asks to walk on the water, then cries out to be saved when he sinks; trying to look generous, he asks how many times he must forgive — up to seven times?; when the Lord moves to wash his feet, he asks to be washed head to foot. Again and again, the focus of Peter's words is — Peter.

Now move forward some thirty or forty years to the letters Peter wrote as an old man, and listen to him pray: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope" (1 Peter 1:3, NKJV). Here the focus has shifted entirely — to God the Father and Christ, to "us," and to "you," his readers. The impetuous, self-centered fisherman has become a shepherd whose heart is fixed on God and on others. His last recorded words in his second letter are, fittingly, "but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18, NKJV). When you read the prayers of Scripture, then, read them slowly — for in them you are watching the growth of a soul, and learning how your own prayers may grow.

II. The Psalms: A Whole Book of Prayers

There is one book in Scripture that is, in effect, a collection of prayers set to music — the book of Psalms. God has given us 150 prayers and songs, and within them we find words for nearly every season of the heart. The Psalms come in several kinds. There are Psalms of lament, the largest group, which pour out grief, pain, and confusion and cry to God for help (Psalm 13, "How long, O Lord?"). There are Psalms of praise, lifting up the majesty of God (Psalm 8; Psalm 150), and Psalms of thanksgiving for His specific deliverances (Psalm 30). There are penitential Psalms that confess sin and beg forgiveness (Psalm 51, David's confession), and Psalms of confidence that rest in God amid danger (Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd"). There are royal and Messianic Psalms that point to the King and to Christ (Psalm 2; Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"), wisdom Psalms (Psalm 1), Songs of Ascent sung by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem (Psalm 121), and even imprecatory Psalms that hand our anger over to God's justice rather than taking revenge ourselves. When you do not have words to pray, borrow the words God Himself has given. And do not overlook this: to memorize a portion of Scripture and carry it in your heart is itself a kind of prayer, for it lets the Word of God dwell in you and shape your speech to Him.

III. Praying Together: Corporate Prayer

Prayer is not only private. The Lord made a remarkable promise about praying together: "if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:19–20, NKJV). There is extraordinary power available to the church when believers pray in agreement. Corporate prayer takes many forms. There is "popcorn" prayer, where a group sits together and each one prays briefly as the Spirit leads. There is united intercession, a group gathering to lift up a specific need — the healing of one who is sick, the needs of the church or community. There is the prayer chain, where a request passes from one praying believer to the next; one fruitful form is the timed prayer chain, in which a group covenants to cover a full day, hour by hour, so that prayer never ceases for a cause. There is the prayer team, where one believer brings a list of specific requests to a few others and asks them to agree in prayer over a set period — a quiet, powerful practice; indeed our own church was born when the leaders of a sending church agreed to join in prayer over whether to plant it. And there is the prayer walk, walking a neighborhood or a hospital corridor and praying before each home or room — for salvation, for healing, for the Spirit to go ahead of the gospel. In all of these, agreement and the presence of Christ in the midst make corporate prayer one of the great engines of the church's life.

IV. Prayer and Fasting

Joined to prayer throughout Scripture is the discipline of fasting. The Hebrew word for fasting, tsom, carries the idea of "covering the mouth" and of "afflicting," or humbling, the soul — for biblical fasting is never merely skipping meals but a humbling of oneself before God. In the Old Testament God's people fasted to seek Him in crisis (Esther 4:16, "fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days"), to show repentance (1 Samuel 7:6), and to mourn (1 Samuel 31:13). In the New Testament the Greek nēsteuō likewise means to abstain from food as a spiritual exercise. The Lord Jesus Himself fasted forty days in the wilderness before His temptation (Matthew 4:1–11). Many read that account as showing Jesus at His weakest; but it is at least worth considering that, having leaned for forty days on the Father as His only sustenance — "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4, NKJV) — He met the tempter not from weakness but from a place of deep spiritual strength.

Fasting teaches us, in a way few disciplines can, that God Himself is our true food and strength. It frees the time we would spend preparing and eating meals for prayer instead. And it shows us our own hearts: when we cannot reach for the "comfort foods" we instinctively grab in certain moods, we are forced to face the feelings we had been covering — and to hand them to God. A word of wisdom is in order. Fasting from food can be genuinely dangerous for those with diabetes or other medical conditions, and anyone in doubt should consult a doctor before attempting it; one who is new to it might begin gently, with a single twenty-four-hour fast. But fasting need not always be from food. One may fast from television, from a favorite sport or hobby, from any lawful thing, giving the freed time and longing back to God. As a rule, keep your fasting between yourself and God rather than parading it. And when the fast is over, give thanks — for once again the Lord will have shown that He, and He alone, is your strength.

Conclusion

We have learned to pray by listening to how Scripture prays, by taking the Psalms onto our own lips, by joining our prayers with the church's, and by humbling ourselves in fasting. None of these earns God's favor; all of them are gifts by which the children of God draw near to their Father. In the units that follow we turn from prayer to the other disciplines of the Christian life — the Word in our daily walk, solitude and confession and service, Christian community, self-control, and finishing well — remembering always that these disciplines flow out of a salvation already given to us by grace through faith.

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