I want to let you know that this next series of Pray The Word is going to be a little different from what you may be used to as far as just taking a book of the Bible and going chapter by chapter successively, one after the other. I want to give you a little context about what this next 10 months or so of Pray The Word is going to look like. The church that I have the privilege of pastoring, McLean Bible Church, in greater Washington D.C., is going to be reading and studying through the story of Scripture together this year.
The Story of Scripture
We are going to start in Genesis 1. Walking through a Bible reading plan that is six days a week, we will cover the story of Scripture chronologically. We will go from Genesis to Revelation. Along the way, we will be looking at different parts of the Bible as they appear in time to try to see how the story of Scripture fits together. The Bible reading plan has about 1 or 2 chapters a day. So for Pray The Word, what I am going to do is take one verse from that day’s reading. I will let it lead us to pray accordingly. The next day do the same, and the next day. So what that means is that we won’t hit every chapter in the Bible. We will be hitting select texts. They will be in chronological order (not necessarily in the order in which we see them in our Bible, for example, in the table of contents).
I hope it will be helpful for you as you track along. You are obviously welcome to join in the Bible reading plan that we are walking through, if you’d like. I certainly don’t want to pull you away from anything you and your local church are doing, but if you don’t have a bible reading plan, you can download this one at radical.net/biblereadingplan and journey with us through the story of Scripture.
Praying through the Bible
Six days a week, Pray The Word will be on a different part of the story of Scripture. We will walk through it together. On the seventh day, what I will do is take a proverb. We will work successively through different proverbs for that seventh day over the course of these ten months. My hope is that after walking through this kind of series in Pray The Word over ten months, we will have literally prayed through the story of Scripture in a way that I hope will help serve the church I pastor. Or for those who want to join in and, even if you are not reading through this Bible Reading Plan, I hope this will be an encouragement for you—to pray through the story of Scripture.
God’s story of redemption
So, that is the plan over the next ten months or so of Pray The Word. Six days a week we will be walking through the story of Scripture. On the seventh day we will be letting a proverb drive us to prayer. I look forward to seeing what God does in and through our hearts as we pray through His story of redemption from cover to cover in the Bible.
O God, we want to take You at your Word. We believe your Word is better than gold, than much pure gold. It’s sweeter than any food we could put in our mouths. We don’t live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from your mouth. God, we are tempted and prone to feast on so many other things in this world apart from your Word, so we pray for your help in our lives. We pray You would help us to believe the treasure that’s found in your Word and to find it—to discover it, see it, experience it. God, I pray for this across our church.
Please, O God, cause a supernatural hunger and thirst to rise in us. We believe your Word will indeed prove right, radiant, trustworthy, sure, certain, and satisfying in all these things it says it is. Lord, we want to experience intimacy with You through your Word, life with You through your Word. We want to experience and enjoy life. Lord, we want to find your peace, your strength, your hope amidst all that life brings us in your Word. So help us, we pray.
Praying for relationships with Christ
God, I pray that even today You would bring some folks here to salvation through Your Word. For them to be saved from their sins, to have their lives transformed by your Word.
Then God, amidst all our struggles and all the besetting sins that we are prone toward in our lives, I pray that You would give us victory through your Word. Lord, make us people who don’t just give lip service to your Word once a week. Make us people who love it, who lift up our hands to it, who worship You through it, who are conformed more and more into the image of Christ through your Word. We pray that You would lead us to greater, deeper intimacy with You. Lord, especially for people to whom this seems so far off right now, I pray this would become a reality in the days to come. Please bless this journey through your Word over the next ten months in ways that resound to your glory in our lives, in your church, in our families, in this city, and wherever You lead us in the world. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
