Prayers for before and after you read the Bible

Before I open it

The one to say with the book or the app still closed, before your eyes start moving.

God, open my eyes. I can read the words on my own; I am asking for the part I cannot do on my own.

I bring what I actually am this morning — distracted, in a hurry, half convinced this will do nothing. Meet me here anyway.

Show me one thing today. Not everything. One thing I can carry out of this room.

Amen.

Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.

Salmo 119:18, BSB

When I do not understand a word of it

For the chapter about temple furniture, the genealogy, the sentence you have read four times.

God, I have read this and I have understood almost nothing of it.

I am not going to pretend otherwise. Open my mind to it, the way you opened it for people who had walked with you and still could not see what they were looking at.

And if this is not the morning for it, let me be at peace putting it down and coming back later.

Amen.

Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

Luke 24:45, BSB

When it feels dry and I feel nothing

For the third week in a row of reading faithfully and feeling flat.

God, I read it and nothing moved. No comfort, no conviction, nothing. I am telling you rather than pretending.

You said that anyone lacking wisdom can ask for it and be given it without being made to feel small for asking. So I am asking, and I am asking without dressing it up.

If today is a day of just showing up, let showing up be enough.

Amen.

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

James 1:5, BSB

When a line lands

For the morning when a sentence stops you, and you know exactly what it is asking of you.

God, I read something today that I would rather not have read.

I know what it touches. I know the conversation I have been avoiding, the habit I have been defending, the person I have written off. Do not let me admire this verse and change nothing.

Give me one concrete thing to do about it today, and the nerve to do it before I talk myself out of it.

Amen.

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.

James 1:22, BSB

When I only have two minutes

Say one of these on the way to the chapter. They are the whole prayer, not a shortened version of a better one.

There is no minimum. Two minutes of reading with ten seconds of prayer around it is a real morning.

• God, light the next step. That is all I need today.
• Speak, I am listening. Two minutes is what I have.
• God, one sentence. Give me one sentence to carry.
• Here is my attention, such as it is. Take it.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Salmo 119:105, BSB

A prayer for after you close it

The one that carries the reading out of the chair and into the day, which is where it was always meant to go.

God, thank you for these few minutes. Let what I read this morning still be somewhere in me at three in the afternoon.

Keep my words today closer to what I just read than to what I usually say. Let the people around me get the better version of me because of this.

And whatever I did not understand, hold it for me until I am ready.

Amen.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Salmo 19:14, BSB