Why You Should Have a Prayer Bible

In a previous blog to encourage you to pray effectively, I wrote about the importance of having a prayer journal.  They are extremely useful for recording some of your prayer needs and answers to prayers as well.  A prayer journal is greatly encouraging because it can help you see the prayer needs that are being met and it can be convicting as well when it shows the way that we neglect meaningful prayer.  We are commanded to pray but it will require great discipline on our part to do so (1 Tim. 4:7-8).  There are a host of commands that we find in the Word of calls to prayer.  A prayer journal can help you to become more focused and more disciplined in your prayers. 

 

I think that most of the people who read this blog are familiar with the Pentecostals of Alexandria in Louisiana.  It is led by Pastor Anthony Mangun who has been there since the early ‘80’s and prior to that, his father, Bishop G. A. Mangun was the pastor.  One of the most important ministries of that church is the 24-hour prayer chain that has been ongoing since 1968 or so.  It is designed to follow 3-hour shifts.  A number of years ago at Because of the Times, I saw the signup sheets that are used.  They have at least three people present and praying around the clock.  Over the years, I have dropped in to pray at POA several times at varying times of the day when I was passing through the city.  I have been in there in the late evening and also in the early morning hours and there is always someone in the prayer area.  The prayer rooms used to be located in the G. A. Mangun center, but they have been moved now to the newer building that houses the sanctuary.  Two prayer areas are located to the sides of the sanctuary and in one of them is a layout of the Tabernacle where you are encouraged to pray through it as a patterned prayer.  They also have a table that has a large glass container to place written prayer needs in it.  Various prayer guides are also available and there are also framed pictures on the walls that are themed toward prayer.  It was during one of those times that I had slipped in to pray probably in the early ‘90’s that I saw several of the older saints who had open Bibles laying on the prayer altars that were in the room.  So that I would not be a nosy soul, I occasionally would slip a furtive glance over at them to see what they were doing with the Bibles.  After watching and listening to them, I realized they were praying through the Psalms.  That was the first time that I had observed this practice taking place and struck me in a very powerful way.  Some time passed before I started practicing it as well, greatly to my benefit.  I will never ever forget one Saturday night at our church that I made an effort pray the Word.  It was pushing midnight and I was alone in our old church on the front row sitting under one of the sidelights which barely illuminated the old sanctuary.  The following Scriptures were the ones I started praying through:

1 Timothy 6:11–16 (KJV)  ¹¹ But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. ¹² Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. ¹³ I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession; ¹⁴ That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: ¹⁵ Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; ¹⁶ Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

 

I prayed about the things I wanted to flee from which are in the previous verses (even chapters of 1 Timothy), particularly about the trap that money can bring into the lives of ministers.  But the thought of praying about things I wanted to flee from expanded and things that I would not have normally thought of began to enter my prayers.  Next, the focus of the prayer turned to the things I wanted to follow after which are character traits that need to be evident in my life.  The same thing happened, and other character traits entered my requests to the Lord.  Then the prayer moved on to the things I wanted to fight for, and this really opened up the avenues of thought for prayer.  Finally, I let Paul help me to see what an incredibly sobering moment it would be for me to stand before the Lord and given an answer for the charge that had been laid out to all apostolic ministers who have been called into service.  From that time on, I paddled around in the shallows of having a Bible with me at all times when I was praying especially in the private times of prayer. 

Once I started praying with a Bible, I adopted a small Nelson KJV and used it much.  The only regret I have was during those days, I thought that writing in a Bible was anathema.  Even though I had seen Brother Griffin’s well-used Oxford Wide-Margin KJV and also his Dugan Reference Bible which had been very much marked up, there was still some hesitation on my part to do so.  I am now guessing that probably 25 years ago, I started marking up my Bibles.  More and more I have come to believe that marked up Bibles can help us to see spiritual progress that we are making as time marches on.  This is just food for thought; I doubt your family is going to want your iPhone, iPad, or Android when you finally pass on from this life, but they will treasure a well-marked, prayed through, and wept over Bible. 

 

What are some things you should mark up in a “prayer” Bible?  If you have a personal library either physical or digital, make your books work for you.  Look at your books as if they are tools, or even soldiers that are under your command, and get the most out of them.  Herbert Lockyer’s All the Prayers in the Bible, E. M. Bounds single volume works on prayer, Andrew Murray’s With Christ in the School of Prayer, Dr. Jim Rosscup’s four volumes on prayer (given to me by Pastor Tony Mansinho) of all the prayers in the OT/NT, and John Eckhardt’s prayer books are all very good tools to push you into a direction of biblically driven praying.  Read through those prayers and then outline them in your Bible.  On another practical tip as well, use Flair marker pens and take the colors and use them for a variety of themes.  However, to keep track of your colors, mark them in the front of the Bible so you don’t just begin to haphazardly mismark your Bible.  Some of the different colors I use are for doctrinal content, holiness themes, spiritual warfare, and the kingdom of God.  One of the mistakes I made early on was not have a precise color system.  What the color choices do is help you to look through a “prayer” Bible and pick up on particular themes of prayer that you need to give yourself to:  intercession, supplication, repentance, empowerment, enlightenment, and discernment. 

 

Another one of the things that praying the Scriptures will do is force you to look at verses in their proper context.  For instance, there are four prayers that Paul prayed as given in his prison epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians) that confronted some faulty understanding that I had of how God operates in the churches.  Paul prayed for doctrinal understanding, a proper foundation in Christian living, to be filled with holiness, and spiritual understanding.  When you began to pray for this in your local church especially if you are a pastor or in some role as a spiritual leader, it can really move you to a place of clarity as to what we should be praying for.  In my thoughts, perhaps the majority of our prayers are focused more on material and physical needs than for the spiritual work both individually and corporately for the kingdom of God.  There is also a wealth of instruction that can be mined out by looking at what is commonly referred to as the Lord’s prayer in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) which is really the disciple’s prayer.  If you truly want to look at the Lord’s prayer, go to John 17 and work through that during your prayer time and it can add so much to your understanding as to what the Lord really wanted to see happen in our lives and the forward movement of the apostolic church. 

 

Lastly, I would encourage you to let your “prayer” Bible be perhaps a different translation that you do not normally use.  I have picked up an ESV that I have set aside to use specifically as a “prayer” Bible in an effort to do all that I can to help me deepen my own work in prayer.  Next week, I will lobby for the need to have regular prayer revivals and other matters that will encourage you to foster a prayerful spirit in your local church. 

 

Again, thanks for dropping by. . .         

 

Philip Harrelson

January 7, 2021      

A Prayer Pouring Out of Psalm 119

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I am presently preaching through the stanzas of Psalm 119 and it has been a spiritually enriching exercise.  Today, I am struck by my need to pray through this Psalm as I preach through it.  One of the greatest things about verse-by-verse preaching is its sanctifying effect on the preacher.  What follows come from the handwritten prayer in my journal as I worked through Psalm 119:17-24 (The Trials That Come our Way).  The prayer was motivated by the cross-references that I followed as the sermon notes unfolded.

The Public Reading of Scripture

Quite some time ago, I was studying some of the practices of the ancient apostolic church and ran across some of the writings of Justin Martyr.  In his Apology 1.67, he describes just a portion of what took place in ancient times:

. . . and on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. . .

"Fake News" & "Fake Theology" Part 3

In this last post on the matter of “fake news” and its comparison to “fake theology” (Part 1, Part 2), I would like for us to consider what impact that “fake theology” ultimately has on a church.  When Murray takes an interlude in one of his chapters about truth, he wrote that truth has a tendency to create trouble.  The trouble the comes with biblical truth is that it demands something of every person—a demand to yield desires and their desired identity to what God is calling for.  In fact, John captured the words of Jesus when he said, “everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).  “Fake theology” will never make such a vigilant, sobering call because it CAN’T!!!!  “Fake theology” is literally the opposite of what God has spoken and even demanded of this fallen world of mankind.  The curse of sin is death and yet “fake theology” wouldn’t dare to tell anyone that even if they were to ask the question as to what the penalty of death really was.  “Fake theology” leaves a lot of casualties and spiritual fatalities in its wake.  What I have been keenly aware of is the fact that for the most part, the results of “fake theology” flies under the radar for several years before its effects are seen in the veering away from biblical truth and standards that have been forsaken.  The Emerging Church (Part 2) seems so far removed from us at this point and some may not even remember the foothold it gained in a group of pastors not too much younger than I am more than a decade ago.  I had some acquaintances who bought into it completely and their lives and ministries are either entirely shipwrecked or they have become enemies of the cross as Paul described them.  But the real problem is the “fake theology” that the EC managed to weave into the church that has now become very dominant in the thoughts of far too many Millennials.  The all-inclusiveness they were pushing in areas of doctrine, questioning the authority/inerrancy of Scripture, “lifestyle” differences, and social action has created so much chaos in the minds of people that biblical truth bounces off of their hardened hearts as they cry out for their particular social or political cause. 

"Fake News" & "Fake Theology" Part 2

In the last post, I recommended a book by Abdu Murray Saving Truth:  Finding Meaning & Clarity in a Post-TruthWorld, that Pastor Tony Mansinho had sent to me.  Murray’s first chapter really struck me in the fact that just as “fake news” has played a major role in shifting a lot of public thinking even though it isn’t true, “fake theology” has enormous eternal consequences due to its lack of truth as well.  There was another matter brought up in Murray’s chapter “Confusion and the Church:  Seductions of a Post-Truth Mindset” when he described that almost immediately after the US Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage another article got widespread dissemination throughout social media.  The article claimed a lawsuit was pending that would outlaw the Bible as hate-speech in the US.  Murray said that when he started reading and digging into the story, he described that it only took about three minutes to get to the root of the details and discover that this was an error that was being passed around as the truth.  The short of it was the case had been immediately dismissed because it had no basis in the law.  Murray put it in the category of an “alarmist” untrue story that had kernels of truth which it went far and wide on social media.  It is doubtful that very few really got to the truth of the matter.  He noted that this kind of thing makes Christianity look bad especially when we know that Jesus is the very core of all truth (John 14:6) and yet we who should be following him aren’t very careful and discerning about what we teach, preach, speak, or share with others.  Murray wrote that this creates a culture of confusion in the church. 

Study Bibles for Expositors--Reformation Study Bible by Reformation Trust

Several months ago, I reviewed some study Bibles (Holman, NIV, ESV, Dugan, Hebrew-Greek Keyword) that I found to be helpful for expositors.  The Bibles that I reviewed were primarily those that fell into a category of general readership and those that were commonly found at large in big box Christian bookstores.  There are several Bibles that I am going to write reviews of in the next few days that fall into a variety of subsets of Christian doctrines and views.  While some of these Bibles can be purchased in big box stores, there are a few that you may have to track down through on-line sources. 

Study Bibles for Expositors--The Holman Christian Standard Study Bible (HCSB)--Holman Bible Publishers

This study Bible is the sixth one that I will review.  Several years ago I ran across a garage sale where due to some very unfortunate events a man had compromised his ministry and his family was selling all of his books, commentaries, and Bibles.  While I did find some very useful books at dirt-cheap prices, I did not want to purchase the Bibles because there was a little something sacred about them even though this man was not of my doctrinal persuasion.  As I was about to leave, his ex-wife came over and gave me a copy of a very nice leather bound Holman Christian Standard Bible that was just plain text with a single reference column.  I started to read it some weeks later and found it to be a thought-provoking translation. 

Study Bibles for Expositors--NIV Zondervan Study Bible--Zondervan Publishing

We have been reviewing several study Bibles that I thought would be helpful to those who are making a concerted effort to become effective expositors.  An expositor is a preacher who has a commitment to preach through the Bible dealing with the context, the doctrinal content, and the application to a New Testament apostolic church.  Expository preaching can be best summed up in this threefold manner:  Read the text, explain the text, and apply the text.  On the other hand don’t let that greatly simplified form lead you to think that this makes for simple preaching for it does not.  I have been working at this angle of preaching for a little over ten years now and it is the most demanding sort of preaching that a minister can give himself to.  It requires great discipline and you have to get control of your personal schedule so that you can effectively work somewhere that is free from interruptions.  However, the soul building that takes place in the preacher and in the life of the church will be astounding!  So all of these study Bibles that I have been reviewing for the last four posts is nothing more than an effort to encourage men to be students of Scripture. 

Study Bibles for Expositors--The NIV Archaeological Study Bible--Zondervan

The fourth study Bible that I would like to recommend to those who are endeavoring to develop into being an expositor is one that is very useful in looking at a text in a bit of a different light.  The NIV Archaeological Study Bible published by Zondervan is another excellent tool for those who would be critical of the biblical text.  A preacher will preach to a wide variety of people that visit the church where he will pastor.  For the most part the vast majority of apostolic churches have people who attend that believe the Scriptures to be authentic, inspired, inerrant, and authoritative.  But we have unbelievers who attend that do not have the same shared confidence in Scripture that we might not have and we have college students who attend schools where professors and other students can be militantly hostile against the Word of God.  This Bible is very helpful in combatting some of that rhetoric. 

Study Bibles for Expositors--Dugan Topical Reference Bible--Dugan Publishers, Inc.

The third study Bible that we come to has a great sentimental value to me.  It is the Dugan Topical Reference Bible from Dugan Publishers out of Tennessee although I believe they are no longer in business.  I purchased this Study Bible on September 15, 1989 from Rev. Kelsey Griffin who was teaching my Bible Study Methods class my freshman year at Texas Bible College when it was still located in Houston.  He had boxes of these Bibles that he kept in his upstairs study/library and he sold them to the students for $20.  If I had known then what I know now I would have bought as many as I could afford at the time.  What is unique about this Bible is that it came at a time when computers were just starting to come on the scene but the vast majority of people did not have $2000-3000 to spend on one.  So most of the resources that ministers had available to them had to be in printed form of books.  Also at that time there was very few study Bibles around.  Most Pentecostal ministers used a Thompson Chain Reference Bible, a Schofield Study Bible, or a Dake’s Annotated Bible.  Occasionally you might find someone who had a Ryrie Study Bible but they were not very many who had those at the time.  There were a couple of features about the Dugan Bible that Brother Griffin brought to our attention.

Study Bibles for Expositors--English Standard Version (ESV) by Crossway

The next study Bible on the list is the English Standard Version (ESV) published by Crossway, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois.  The ESV was initially published in 2001 however the Study Bible was published in 2011.  If you are a Bible reader and are familiar with other translations, it won’t take you long to realize that the ESV closely resembles the New American Standard Bible.  There are not a lot of changes between to the two to the casual reader.  I am certain that it you made a comparison with charts and diagrams and so forth that there would be some notable differences between the two of them.  Before going further I would like to point out my usual disclaimer that just because I am a reader of this particular translation it does not mean that I can entirely endorse everything about the ESV Study Bible.  I look at it as simply being another tool in the toolbox of one who desires to be serious about the exposition of Scripture in his preaching. 

Study Bibles for Expositors -- Hebrew-Greek KEYWORD Study Bible by AMG Publishers

Part 1—Hebrew-Greek KEY WORD Study Bible—AMG Publishers

If you would be a serious expositor of God’s Word, you are constantly on the lookout for good resources that will help you to pull all you can from the biblical text.  One of tools that you need is good study Bibles.  There was a time not too long ago when we would have had to say a good study Bible but as times have progressed there are many choices of study Bibles that are available for us to use.  For the month of November I intend to do a review of a host of study Bibles that I have found helpful to me in the last several years.  Another reason that I am going to spend November to do this would be because of Black Friday being just around the corner.  If you live near a chain Christian bookstore, you can pick up many of these study Bibles very cheaply and even more so if you decide to go with hardbound instead of bonded or genuine leather.