March 3

Bible study necessary to prayer

“And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them” (Deut. 17:19).
“Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures?” (Matt. 21:42).

There is a tendency to leave the Bible out of the closet. We hear a great deal of earnest counsel concerning secret prayer. We are urged both to open and close the day at God’s feet. We are taught that prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. And not a word too much can be said on this subject. If we would live strong, noble, beautiful, radiant, and useful Christian lives, we must get seasons of secret prayer into all our busy days. But we must take our Bibles with us into the closet. While we talk to God, we must also let God talk to us. God feeds us through His Word. It is into all truth that the Holy Spirit leads Christ’s disciples. Seasons of prayer without meditation on some word of God cannot yield the full blessing that we need.
—J. R. Miller.


Little of the Word with little Prayer is death to the spiritual life. Much of the Word with little Prayer gives a sickly life. Much Prayer with little of the Word gives emotional life. But a full measure of the Word and Prayer each day gives a healthy and powerful life.
—Andrew Murray.

While now Thine oracles we read
With earnest prayer and strong desire,
Oh, let Thy Spirit from Thee proceed,
Our souls to awaken and inspire,
Our weakness help, our darkness chase,
And guide us by the light of grace.
—Charles Wesley.

The “Burman Missionary” tells the story of an old man who years ago, when a heathen, came into possession of a copy of the Psalms in his native language, which had been left behind by a traveler stopping at his house. He began to read and before he had finished the book he had resolved to cast his idols away. For twenty years he worshiped the eternal God revealed to him in the Psalms, using the fifty-first (which he had committed to memory) as a daily prayer. Then having occasion to go to R—, he fell in with a white missionary, who gave him a New Testament. With joy unspeakable he read for the first time the story of salvation. “Twenty years I have walked by starlight,” he said; “now I see the sun.

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