When Does a Verse Become a Promise?

Here is this week’s entry from Pray Big for Your Life.

People often ask me, “How do I know when it’s okay to pray a verse for myself? How do I know I’m not being greedy or self-centered? How can I be sure that I’m really hearing the Spirit and it’s not just my own wishful thinking?”

For instance, in Deuteronomy 28, God gave some tremendous promises to Israel. If they stayed faithful to him, he promised, “The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom,” (Deuteronomy 28:12-13).

It would be very easy for me to read those wonderful promises and want them to be true of me. I’d love to have God bless me with his rich bounty. Of course I’d prefer to be financially secure, and to be in a position to lend instead of borrowing. I’d love to be at the front of the pack, not at the back, and to be the head, not the tail. Who wouldn’t? But can I really pray those verses for my life without being selfish or greedy? How do I know that promise is really a pinpoint prayer that God wants me to pray for my life?

Discovering pinpoint prayers isn’t an exact science. You’re going to have to learn to discern the Spirit’s voice and to humbly approach God’s Word. Here are some questions you can ask as you try to distinguish between God’s promptings about a promise for your life and your own desires and wants.

Will this honor God? This is a great first question to ask before you start praying a verse for yourself. We know that the Holy Spirit’s job is to honor and exalt God, not us. We’re to point others to him, not ourselves. If you can pray a verse with God’s glory in mind, then you’re probably on safe biblical ground.
What’s my motivation for wanting this? If I ask God to give me the wealth of Abraham or the fame of Solomon, what’s my reasoning? Why do I want riches? Is it so I can funnel more resources to God’s work, or is it so I can live a cushy life? And why am I seeking fame? Do I want popularity and fans? Or am I seeking a platform from which to proclaim God’s Word. Your true motives will tell you a lot about whether or not you’ve really heard God in a verse. Do an honest gut-check if you’re not sure.
Is this consistent with what the Bible teaches as a whole? It’s easy to read a verse and to forget to consider it in light of its biblical context. Finding pinpoint promises in the Bible certainly requires you to listen for God to speak to you through specific verses, but it also requires you to use good biblical interpretation skills. Here’s a good rule of thumb: If what you think the verse promises is inconsistent with the whole of biblical teaching, then you’re probably not hearing God. God will not lead you to contradict his Word. So, if you’re not sure that what you are praying is biblical, check it out in light of the overall teaching of Scripture. If you’re uncertain, ask someone who knows the Bible better than you do. Here are a few examples of the Bible being clearly misunderstood and misused in prayer for unbiblical things.


A man, hoping to find justification for his affair, read about King David’s affair with Bathsheba. He used David’s desire for and subsequent tryst with the married Bathsheba as biblical justification for his own adulterous behavior.
In Malachi 3:10, God promised to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessing in response to faithful tithing by his people. Many have used those words to pray for and expect worldly wealth as part of the Gospel’s promise. While God clearly honors giving, the promise of material wealth is nowhere connected to the Gospel message in the New Testament.
Some have used God’s Old Testament commands to destroy entire groups of people to justify praying for and promoting physical violence against “God’s enemies,” like doctors who perform abortions. Such prayers are completely inconsistent with God’s prohibition against murder and Jesus’s command to love and pray for our enemies.

In each of those extreme examples, the verses in question were not viewed in light of the whole of biblical teaching. God wants us to scour his Word in search of pinpoint promises, but he expects us to be biblically responsible in the process. We don’t have permission to misappropriate God’s Word for the sake of our own selfish or sinful preferences. God won’t reward, but rather will judge, such misuse of his Word.

Would Jesus himself pray for this? This may be the best question to ask when discerning the appropriateness of a pinpoint prayer. Simply ask, would Jesus agree with this prayer? Would he put his seal of approval on it?

In John 14:13-14, Jesus encouraged us to ask for things in his name. But the in Jesus’s name phrase we use in prayer isn’t just a rote expression we tack on to the end of our requests. Praying in Jesus’s name means that we are praying for something that Jesus himself would pray for. It means that our request is consistent with the heart, passion and mission of Jesus and is in agreement with the Kingdom-building work of the Holy Spirit.

As I feel led to pray verses for my life, marriage, ministry or family, I always pause to see if I can biblically and with confidence say that prayer in Jesus’s name. Am I sure that Jesus would agree with me on this one? If I’m not, then I typically rethink what God may be saying to me in the verse. You can do the same. Be mature and responsible enough to run your pinpoint prayers through the in Jesus’s name filter.

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