If you’re like me, you sometimes struggle for the words to pray. One of the most powerful and personal ways to pray is to pray prayers from the Bible. We can express the depths of our hearts by personalizing the prayers of the Apostle Paul. Here are two of those prayers that Shirley and I have been praying together: Ephesians 1:15-23 and Ephesians 3:14-21.

Ephesians 1:15-23

Father of Infinite Glory,

We pray that You would give us the Spirit’s wisdom and illumination

so that we may know You better—more deeply, richly, and personally.

We pray that You would enlighten the eyes of our hearts:

in order that we may more fully know the future eternal heavenly blessed hope to which You have called us;

in order that we may more fully know the endless riches of Your glorious inheritance in the saints—all that we will forever enjoy as a joint-heirs with Jesus;

and in order that we may more fully know Your incomparably surpassing, exceeding, mega-great, dynamic power for us who believe

—that working, energizing power is the same as the mighty infinite ruling and overcoming power—the working of Your mighty strength—that You exerted when You raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at Your right hand in the heavenly realms…

Ephesians 3:14-21

 We kneel before You, Father, and we pray that out of Your glorious riches

You may strengthen us with power through Your Spirit in our inner being

so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.

And we pray that being rooted and established in love,

We may have power, together with all the saints,

to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ

and to know this love that surpasses knowledge

—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Personalizing Biblical Prayers

As I’ve done above, you can put these prayers in the plural: “we, our.” Or, you can make them individual: “me, I.” Or you can make them specific for another person: “my son, my daughter,” or with someone’s name, “Jim, Susan,” etc.