Many Christians also have the experience of their prayer losing its freshness and becoming a dry, repetitive ritual. Likewise, many have experienced their reading of the Bible losing its impact and, as a result, the interest level declines and the reading eventually stops.
If this is inevitable, then how is it that prayer and reading the Bible can remain fresh and full of life?
The secret is combining prayer and reading.
The power of our prayer lies in the words of the Bible. By using God's words as the content of our prayer (not necessarily praying it word-for-word), our prayers will be lifted to a higher plane and we'll never run out of things to pray.
Likewise, reading the Bible eventually becomes impersonal and tedious. Turning what we read into prayer makes God's word personal and applicable to our current situations.
I read somewhere that the Bible is God speaking to us. Prayer is our speaking to God. Only by combining the two is this two-way conversation initiated and maintained.
In the book, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, which is a publishing of a a booklet titled, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon shares with us her secret with great clarity.
"Praying the Scripture" is a unique way of dealing with the Scripture; it involves both reading and prayer.
Turn to the Scripture; choose some passage that is simple and fairly practical. Next, come to the Lord. Come quietly and humbly. There, before Him, read a small portion of the passage of Scripture you have opened to.
Be careful as you read. Take in fully, gently and carefully what you read. Taste it and digest it as you read.
In the past it may have been your habit, while reading, to move very quickly from one verse of Scripture to another until you have read the whole passage. Perhaps you were seeking to find the main point of the passage.
But in coming to the Lord by means of 'praying the Scripture,' you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read.
You may then want to take that portion of Scripture that has touched you and turn it into prayer....
"Praying the Scripture" is not judged by how much you read but by the way in which you read.
If you read quickly, it will benefit you little. You will be like a bee that merely skims the surface of a flower. Instead, in this new way of reading with prayer, you must become as the bee who penetrates into the depths of the flower. You plunge deeply within to remove its deepest nectar.
Of course, there is a kind of reading the Scripture for scholarship and for study—but not here. That studious kind of reading will not help you when it comes to matters that are divine! To receive any deep, inward profit from the Scripture, you must read as I have described. Plunge into the very depths of the words you read until revelation, like a sweet aroma, breaks out upon you.
I am quite sure that if you follow this course, little by little you will come to experience a very rich prayer that flows from your inward being.
-Jeanne Guyon; Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ; p. 8