Praying All of Scripture: Deuteronomy
Author: Daniel Owens, PhD
November 20, 2025
Fifth in a series.
Deuteronomy 1:8
“See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.”
Deuteronomy 4:25–31
25“When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. 31For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.”
Deuteronomy 6:4–7
4“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Deuteronomy 10:12–22
12“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? 14Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 20You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. 21He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. 22Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
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To what parts of Scripture should we look for guidance when we pray? To answer that, we might begin with the precious verses of Scripture we have memorized and studied through the years.
Alternatively, we might answer that question by asking, when Jesus prayed, what parts of Scripture did he use? Jesus infused his ministry with prayer, rising early in the morning to pray (Matt. 14:23), praying in the daytime when people brought children to him (Matt. 19:13–15), or praying at night in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:23). At the most critical moment, when he was on the cross, Psalm 22:1 came from his mouth as he cried out to God (Matt. 27:46). So if I were to guess based on that, I would say he prayed the Psalms a great deal, so much that it came out of his mouth naturally when he was at the end of himself.
But I would guess that Deuteronomy was at least a close second, since he responded to the temptations of Satan in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11) by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13, 16, and 8:3. We cannot overestimate the importance of Deuteronomy. As Daniel Block argues, Deuteronomy parallels Paul’s letter to the Romans in systematically presenting theological truth, and it parallels the Gospel of John in presenting the experience of God’s grace in history. Deuteronomy is one of the most important books in the Old Testament in particular but in the Bible as a whole. So how might it lead us to pray?
First, we recognize that Moses preached the content of Deuteronomy as the second generation of Israelites who left Egypt were preparing to take the land. Their parents received the command to enter the land (Deut. 1:8) and shrank back in fear, leading to the wilderness wanderings for a generation.
In that context, God called for the second generation to be faithful. He knew the Israelites would eventually fail and be expelled from the land, yet he held out the possibility of repentance and restoration (Deut. 4:25–31). In that context God called the people to whole-life devotion to him, including family instruction in God’s ways (Deut. 6:4–7). He called Israel to love him for who he is, the God who owns the entire world and yet placed his love specifically on Israel, a stubborn people, who calls for and enables (Deut. 30:6) inner transformation of the heart toward God and his ways, and who extends love not only to his chosen people with intact families but also to the orphan, widow, and foreign refugee in their midst (Deut. 10:12–22). The call to faithfulness is a call to embrace the grace of God for sinners. God is beautiful in his justice and mercy, and this shines through in the Book of Deuteronomy.
In Jesus, the words of Deuteronomy find their fulfillment, since in Christ we are circumcised in our hearts, not by the cutting of flesh, but by “the powerful working of God” by which he raises us from death by faith into new life. In this new life, we are no longer weighed down by our sins but are liberated and made victorious over the power of Satan (Col. 2:11–15).
And so we can pray,
O God, you are the only God, who owns the entire earth. You call all nations to yourself through Jesus, who is faithful Israel, showing us what it means to love God with our whole heart, soul, and strength. We give you thanks for your mercy and grace. Like Israel of old, we are stubborn people, prone to turn from you to serve idols. Yet you are a merciful God who opens the way through repentance and faith in Jesus. This enables us to be reconciled to you, to have our hearts circumcised so that we may keep your instruction and imitate your beauty in the way that we love our neighbors, especially those who cannot help us, that we may reflect the love you have demonstrated to us. Help us to hear you, to love you, to fear you, and to walk in all your ways, through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Daniel Owens is NCC’s Pastor of Discipleship. Earlier chapters in this series will be found in the NCC Blog.
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