Bible Intake and Prayer: Just roommates? Or a healthy marriage?

What's the relationship between Bible intake and prayer?

Too often, I can approach these two things as roommates - they both live under the same "roof" of the spiritual disciplines, but apart from that they can live pretty normal lives independently of each other.  Sure, communication doesn't hurt and some level of interaction is needed.  But most roommates also want a fair amount of personal space as well, right?

But what if prayer and Bible intake should be approached more as a healthy marriage?  Sure, there are still things that distinguish one from the other - but ongoing communication and shared space are essential.  When one spouse isn't around, the other "feels" their absence in marked ways.  The other spouse is missed, because of all they add to the interactive relationship.

Seeing Bible intake and prayer as a marriage (instead of as roommates) has done as much to breathe life and health into my practice of these disciplines as anything else.  Instead of reading the Bible, then shutting the Bible, then changing gears in my mind, and then trying (struggling?) to pray, I now look for ways my careful reading of God's Word invites me into responding to God in certain ways.  I look for how God's Word can send me into biblical prayers for myself, my family, those around me, and faithfully living in the ways God wants me to be living.  

And (like most things) this idea isn't original to me.  Here are some passages from helpful books that have helped guide me into seeing this connection between Bible intake and prayer - seeing them not as roommates but as a marriage:

• "...we know how we should be praying only be getting our vocabulary from the Bible."  (Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, pp. 54-55)
• "...our prayers should arise out of immersion in Scripture.  We should 'plunge ourselves into the sea' of God's language, the Bible.  We should listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds.  It may be one of shame or of joy or of confusion or of appeal - but that response to God's speech is then truly prayer and should be given to God."  (Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, p. 55)
• "If the goal of prayer is a real, personal connection with God, then it is only by immersion in the language of the Bible that we will learn to pray, perhaps just as slowly as a child learns to speak.  This does not mean, of course, that we must literally read the Bible before each individual prayer....We can cry out to God all during the day as long as we regularly spend time with his Word."  (Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, pp. 55-56)
• "Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word.  This wedding of the Bible and pryer anchors your life down in the real God."  (Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, p. 56)
• Donald Whitney on connecting the dots between Bible intake and prayer: "The process works like this: After the input of a passage of Scripture, meditation allows us to take what God has said to us and and think deeply on it, digest it, and then speak to God about it in meaningful prayer.  As a result, we pray about what we've encountered in the Bible, now personalized through meditation.  And not only do we have something substantial to say in prayer, and the confidence that we are praying God's thoughts to Him, but we transition smoothly into prayer with a passion for what we're praying about.  Then as we move on with our prayer, we don't jerk and lurch along because we already have some spiritual momentum."  (Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, p. 72)
• "Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer, and hath respect to both.  The word feedeth meditation, and meditation feedeth prayer.  These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer.  To hear and not to meditate is unfruitful.  We may hear and hear, but it is like putting a thing into a bag with holes....It is rashness to pray and not to meditate.  What we take in by the word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer.  These three duties must be ordered that one may not jostle out the other.  Men are barren, dry, and sapless in their prayers for want of exercising themselves in holy thoughts."  (Thomas Manton quoted in Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, p. 73)
• "The main method of prayer in the fight for joy is to pray the Word of God.  That is, to read or recite the Word and turn it into prayer as you go.  Most people (certainly including me) do not have the power of mind to look at nothing and yet offer up to God significant spiritual desires for any length of time.  I suspect this has always been the case.  To pray for longer than a few minutes in a God-centered, Christ-exalting way requires the help of God's Spirit, and the Spirit loves to help by the Word he inspired."  (John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, pp. 163-64)

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How does seeing the relationship between Bible intake and prayer as a healthy marriage (instead of as roommates) change the way you've viewed these spiritual disciplines?  What practical ideas can help you connect the dots between you reading of the Bible and your practice of prayer?