How do you pray when you pray for you? Praying for the crisis of the moment — a particular stress, a sudden illness, a big deadline — or praying for the needs of others can seem pretty clear and straightforward. But how should we pray for our own hearts day after day after day? Should we be praying for our own hearts? The Psalms model prayers like these for us — prayers you can pray any day and every day.

In three short videos, John Piper walks us through one of these prayers in Psalm 141. He draws out several key points for our prayer lives, teaching us to call on God to move, first to meet us, then to guard and keep us, and finally to fill and satisfy us.

Look at the Book is an online method for teaching the Bible. It’s an ongoing series of 8–12 minute videos in which the camera is on the text, not the teacher. You will hear John Piper’s voice and watch his pen underline, circle, make connections, and scribble notes — all to help you learn to read God’s word for yourself. His goal is to help you not only see what he sees, but where he sees it and how he found it.

Part 1: Pray for God to Meet You

We learn to pray by reading the prayers in the Bible. This short series will look at David’s prayer in Psalm 141. In the first lab, John Piper asks why we pray for God to come. God is everywhere all the time, so what would it even mean for him to come to you today?

Part 2: Pray for God to Guard You

Prayer is vital for the fight to be more like Jesus. In this lab, John Piper looks at prayer in the Bible that models the pursuit of purity. All of our effort in the pursuit of purity and holiness rests on the power and favor of God to guard us from evil.

Part 3: Pray for God to Satisfy You

When we ask God to incline our hearts, can he do it? In this third lab, John Piper asks a couple of hard questions about what we pray when we pray. Are we hypocrites to pray for our mouths and behavior even when our hearts fail? We need God to meet us at every level of our lives.