Praying the Psalms

The Book of Psalms has long been a part of the Christian life of prayer and worship. Yet, today many people do not see them as a tool for their own prayer life. Why should we pray with the Psalms and how do we?

Why is praying the Psalms a good idea?

1. The Psalms teach us to pray through imitation and response.
   Real prayer is always an answer to God’s revelation. The Psalms are both prayer and revelations about God — the perfect ideal soil for learning prayer.

2. The Psalms take us deep into our own hearts 1,000 times faster than we would ever go if left to ourselves.
   Religious/moral people tend to want to deny the rawness and reality of their own feelings, especially the darkness of them. The secular world has almost made an idol of emotional self-expression. … But the Psalmists neither “stuff” their feelings nor “ventilate” them. They pray them — they take them into the presence of God until they change or understand them.

3. The Psalms force us to deal with God as God is, not as we wish God was.
   “Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything he speaks to us … the Psalms train us in that conversation” (from Eugene Peterson’s Answering God).

How do I pray the Psalms?

1. Linger over a Psalm and investigate it.
   Is there a particular verse that is particularly relevant to your life right now? Chew on it. Read it aloud over and over, with a different emphasis on each word. Why is this word chosen or important here? What difference would this make in my life if I believed this with all my heart? If I applied this to my life? Pray for yourself and others from it.

2. If you don’t understand, look it up.
   A commentary is particularly helpful to understand the context of the Psalm (Google can offer lots of help here!) What was the Psalmist going through when he wrote this particular Psalm? The Psalms also point to Christ. Where might this psalm fit into his life?

3. Use the Psalms to praise God.
   Psalms touch on different aspects of who God is, look for them and then celebrate them.

Go Further

Praying with the Psalms by Eugene Peterson

Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton

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Article adapted from http://www.redeemer.com/learn/resources_by_topic/prayer/prayer_and_fasting/
praying_the_psalms/