Summer in the Psalms Prep 2024

Praying through the Psalms

Article by Christopher Ash

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-to-pray-the-psalms

Teach Us to Pray

Let’s go back to basics. We need to be taught how to pray. It is a wonderful privilege that Christian people have: through Jesus Christ and his death for our sins, and by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we have access to God the Father in prayer (Ephesians 2:18). That is a magnificent, life-transforming, joyful privilege. And yet we need to be taught how to use this privilege; we need to be taught how to pray. God hears us when we ask according to his will (1 John 5:14 “14 This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” and in Jesus’s name (John 14:14; 16:23, 26). But what does this mean? Jesus gave his disciples the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer when they asked him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:2–4; Matthew 6:9–13). In many ways, the Psalms are the expanded version of the Lord’s Prayer, or we might say that the Lord’s Prayer is the compressed version of the Psalms. Just as the Lord’s prayer expresses in brief an adoration for the majesty of God’s holiness, a yearning for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, a supplication for God to provide for us all that we need, and a concern to live with pure piety in a sinful world, so we shall find that the Psalms express all these expansively and majestically. No wonder, then, that the epistles give the Psalms a central place in the life of the church. In Ephesians 5:19, Paul says that a Spirit-filled church will speak to one another “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” In Colossians 3:16, he instructs the church to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly as they sing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” All three words — psalms, hymns, songs — are most closely associated with the biblical psalms in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint). It is not that “psalms” mean psalms, whereas “hymns” and “songs” mean other things; they all (mostly) mean biblical psalms. (The adjective “spiritual” may apply to all three, since all biblical psalms are given by the Holy Spirit.) So the New Testament tells us that the speaking, the praying, and — yes! — even the singing of psalms is part of a church that is in tune with the Scriptures. Why Pray the Psalms?

The blessings of praying the Psalms are many. For one, the Psalms are Spirit-inspired words, given us by God to speak about God and to God. Even the best of our Christian hymn-writers or songwriters are not inspired by the Spirit in this definitive and authoritative way. Every word of every psalm is given by God. “The interpretive key to the Psalms is how the New Testament uses them.” Also, the Psalms connect our personal walk with God to the corporate life of the whole church of Christ worldwide and through the centuries. We do not invent our individual spiritualities (in the way that is so fashionable in Western cultures today); rather, we join in the God-given spirituality of the whole Church of Christ. In particular, many psalms will help us to identify and stand with the persecuted church. And then the Psalms greatly enrich the depth and breadth of our affections and our emotions, so that we learn, for example, to lament in a godly way, to wait and hope in a godly way, to praise even in dark days in a godly way. But how are we to do this? I am not here asking the musical question. In the past, Psalms have most often been chanted, as they still are in some denominations. But this musical form can often be dreary when sung by a congregation, and it doesn’t exactly feel contemporary. So we should be grateful for musicians who set psalms to contemporary settings that can be sung well by an untutored congregation. How Do We Pray the Psalms?

By asking the question “How?” I mean, “How do we overcome the many problems we encounter in the words of the Psalms?” Many of us cherry-pick; we read through a psalm and fix on a verse we like. Perhaps we put that verse on a devotional calendar or as the screensaver on our tablet. But we skim over all sorts of difficult verses. For example, we ignore verses where the psalmist claims to be deeply innocent (Psalm 17:3, 5, for instance); we skip over verses where the psalmist’s sufferings feel too intense for us (such as Psalm 88); we feel awkward in the many places where the psalmists pray for God to punish the wicked (as in verses 19–22 of the otherwise popular and well-loved Psalm 139). “It is vital that we ask of every psalm just how it speaks to us of Christ.” So how are we to use all the verses of every psalm in our prayer life? I cannot here do more than offer some pointers. (I have written at greater length about these questions, both for readers and for teachers of the Psalms.) The interpretive key to the Psalms is how the New Testament uses them. The New Testament quotes often from the Psalms and echoes the Psalms with bewildering frequency and rich variety. We may sum up the main lines of these echoes and quotations as follows. 1. PRAYERS OF JESUS Often, the Psalms express the experience, the sufferings, the faith of Jesus of Nazareth in his fully human nature during his life on earth. They are the prayers of Jesus. They express his “loud cries and tears” Hebrews 5:7 “7 During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” as well as his praises. As the early church father Athanasius wrote, “Before Christ came among us, God sketched the likeness of this perfect life for us in words, in this same book of Psalms; in order that, just as He revealed Himself in flesh to be the perfect, heavenly Man, so in the Psalms also men of goodwill might see the pattern life portrayed, and find therein the healing and correction of their own.” 2. PROPHECIES ABOUT JESUS Not infrequently the New Testament sees in the divine nature of Jesus the fulfilment of words spoken of God in the Psalms. The most remarkable of these is Psalm 45:6–7 “6 Your throne, God, is forever and ever; the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of justice. 7 You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy more than your companions.” in which the king in David’s line is addressed as God. But also, for example, the Psalms three times rejoice that God “will judge the world in righteousness” (Psalms 9:8; 96:13; 98:9); the New Testament proclaims that he will do precisely this through the resurrected Jesus (Acts 17:31). 3. WORDS FOR THE CHURCH Finally, the New Testament understands that what is true of Christ overflows to his church today. His sufferings overflow (see, for example, Psalm 44:22 quoted in Romans 8:36). His government of the world will be shared with his people (Revelation 2:26–27 promises Psalm 2:9 to the believer who perseveres to the end). Just as Jesus entrusted his soul to the Father in the words of Psalm 31:5, so Christians are to entrust their souls to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). And similarly in various other ways. “The Psalms are Spirit-inspired words, given to us by God to speak about God and to God.” Colossians 3:16 indicates that the singing of Psalms will lead to a rich filling with the word of Christ. It is therefore vital that we ask of every psalm just how it speaks to us of Christ. It may show us Christ praying, and leading us, his church, in prayer. It may speak to us of Christ’s kingship and rule (as in Psalm 72, for example). It may speak to us of Christ in some other way. There is a rich variety in the Psalms. Four Questions for Every Psalm I have found it helpful to ask, as I read a psalm, the following questions: What would it have meant for David, or the original psalmist, to sing the psalm? How would it have expressed his convictions, his hopes, his prayers, his praises in his original circumstances? What would it have meant for old-covenant believers (such as Simeon and Anna in Luke 2) to sing this psalm? What might it have meant for Jesus of Nazareth, as the perfect worshiper, to sing this psalm in his earthly life? What will it mean for us, as men and women in Christ, as the church of Christ, to make this psalm our own today? May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus fill you with his Spirit, and cause the word of Christ richly to indwell you, as you too join with God’s people in praying and singing the Psalms.

A practical illustration from Don Whitney’s little book, Praying the Bible, using Psalm 23:

You read the first verse—“The Lord is my shepherd”—and you pray something like this: Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd. You’re a good shepherd. You have shepherded me all my life. And, great Shepherd, please shepherd my family today: guard them from the ways of the world; guide them into the ways of God. Lead them not into temptation; deliver them from evil. O great Shepherd, I pray for my children; cause them to be your sheep. May they love you as their shepherd, as I do. And, Lord, please shepherd me in the decision that’s before me about my future. Do I make that move, that change, or not? I also pray for our under-shepherds at the church. Please shepherd them as they shepherd us. And you continue praying anything else that comes to mind as you consider the words, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then when nothing else comes to mind, you go to the next line: “I shall not want.” And perhaps you pray: Lord, I thank you that I’ve never really been in want. I haven’t missed too many meals. All that I am and all that I have has come from you. But I know it pleases you that I bring my desires to you, so would you provide the finances that we need for those bills, for school, for that car? Maybe you know someone who is in want, and you pray for God’s provision for him or her. Or you remember some of our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world, and you pray for their concerns. After you’ve finished, you look at the next verse: “He makes me lie down in green pastures” (v. 2a). And, frankly, when you read the words “lie down,” maybe what comes to mind is simply, “Lord, I would be grateful if you would make it possible for me to lie down and take a nap today.”2 Possibly the term “green pastures” makes you think of the feeding of God’s flock in the green pastures of his Word, and it prompts you to pray for a Bible teaching ministry you lead, or for a teacher or pastor who feeds you with the Word of God. When was the last time you did that? Maybe you have never done that, but praying through this psalm caused you to do so. Next you read, “He leads me beside still waters” (v. 2b). And maybe you begin to plead, Yes, Lord, do lead me in that decision I have to make about my future. I want to do what you want, O Lord, but I don’t know what that is. Please lead me into your will in this matter. And lead me beside still waters in this. Please quiet the anxious waters in my soul about this situation. Let me experience your peace. May the turbulence in my heart be stilled by trust in you and your sovereignty over all things and over all people. Following that, you read these words from verse 3, “He restores my soul.” That prompts you to pray along the lines of: My Shepherd, I come to you so spiritually dry today. Please restore my soul; restore to me the joy of your salvation. And I pray you will restore the soul of that person from work/school/down the street with whom I’m hoping to share the gospel. Please restore his soul from darkness to light, from death to life. You can continue praying in this way until either (1) you run out of time, or (2) you run out of psalm. And if you run out of psalm before you run out of time, you simply turn the page and go to another psalm. By so doing, you never run out of anything to say, and, best of all, you never again say the same old things about the same old things. So basically what you are doing is taking words that originated in the heart and mind of God and circulating them through your heart and mind back to God. By this means his words become the wings of your prayers.

I think every Christian should learn the habit of praying through the Psalms.

What can I do to persuade you to do this, if you don’t already do so? I have developed the arguments at greater length in Teaching Psalms, volume one.

But here are seven good reasons.

1. Praying the Psalms teaches us to pray.

This is the most important reason by a long shot. Every Christian knows we need to pray. After a while, we realize we need to be taught to pray (Luke 11:1); we don’t just instinctively know how, even after we’re born again. The pattern of the Lord’s Prayer is filled out by the Psalms, which expand on and echo its themes. Not all the Psalms are prayers, but they will all shape our prayers in so many ways. The early church did this, and we should follow their example (e.g., Eph. 5:19).

In Luther’s preface to the Psalter, he wrote:

As a teacher will compose letters or little speeches for his pupils to write to their parents, so by this book he prepares both the language and the mood in which we should address the heavenly Father.

2. Praying the Psalms trains us to respond to the riches of Bible truth.

All the wonderful truth of the Bible is poured into the Psalms in such a way that we learn to delight in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church father Athanasius says that if we think of each Bible book as a garden with its particular fruit, the Psalter is a garden in which every kind of biblical fruit grows. Perhaps that’s why travelers in pre-digital days would sometimes carry a New Testament and Psalms where they couldn’t take a complete Bible.

It takes a while to learn from the Psalms how to respond to the whole of the Bible’s teaching. But it’s worth the effort. If we learn to pray the Psalms, we will have learned to respond in prayer to every facet of biblical truth.

3. Praying the Psalms shapes well-rounded people to pray in all of human life.

Not only do the Psalms encapsulate all the Bible’s teaching, they also express every facet of human experience. One of my students commented that the Psalms are giving him a richer palette of emotional colors to describe, understand, and feel his own and others’ experience. Just as a child graduates from painting in primary colors to using subtle tones in her art, so a Christian soaked in the Psalms moves from an emotionally childish experience toward a richer and more nuanced life of the heart.

In the wonderful preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, the reformer John Calvin calls the Psalms an “anatomy of all the parts of the soul” because “there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or, rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.”

4. Praying the Psalms reorients disordered affections into God’s good order.

You and I are a mass of disordered affections. We desire what we ought to detest, and we care little for what we ought deeply to desire. And it matters because our wills choose what we desire; we do what we want. Perhaps the the most necessary work of God in our hearts is to change our desires so that we want what God wants. Only when this begins to happen will our lives change at the deep level of our hearts.

Here is a paraphrase of one of the classic set prayers (collects) in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who alone can order [re-order] the unruly wills and affections of sinful people: grant to your people that they may love the things you command and desire what you promise; so that, among all the changes of this fleeting world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found.

The Psalms do just this: they shape our affections so that we love what God says is right and deeply desire the blessings he promises us in the gospel.

The Psalms shape our affections so that we love what God says is right and deeply desire the blessings he promises us in the gospel.

5. Praying the Psalms can sweeten sour emotions.

When we are turned in on ourselves in resentment, bitterness, anger, or despair, these emotions become deeply destructive. They give our whole lives a sour taste. The Psalms can take these dark emotions and transform then into something life-giving.

The Psalms, Calvin writes, will “principally teach and train us to bear the cross . . . so that the afflictions which are the bitterest and most severe to our nature, become sweet to us, because they proceed from [Christ].”

6. Praying the Psalms guards us against dangerously individualistic piety.

In Western cultures we think our Christianity is a “me and God” thing; but, more fundamentally, it’s a “we and God” thing—where “we” means the church of Jesus Christ in all the world and every age. When we properly understand the Psalms, we know they make sense only when we remember that we belong—and pray, and praise—with all Christ’s people.

One scholar writes:

Whenever you read the Psalms . . . you are praying, singing, and reading alongside a huge crowd of faithful witnesses throughout the ages. The words you speak have been spoken thousands—even millions—of times before. . . . As you read or sing or pray, off to your right stand Moses and Miriam, in front of you David and Solomon kneel down . . . while from behind come the voices of Jerome, St. Augustine. . . . Luther, Calvin, and more—so many more!

7. Praying the Psalms arouses us to warmth in our relationship with God.

Finally, praying the Psalms is God’s antidote to coldness of heart in our walk with Christ. We know that we ought to find the truths of the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ thrilling and heart-warming, but the reality is we sometimes feel so cold, dull, empty of zeal and fervor. How are we to be brought out of the spiritual refrigerator and into the oven of fervent love for Christ? The Psalms are a significant part of the provision God has given to us for just this purpose.

Have I persuaded you? I hope so! I’d be so pleased to draw you into the same passion for the Psalms that has long stirred my affections for God.

Psalms Done - 1, 2, 14, 18, 29, 34, 38, 62, 138, 109,

First sermon - Why should we pray? A.C.T.S model of prayer