PRAYING THE PSALMS: CONTEMPORARY VOICES

• To know, enjoy, treasure and glorify the living, faithful, eternal and triune God revealed in Jesus Christ to whom the sweet singer of Israel points.

THE PURPOSE OF PRAYING THE PSALMS

• Read them. “The Psalter exists more as a book for reading rather than performance, a book for meditation rather than recitation.” - Gerald Wilson

• Sing them. Singing the Psalms serves as a vital form of public prayer that fulfills their divine intention of why they were given to the church.

• Preach them. The short answer to the “why preach them” question is, “so that we all learn to pray them.”

THE BEST USE OF THE PSALMS

• The book of Psalms provides the most reliable theological, pastoral, and liturgical resource given us in the biblical tradition.

• In season and out of season, generation after generation, women and men turn to the Psalms as a most helpful resource for conversation with God about things that matter most…

• In this book, the community of faith has heard and continues to hear the voice of the living God who meets the community in its depths of need and in its heights of celebration.

• The Psalms draw our entire life under the reign of the Lord, where everything may be submitted to the God of the gospel.

THE BEST USE OF THE PSALMS

• To Promote Theological and Spiritual Health. The path toward spiritual and mental health comes by learning the discipline of meditation – the art of talking to yourself out of the text of the Psalms.

• Answering God by Linking Scripture Reading to Prayer. The Psalms teach us how to answer God. They are God’s gift to train us in prayer that is comprehensive and honest… In the history of prayer they stand out with an awkward singularity… What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God. The Psalms show us how to answer God.

WHY PRAY THE PSALMS?

• Facilitating our Movement Towards a Cross-Centered Life. All of us have natural propensities towards self-centeredness, self-assertiveness, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, self-pity, self-service, and self-love.

• Priming the Pump Devotionally. Donald Hustad comments that oftentimes we are… “so beset by the pressures of life that we have difficulty centering our thoughts on God; to express our praise and our petition in our own words seems impossible. It is at such a time that borrowing prayers from the Psalms serves a ‘priming the pump’ function… eventually we find that the well of our own spirit starts flowing again, and that our own language of improvised prayer has been greatly enlarged.”

WHY PRAY THE PSALMS?

• Assuring God’s People that They Pray God’s Will. If we wish to give to God’s Word the most faithful and most obedient answer in our prayer, we must use above any other that prayer which continues in the mouth of man to be the Word of God.”

• Providing a Spiritual Cardiovascular Workout. The Psalms force us to pray when we don’t feel like it and to pray in ways that seem contrary to our feelings. Praying the joyful, praise psalms on days when we feel sad and gloomy seems counterintuitive. Praying the lament and sad psalms feels cruel when joy pervades our lives.

WHY PRAY THE PSALMS?

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wise approach to prayer: If we want to read and pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. We must ask how we can understand the Psalms as God's Word, and then we shall be able to pray them. It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. If we are dependent entirely on ourselves, we would probably pray only the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer [give us this day our daily bread]. But God wants it otherwise. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayers, not the poverty of our heart.

WHY PRAY THE PSALMS?

• The Unfanciful and Regular Opening of Our Bibles. Open your Bible to the book of Psalms and pray them – sequentially, regularly, faithfully across a lifetime. This is how most Christians of past centuries have matured in prayer. Nothing fancy.

• Pray the Psalms with Other Believers. All the psalms are prayers in community: People assembled, attentive before God, participating in a common posture, movement and speech, offering themselves and each other to the Lord. Prayer is not a private exercise, but a family convocation… It is possible to practice prayer in such a way that it drives us deep into a conniving, calculating egotism… Jesus was not indiscriminate in his praise of prayer; some people who prayed got a severe tongue-lashing from him.

BEST PRACTICES

• Pray the Psalms Christo-centrically. To imagine Jesus singing or praying the Psalm in his humanity, deity, his humiliation or his exaltation. Where might it fit? Think of him as divine, think of him as human. Think of him suffering. Think of him being exalted to the Father’s right hand. Ask the question: Where might he be praying this Psalm? Where would this Psalm fit in his earthly life?

BEST PRACTICES

• Pray and Sing the Sad Songs. For those who suffer, biblically-shaped laments convey three important and interwoven themes: Their suffering is real, it is spiritually significant, and it is not the last word—all without a theological treatise on the subject.

BEST PRACTICES

• Pray the Psalms Using Lectio-divina. Four stages are discerned within the process of reading the biblical text: Reading (lectio), meditation (meditatio), prayer (oratio), and contemplation (contemplatio)… Reading without meditation is sterile. Meditation without reading is prone to error. Prayer without meditation is lukewarm. Meditation without prayer is barren. Prayer with devotion achieves contemplation.

• Pray Through the Whole Psalter in Their Canonical Order.

BEST PRACTICES

1 In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to my soul,    “Flee like a bird to your mountain,2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow;    they have fitted their arrow to the string     to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; 3 if the foundations are destroyed,    what can the righteous do?”

PSALM 11

4 The Lord is in his holy temple;     the Lord's throne is in heaven;     his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. 5 The Lord tests the righteous,     but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.6 Let him rain coals on the wicked;    fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.7 For the Lord is righteous;he loves righteous deeds;    the upright shall behold his face.

PSALM 11

What does the text say? What words and phrases stand out in your reading?

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PSALM 11: LECTIO - READING

• Imagine the scene when David writes Psalm 11? See 1 Samuel 22:6-23, especially vv. 18-19. 85 priests of the Lord are murdered by the request of King Saul. What would you have seen, heard, and felt?

• How are the foundations being destroyed in our day? • What are you naturally prone to do when this happens? • What does this psalm invite you to do? How should you respond?

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PSALM 11: MEDITATIO: MEDITATION

How should you answer God based upon reading and reflecting upon this Psalm? What words, phrases, and ideas captured your attention and what should you pray for in light of the truths contained in this Psalm

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PSALM 11: ORATIO: PRAYER

Here’s a sample prayer of seeking the Lord in prayer through Psalm 11.

God of Refuge, how easy it is to pursue safety, security, and deliverance in our own ways and methods as we “flee to the mountains.” However, you are the only true refuge. As you look down from heaven and see the foundations of our society being destroyed, have mercy upon us. The foundations of justice, truth, duty, honesty, marriage, vows faithfully performed, holiness, and family are being assaulted on all fronts. A fortress mentality and a spirit of fear, discouragement and cynicism plague us. Help us to remember that… 1. You ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. You___________________________________________________________________________ 3. You___________________________________________________________________________ 4. You___________________________________________________________________________

In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

PSALM 11: ORATIO: PRAYER

• How does this Psalm shift our attention from ourselves to the Lord?

• What difference should it make in your life to know and enjoy the Lord as your “refuge?”

• What difference should it make in your life to know that you will one day see His face?

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PSALM 11: CONTEMPLATIO (CONTEMPLATION)

• Faith conquers fear as we fly to where true safety lies.

• Faith conquers fear as we accept the testings of life as the Lord’s purpose.

• Faith conquers fear as we await the blessed hope of the beatific vision. There is yet a God in heaven to be sought when our deliverance is beyond the help of human policy or power.

PSALM 11: CONTEMPLATIO (CONTEMPLATION)

• When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?

• We would all be undone if we did not have a God to whom we can go, a God in whom we can trust, and a glorious future of which we are assured.

PSALM 11: CONCLUDING THOUGHT