7 Reasons You Should Pray the Psalms
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.
Christopher Ash is writer-in-residence at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England. He has written numerous books, including Psalms for You, Teaching Psalms (vols 1 and 2) and Bible Delight.
CREDIT:https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/7-reasons-pray-the-psalms/
Teaching Psalms Vol. 1: From Text to Message (Proclamation Trust) Paperback – June 2, 2017
by Christopher Ash (Author)
by Christopher Ash (Author)
The Psalms can be sung, spoken or read - but they were written to be prayed. Until we pray them from the heart we miss their purpose. If you love, or want to love, or think perhaps you ought to love, the Psalms, this first instalment of a two-volume set on the Psalter is for you. Christopher Ash gives us a practical and theological handbook to equip us to pray and to teach the Psalms. He faces the difficulties and shows how praying them in Christ does justice to their original meaning and context as well as their place in the whole bible.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The Teaching series is a great resource for Bible study leaders and pastors, indeed for any Christian who wants to understand their Bible better. (Mark Dever ~ Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church and President, 9Marks.org, Washington, DC)
The need of the hour is Bible knowledge. When knowledge fails, faith fails, and we are shaped instead by cultural forces alien to God. This teaching series, written by skilled and trustworthy students of God's word, helps us to understand the Bible, believe it and obey it. I commend it to all Bible readers, but especially those whose task it is to teach the inspired word of God. (Peter Jensen ~ Retired Archbishop of Sydney, Sydney, Australia)
This series of excellent guides aims to help the Bible teacher to observe what is there in the text, and prepare to convey its significance to contemporary hearers. It is like having the guidance of an experienced coach in the wonderful work of rightly handling the word of truth. (John Woodhouse ~ Retired Principal and Lecturer in Doctrine and Old Testament, Moore College, Sydney, Australia)
North India desperately needs men and women who will preach and teach the Bible faithfully and Proclamation Trust's Teaching series is of great value in encouraging them to do just that. (Isaac Shaw ~ Executive Director, Delhi Bible Institute, New Delhi, India)
The need of the hour is Bible knowledge. When knowledge fails, faith fails, and we are shaped instead by cultural forces alien to God. This teaching series, written by skilled and trustworthy students of God's word, helps us to understand the Bible, believe it and obey it. I commend it to all Bible readers, but especially those whose task it is to teach the inspired word of God. (Peter Jensen ~ Retired Archbishop of Sydney, Sydney, Australia)
This series of excellent guides aims to help the Bible teacher to observe what is there in the text, and prepare to convey its significance to contemporary hearers. It is like having the guidance of an experienced coach in the wonderful work of rightly handling the word of truth. (John Woodhouse ~ Retired Principal and Lecturer in Doctrine and Old Testament, Moore College, Sydney, Australia)
North India desperately needs men and women who will preach and teach the Bible faithfully and Proclamation Trust's Teaching series is of great value in encouraging them to do just that. (Isaac Shaw ~ Executive Director, Delhi Bible Institute, New Delhi, India)
Book Description
Praying the Psalms in Christ
Rhys
4.0 out of 5 stars A new go-to resources for evangelical psalm teaching... but still a few notable omissions
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2018
Verified Purchase
For a long time, I've lamented the lack of quality evangelical resources on the Psalms. Most evangelical commentaries lack depth, or just get their reading plain wrong. This often puts the earnest teacher in a position where they must comb the works of more liberal writers, who usually have stronger scholarship or seem to "get" the Psalms more (Walter Brueggeman, N.T. Wright, Eugene Peterson), but obviously lack both a strong doctrine of scripture, and often a Christological focus. This means you spend a lot of time mining for nuggets when teaching the Psalms, and that there aren't a lot of things to recommend to the average congregant.
So I'm very glad that this has been published! I was excited to hear about this, having read Ash's Job: The Wisdom of the Cross commentary in the Preaching the Word series, and been hugely helped by his handling of wisdom literature there. This did not disappoint!
I'd make this a go-to book if I were introducing someone to teaching the Psalms. In fact, the vast majority of this would be useful for anybody looking to understand the Psalms, as only the last (somewhat shorter) part deals with teaching. So much to recommend - chiefly, the way in which he ties our reading of the Psalms to Christ in a way that actually honours the weird warp and woof of the Psalm texts, rather than glossing over the details to get to Jesus. If you've read widely on the Psalms, Ash doesn't say anything new, but he brings in ways of reading the Psalms that have been left somewhat out in the cold in contemporary evangelical writing. Read it, use it. Overall, a great resource.
I have a few of gripes though. I'm hopeful these may be improved upon in the second volume, however.
Firstly: using the dominant image of Jesus as our choir leader, Ash repeatedly states that we "join in" with Jesus' songs and prayers; but he doesn't really lean into what that means. He (rightly) takes Psalms out of our mouths, and puts them into Christ's - but it feels as if he often doesn't then put them back into our mouths with a sense of what they now mean for us. It's clear how they're the prayers of the head, but not always clear how they then become the prayers of the body. What, cognitively, should be going on in the mind of a Christian as they join in with Christ's words in the Psalter? There are snippets of answers, but nothing focused enough.
Secondly: a similar problem, Ash seems to often skip over what the Psalms would have meant for the Old Testament believers who sung them in the temple. His line of interpretation usually goes: David--->Christ--->Church. He makes David's foreshadowing of Christ, and his inability to measure up to all the "standards" of the Psalms, really clear; but this skips over the question of what Israel would have made of all that. This is no minor thing, as David wrote the Psalms for Israel, his last great work in life as he established the temple's music ministry in Chronicles before he died.
Thirdly: perhaps related to the second problem, this book falls down hugely in the lack of attention given to the use of the Psalms in corporate worship. I imagine this wouldn't cross the mind of most readers of Proc Trust resources, but it's so key! The objection may be made that this is a book about teaching the Psalms, so of course it focuses on preaching, but that is a profound misunderstanding of how psalms work. One of the principal ways to teach the Psalms is to learn the Psalms! Corporate reading of the Psalter is given a brief mention on almost the last page, as something that happens in "one church" which Ash knows of. Ash says at the start of the book that he's reclaiming an older way of reading the Psalms, but he undermines that venture by not focusing more on psalms in worship. If the great Psalms commentators of previous eras were around today, they'd be more baffled by the absence of the Psalter in corporate worship than they would be by our exegesis of it.
So I'm very glad that this has been published! I was excited to hear about this, having read Ash's Job: The Wisdom of the Cross commentary in the Preaching the Word series, and been hugely helped by his handling of wisdom literature there. This did not disappoint!
I'd make this a go-to book if I were introducing someone to teaching the Psalms. In fact, the vast majority of this would be useful for anybody looking to understand the Psalms, as only the last (somewhat shorter) part deals with teaching. So much to recommend - chiefly, the way in which he ties our reading of the Psalms to Christ in a way that actually honours the weird warp and woof of the Psalm texts, rather than glossing over the details to get to Jesus. If you've read widely on the Psalms, Ash doesn't say anything new, but he brings in ways of reading the Psalms that have been left somewhat out in the cold in contemporary evangelical writing. Read it, use it. Overall, a great resource.
I have a few of gripes though. I'm hopeful these may be improved upon in the second volume, however.
Firstly: using the dominant image of Jesus as our choir leader, Ash repeatedly states that we "join in" with Jesus' songs and prayers; but he doesn't really lean into what that means. He (rightly) takes Psalms out of our mouths, and puts them into Christ's - but it feels as if he often doesn't then put them back into our mouths with a sense of what they now mean for us. It's clear how they're the prayers of the head, but not always clear how they then become the prayers of the body. What, cognitively, should be going on in the mind of a Christian as they join in with Christ's words in the Psalter? There are snippets of answers, but nothing focused enough.
Secondly: a similar problem, Ash seems to often skip over what the Psalms would have meant for the Old Testament believers who sung them in the temple. His line of interpretation usually goes: David--->Christ--->Church. He makes David's foreshadowing of Christ, and his inability to measure up to all the "standards" of the Psalms, really clear; but this skips over the question of what Israel would have made of all that. This is no minor thing, as David wrote the Psalms for Israel, his last great work in life as he established the temple's music ministry in Chronicles before he died.
Thirdly: perhaps related to the second problem, this book falls down hugely in the lack of attention given to the use of the Psalms in corporate worship. I imagine this wouldn't cross the mind of most readers of Proc Trust resources, but it's so key! The objection may be made that this is a book about teaching the Psalms, so of course it focuses on preaching, but that is a profound misunderstanding of how psalms work. One of the principal ways to teach the Psalms is to learn the Psalms! Corporate reading of the Psalter is given a brief mention on almost the last page, as something that happens in "one church" which Ash knows of. Ash says at the start of the book that he's reclaiming an older way of reading the Psalms, but he undermines that venture by not focusing more on psalms in worship. If the great Psalms commentators of previous eras were around today, they'd be more baffled by the absence of the Psalter in corporate worship than they would be by our exegesis of it.
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Comments
Post a Comment