Praying with Jesus: Praying the Psalms
Praying with Jesus: Praying the Psalms
“Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Ephesians 5:18-20
Have you ever felt like your prayers were old and stale?
You can categorize prayers into the two categories of “prayers from the heart” and prewritten prayers.
Prayers “from the heart”
The idea of what some people call “praying from the heart” is that you pray what’s on your heart rather than something that is prewritten. These can be excellent prayers sometimes, and certainly, God encourages us to bring everything that is on our hearts to Him. However, sometimes it’s good to pray a prewritten prayer and can actually be quite refreshing.
Why Prewritten Prayers?
The reason I keep putting “praying from your heart” in quotes is that the name implies that we aren’t praying from our heart if we pray a prewritten pray. This isn’t true. In fact, there are many good reasons to pray prewritten prayers.
It provides some help – The truth is that while praying from the heart sounds great, sometimes people struggle to do it. They feel like they don’t know what to pray. This can especially be true when you’re asked to pray with or in front of others. A prewritten pray can help you through those times.
It gives new ideas – Another reality of praying from the heart is that often our prayers become repetitive. Time after time, we find ourselves praying the same things. There’s nothing wrong with this, but there may be some things to pray for which you never think about. A prewritten prayer can make you aware of new things to pray for.
It gives new language – Similar to what I wrote above, when praying from the heart, our prayers can not only pray for the same thing over and over, but we may find that we use the same words. This may not only be true from one time praying to the next but even multiple times in the same prayer. Prewritten prayers can give us new words and new ways of praying for things.
The Lord’s Prayer
The most common prewritten prayer people pray is the Lord’s prayer. It is absolutely wonderful that Jesus gave us this prayer which, though simple, includes everything we need to pray for.
Praying the Psalms
Not only did God give us the Lord’s Prayer, but He also gave us an entire book of the Bible for our prayers. The book of Psalms is used by many as a prayer book. It gives a variety of words and topics to pray. It also gives us different ways to pray, such as praise, confession, lament, and requests.
Give it a try.
In fact, here’s a good Psalm to start with.
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
-Psalm 8
Amen.
In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Kurt