Do you desire deeper communion with God? A more vibrant prayer life? Help for when you ‘just don’t feel like praying’? Sandwiched in the middle of your Bible—the book of Psalms—is the help you seek! From the days of the Church Fathers, through the Middle Ages, and into the Protestant Reformation, the Psalms have shaped the prayers of the saints. “Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian Church. With its recovery, will come unsuspected power.” [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible]
Bonhoeffer encourages us to pray through the Psalms, in the sequence handed down to us from Israel’s temple: start today, by praying through Psalm 1; tomorrow, move on to Psalm 2; keep praying until you reach the end of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ of Psalm 150; and then do it all over again. Why pray through the Psalter, and why in sequence? Here are seven solid reasons:
- The gift of a daily habit. You don’t have to decide, What should I pray for? Or how should I pray? Instead, you simply pick up your Psalter, and begin from where you left off yesterday, with the next psalm, trusting in the God-given process.
- The Psalter gives you inspired words to recite back to God when you don’t know what to say.
- The Psalms embolden you to be honest with God. The psalmist is shockingly blunt with his emotions, and with his doubts and fears. [E.g., the fourfold “How Long?” of Psalm 13:1-2.]
- Oftentimes, our prayers are reactive and human-centered. We pray in response to a problem that arises. And our petition reduces to, “Give us this day our daily bread”. Instead, praying the Psalms will lift our eyes to God-centered, doxological concerns (without ignoring the material concerns!)
- Praying the Psalter gives us sense of spiritual progression, and participation in God’s redemptive story. Each day, we pray the next psalm, and so get closer to the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ crescendo at the end of the Psalter. We journey from lament (Psalms 3—7), through varied upswings and downswings, until we arrive at the ‘New Jerusalem’ of doxologies (Psalms 146—150). The Psalter ties us into the entire Bible. The Psalms constantly reverberate with the rest of Scripture: the Law of Moses; temple, priesthood, and sacrifices; ancient Israel’s journey [Exodus to Wilderness to Inheritance of Canaan; Exile and Restoration]; Messianic prophecies.
- The Psalms connect us to Christ (in many and remarkable ways): Paul wrote, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly . . . as you sing psalms” [Colossians 3:16]; Jesus said, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and Psalms” [Luke 24:44.]
- Praying the Psalter roots us deeply in the Church (“the communion of saints”): the monks of old chanted the Psalms throughout the day; our Scottish Presbyterian forefathers set the Psalms to meter, and sang them in church.
If you have never experienced the Psalms as the Prayerbook of the Church—I invite you to try!
– Dr. Adrian Smith