I still remember the place where my love for poetry died.
Humans are born with a love for poetry. They first appear as nursery rhymes or the rhythmic cadence of a children’s book. It progresses into simple songs and then animated Disney movies. As teenagers, we shift to poems set to music. Everyone loves poetry, and I did too. Until.
As a college freshman, I was forced to read Beowulf, that epic old English poem, and by epic, I mean long and boring and extremely difficult to understand. I know it is one of the greatest works of English literature, but I hated every 3182 lines of it. Poetry was dead to me, and that included biblical poetry. I avoided the book of Psalms like Beowulf and focused on the New Testament epistles like every good Christian should.
But recently, and I hate to admit how recently, the Lord broke through my foolish childishness.
Recognizing the psalms for what they are
The Lord opened my eyes to see that the psalms were confessions of God’s people hammering out their faith in the real world. These ancient prayers weren’t ivory tower poems; they were battlefield memoirs. They dealt with real problems, trials like I face every day.
Some days, life was good and the writers of the psalms delighted in God’s sovereignty and provision with words that helped my heart to sing. But many times, life was rough and they poured out their complaints to the Lord, again giving my own heart words to say to God. Through it all, they combined deep confessions of who they believed God to be with painful words and questions about His seeming absence. Again, words my heart needed.
Psalms as
My eyes were opened to the riches of these psalms, but God was not done with me yet. The next step was some simple guidance that I found in Donald Whitney’s little book, Praying the Bible. He recommended a systematic approach for praying five psalms each day. I wasn’t quite ready for that, so I stole his formula but simplified it. Instead of praying five psalms each day, I would pray one psalm a day. But I followed his idea of praying the psalm that corresponded with the day of the month. When I reached the end of the month, I would add 30 to the day of the next month, and so on. For example, on June 1, I would pray through Psalm 1. On July 1, I would pray Psalm 31. On August 1, I would pray Psalm 61, and so on until I reached the end of Psalms and started over with Psalm 1.
The systematic reading and praying of the psalms liberated me from the “what should I read this morning” struggle that plagues us all. But God wasn’t done with me yet.
Deeply examining these ancient prayers
Next, I had to learn how to pray through the psalm instead of just reading the psalm. One can read the psalm like fine poetry, but if you do, you will miss the incredible beauty and power of these songs. I learned to read them analytically and then pray through them. For each psalm, I would ask questions like these:
- What is the crisis driving this psalm? What’s the problem?
- What does the psalmist believe to be true about God?
- How is the psalmist’s faith being tested?
- What is the psalmist feeling?
- In light of the psalmist’s faith struggle, how is he expressing his faith in God?
By analyzing the prayer, I began to see these ancient prayers were really about very modern problems. They struggled with the prosperity of the wicked and suffering of the righteous. They struggled with enemies and betrayal. They struggled with unanswered prayers and waiting on God. And through it all, they continued to trust and find refuge in the very God they were frustrated with. Ancient prayers, but very modern problems.
Every psalm is fulfilled in Christ
I was moving in the right direction, but still not quite there. I was praying the psalms daily, systematically and analytically, but still incompletely because I needed to read the psalms through the lens of Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of every prayer in the psalms. Our heart cries for justice are fulfilled in Christ. Our desire for a Good Shepherd is fulfilled in Christ. Our longing for the perfect king is fulfilled in Christ. All of our waiting and longing and hoping finds its “Amen” in Christ.
I finally arrived at what I call the Spiritual Discipline of Praying the Psalms. Daily. Systematically. Analytically. Christ-centered.
Spiritual disciplines are those habits that we practice to put ourselves in the flow of God’s grace. By themselves, they may not do much, but they put us in a position where God can do great things. Disciplines like daily Bible reading, Scripture memory, prayer, fasting, corporate worship, and giving are just a few examples. And the spiritual discipline of daily praying the psalms has blessed me greatly these past few years.
How to pray the psalms
Daily. Why do we need to pray the psalms daily? Perhaps we can think of it like this: We only need to pray the psalms on a day where we might encounter a challenge to our faith, where we might battle a spiritual enemy, where we might face an injustice, where we might struggle with an unanswered prayer, or where we might experience something painful. Otherwise, we won’t need the psalms. Tongue in cheek, I know, but we need to pray the psalms every day.
Systematically. Why not just pick and choose a psalm? Why read them consecutively? Eugene Peterson, in his book Answering God, advocates for reading the psalms consecutively as a means for letting God speak first. His image is of the choirmaster, the one who picks the song and leads the choir to sing the song of his choosing. By letting God speak first, prayer becomes “answering speech.” In our answer, we have plenty of time to talk to God about what we want to talk about, but by letting God speak first, He gets to pick the song.
Analytically. Why stop and analyze the song? Why not just read it once and get the big picture? Breaking down the prayer is where we see the psalmists hammer out their faith. What is the crisis? What do they believe about God? What are they feeling? Where is their faith being tested? How can they still trust God? When we answer these questions, they begin to lead us in prayer as our faith is being tested, as we have doubts, as we feel abandoned.
Christ Centered. Why think about how this prayer leads us to Christ? Why not just let this prayer stay in the Old Testament? The simple answer is that Jesus said that everything written about Him in the Psalms was fulfilled (see Luke 24:44), so for us to look to see how every ancient prayer in Psalms is ultimately fulfilled in Christ is obeying Jesus. Praying the psalms leads us to hammer out our faith in Jesus in the real world.
The Spiritual Discipline of Praying the Psalms is nothing new. Eugene Peterson didn’t invent it, neither did Donald Whitney or even the monks who have been praying the psalms daily for hundreds of years. The people of God have been doing this for thousands of years.
Have I developed a love for poetry? No. Have I developed a love for hammering out my faith in the real world? Absolutely.
This article originally appeared at Southwestern Seminary’s Equipped the Called.
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