Praying the Psalms: An Invitation to Intimacy
Back in January of 2020, as I began to dream about what my next music project might be, I felt inexplicably drawn to the Psalms. So, armed with an ESV Scripture journal, a commentary from Derek Kidner, and a few other resources, I set out to study and meditate on the Psalms one by one. Little did I know how difficult the next few years would prove, nor how this book of ancient prayers would sustain and guide me as I weathered the coming storm.
By March of 2020, the COVID pandemic had swept into our city and across the world. Feeling unmoored from my usual rhythms and unsure of how to process, I found my practice of meditating on a new psalm each day anchoring, giving me words to pray when I had none of my own. The Psalter came alongside me again in late 2020, as the world began to open up after COVID and I eagerly jumped back into the busy-ness of music and everyday life. After many busy years of ministry and music, I had begun to feel burned out, weary, angsty and even cynical, and the Psalms helped me pray through the gamut of emotions swirling in my head and heart.
And then, toward the end of 2021, my dad passed away unexpectedly after failing to recover from routine heart surgery. Watching his weeks-long struggle and decline in the ICU and seeing death up-close felt like drowning, wave upon wave throwing me against a rocky shore. Once again, the Psalms brought comfort and guidance as I struggled to pray and process.
This book of ancient prayers invited me into an immersive conversation with God, giving me a prompt and pattern for prayer and a model for how I could bring him every emotion and experience. The Psalms extend that same invitation to you.
“The Psalms set the table for an immersive, transformative conversation with a God who desires for us to be intimately acquainted with him. ”
The Psalms As Immersive Practice
In their devotional The Songs of Jesus, Tim and Kathy Keller write, “We are not simply to read psalms; we are to be immersed in them so that they profoundly shape how we relate to God…. they are written to be prayed, recited and sung—to be done, not merely to be read.” James W. Sire echoes this in Learning to Pray through the Psalms, reminding us that the Psalms should not be approached for the mere gleaning of knowledge or principles, but as a practice to inhabit.
All of Scripture is alive, active, and useful as a bridge into conversation with God. But the Psalms are uniquely designed to help us relate to him. Perhaps this is why the rabbis of ancient Israel read a psalm every day in the synagogue, or why The Book of Common Prayer recommends reading through the entire Psalter every 30-60 days (and then starting over!). The Psalms set the table for an immersive, transformative conversation with a God who—through the gracious work of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit—desires for us to be intimately acquainted with him.
The Psalms As a Prompt and Pattern for Prayer
For me, the discipline of reading and studying the Bible has always come easier than the discipline of prayer. My personality type loves the concreteness of Scripture. I geek out over discerning patterns and meaning in the biblical text and in seeing how each story connects to the Bible’s bigger, overarching Story. Prayer on the other hand feels more abstract and nonlinear. From my evangelical upbringing, I knew the A.C.T.S. pattern of prayer—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication—and found it generally helpful. But at times, it felt rigid and seemed to fall short. What exactly should I adore and praise God for today? And must I always check the adoration and confession boxes before I pray over a pressing need?
Meditating on the Psalms and praying them back to God in my own words has helped me bridge the gap between the discipline of prayer and the discipline of reading the Bible. Psalm 136, for example, gives me words of adoration for a God whose steadfast love endures forever, helping me praise him for his wondrous work in creation, his mercy in delivering the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, and his mighty power in leading them to victory after victory all the way to the Promised Land. Psalm 51, on the other hand, begins straightaway with confession of sin and a request for mercy in light of God’s character. And Psalm 59 gives yet another pattern for prayer, diving headlong into a desperate cry for deliverance.
In other words, there are countless ways to pray, and countless reasons to praise God. A psalm can prompt us to begin, catalyzing our worship, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication and giving us a myriad of meaningful patterns to follow. Soon enough, we are praying freely and in our own words.
As Eugene Peterson writes, the Psalms are always “directing and shaping the prayers of Christians into fluency. They do not do our praying for us—they cannot be mechanized into a prayer wheel—but they get us praying when we don’t feel like it, and they train us in prayers that are honest and right. They are both encouragement to pray and patterns of prayer.”
“The Psalms show us that it is right and good to bring all our authentic emotions to God in prayer. ”
The Psalms Train Us to Process with a God-Facing Orientation
Joy. Shame. Thanksgiving. Fear. Trust. Anger. The Psalms express the gamut of raw, human emotion. An iPhone commercial from many years ago became a meme with this catchy tagline: “there’s an app for that!” At the risk of sounding overly cheesy, whatever you are feeling today, know this: “there’s a psalm for that.” John Calvin wanted to call his 1557 commentary on the Psalms An Anatomy of the Soul because “there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”
The Psalms show us that it is right and good to bring all our authentic emotions to God in prayer. They invite us to come to him, raw and unfiltered, in every circumstance we face. The Psalms demonstrate how an honest, angry prayer can also be humble and God-oriented, or how the act of prayer itself can reshape our fear and worry into praise. Moreover, we remember that the Psalms were intended for corporate use, bidding us to bring our unmasked selves to church and to our Christian community. Our only mistake would be to refuse the Psalms’ invitation, bottling up our emotions or attempting to handle what we are facing in our own strength.
The Psalms have been a companion for me in many seasons, helping me process my feelings through a God-facing lens. “Send out your light and your truth” from Psalm 42 (and the accompanying Sandra McCracken song) became an anchoring prayer for me during a season when I felt misunderstood. As I have struggled in recent years with bouts of anxiety, I wrote the song Psalm 131 as a prayer for a quiet heart and trusting disposition; how I long to be like a weaned child regulated by the calming presence of her mother. Just before recording the Psalms album, I wrote a song with a family from my neighborhood in mind, based on the dark lament of Psalm 102; their young daughter had died, and they had turned to this psalm in their grief.
Responding to the Invitation of the Psalms
Whether we find ourselves rejoicing in the heights or stumbling through the valley of the shadow of death, the Psalms can give us words to pray and even sing, channeling our raw emotion into a relational, transformative conversation with a loving God. Let the Psalter be a prompt and pattern as you seek his face, a compass as you process your joys and sorrows, and an anchor to steady you against the storms brewing dark on the horizon. Accept the invitation of the Psalms like you would an invitation to a feast: Simply sit down at the table and let the rich conversation begin.
Practical Helps for Praying, Singing, and Meditating on the Psalms:
The Songs of Jesus, by Tim and Kathy Keller
Psalms Bible Study by At His Feet Studies
The Psalms Playlist on Spotify, curated by Caroline Cobb
Psalms 1-72 and Psalms 73-150, commentaries by Derek Kidner
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