Learning to Pray with the Psalms
Do you struggle to Pray?
I’ve always wanted to grow in prayer. Even before I began to follow Jesus, I understood that prayer was essential to the Christian life. But as I started walking with Him, I found prayer myself struggling to pray consistently.
Going to church was easy. Daily Bible reading came naturally. But prayer… prayer has always been the place where I’ve felt the least content.
A few years ago, I learned that historically the Psalms have been referred to as the “prayer book of the Bible.” That surprised me. I had always thought of the Psalms as the “hymn book of the Bible”—something for singing, mostly for worship leaders and musicians.
But when I discovered that the Psalms had been used throughout history as guided prayers, and I began praying them myself, my prayer life changed dramatically.
My prayers went from short, reactive, and mostly petition-based to more developed, intentional, and formational. Instead of being centered on my experience and desires, my prayers became oriented around Christ—His world, His will, His word.
As a church, my prayer is that through our time in the Psalms, our prayer life would expand and mature.
Lord, Teach us to Pray
When we come to the Gospels, we find that prayer is central to the life and ministry of Jesus. The disciples witnessed this firsthand. They watched Him pray and recognized that prayer was not peripheral—it was essential. And the only thing we are told they explicitly asked Him to teach them was this:
“Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1
Prayer & the Psalms
From childhood, Jesus prayed the Psalms. In fact, all observant Jews did. The Psalms were, and still are, the prayer book of the Bible. For centuries Jews prayed the psalms corporately on the Sabbath and at synagogue. On the cross, Jesus was praying different psalms. In the earliest gatherings of the Church, believers prayed various psalms together (Acts 1; Acts 4).
The Psalms were never meant to be read only. They were meant to be prayed.
We believe that all Scripture is inspired by God. God speaking to His people through the prophets and apostles. But in the Psalms, something unique happens. The direction of communication is, in a sense, reversed. The Psalms are Spirit-inspired prayers spoken by human authors to God. God is speaking through the prayers of His people—back to Himself. And in doing so, He teaches us how to pray.
It’s worth noting that the Psalms are not God affirming every emotion expressed within them. Take Psalm 137, for example. It ends with:
“Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” Psalm 137:9
This is not God’s instruction to commit violence against innocent children. It is an imprecatory psalm—a prayer arising out of deep suffering and a longing for justice (more on this later in the series). What the Holy Spirit shows us here is not what to do with our enemies, but what to do with our raw emotions.
We bring them to God. Even our hate. Even our grief. Even our desire for justice.
The Psalms teach us that nothing in our hearts is off-limits in prayer, but everything must be directed to God and ultimately shaped by Him.
The Psalms give us language for every season of life—joy, grief, fear, anger, gratitude, and hope. They train us to bring all of life before God. Eugene Peterson writes:
“In prayer we intend to leave the world of anxieties and enter a world of wonder. We decide to leave an ego-centered world and enter a God-centered world.”
Prayer is not escaping reality. It is reorienting reality around God. And that’s exactly what the Psalms do. They give words to human experience, yet faithfully draw our desires and emotions back toward Him.
Psalms & The Lord’s Prayer
If the Psalms already existed, why did the disciples still ask Jesus how to pray?
Because the way Jesus prayed was different. He prayed to God as Father. Jesus showed the disciples that the foundation of a prayer is relational union with the Father. In response, Jesus gives them the Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”Matthew 6:9–13
The Lord’s Prayer does not replace the Psalms. It summarizes them. Everything the Psalms teach us to pray is captured here—praise, dependence, confession, hope, and trust.
The Psalms give us the language of prayer, and Jesus gives us access to the Father in prayer. He alone is the One who restores us to God, sympathizes with our weakness, and shows us that relationship is the foundation of prayer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:
“The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter, and now it has become his prayer for us.”
When we pray the Psalms, we are not just reading ancient prayers. We are stepping into the prayer life of Jesus Himself.
Prayer is non-negotiable for those who follow Jesus. And the Psalms are our guide. We don’t begin with perfect words. Like a child learning to speak by listening to their parents, we learn to pray by listening to the Holy Spirit through the words of the psalmists.
Before we speak, we listen.
And in doing so, we learn to pray.
