praying like the psalmists

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 10: God is Love

July 13, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

(If you are stumbling across this for the first time, you may want to start at the beginning of the series and work your way through the links at the end of each post. Or check out the index for this entire series of posts. We’ve learned so much about the psalmists and their relationship with God. I hope today’s is no exception.)

God is Love

A popular modern approach to God as revealed in the Bible is to change God between the testaments. Folks look at the God of the Old Testament as a harsh, legalistic, sometimes mean, sometimes brutal, judging God. Then they come to the New Testament and say all that has changed. Now, God is a God of love. He doesn’t judge, He is never harsh. He just wants us to know how much He loves us.

However, that doesn’t mesh with the Psalmists view of God at all. Despite the brutal judgment God sometimes administered, the Psalmists were completely sure that God was a God of love. The psalmists mention God’s love 123 times. Consider just a few of the statements.

God’s steadfast love is precious (Psalm 36:7).
We enter His house through His steadfast love (Psalm 5:7).
He delivers us for the sake of His steadfast love (Psalm 6:4).
He is merciful and forgets our sins because of His steadfast love (Psalm 25:6-7).
His steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts Him (Psalm 32:10).
His steadfast love endures all day (Psalm 52:1).
God answers our pleas because of His steadfast love (Psalm 69:16).
His steadfast love holds us up when we think we’ll slip (Psalm 94:18).
His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 100:5).

This story of God’s love crescendoes in Psalm 136. Here the Psalmist repeats “For his steadfast love endures forever” 26 times. In fact, this was most certainly a liturgical psalm used in public assemblies and worship for the Jews. The priest or officiate would say the first line of each couplet and the congregation would shout the refrain–“For his steadfast love endures forever.” What an amazing experience that must have been, hearing the entire congregation praise God for his love as the stories of God’s love were repeated to them.

No doubt, the psalmists were sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes hurt, sometimes angry, sometimes lonely, sometimes joyful, sometimes bitter. But they always knew God loved them.

How can we not pray to a God whose steadfast love for us endures forever, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what we’ve done?

Whatever you do today, don’t forget–God Loves You!

(I think we’re going to take a little break from this study of the Psalms. But keep your eyes open, in a few weeks we’ll get back to them and start learning to look at ourselves the way the Psalmists did.)

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 6: God is King

June 15, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

Mondays have just been tough for the past two months. One thing and another have kept the Spiritual Springboard from being published, but I’m back in the saddle with our look at Praying Like the Psalmists.

Or check out the index for this entire series of posts.

As we examine the psalms with prayer in mind, we’ll analyze, categorize, and subdivide the psalms. We’ll look at words and phrases. We’ll examine figures, pictures, and illustrations. We’ll learn a great deal. However, the first step to praying like the psalmists has little to do with their forms and figures. It has to do with their relationship with God. If we want to pray as they did, we need to believe in the God they did.

We have already seen that they believed God is, God is the creator, God is my creator, God is the source, and God is the judge. In addition to all this, God was the king of the psalmists.

This is especially impressive considering one of the main psalmists was King David. While the psalmists recognized their earthly king and even wrote psalms about him and his place before God (e.g. Psalm 18:50; Psalm 20:9 et al), they still understood that the true and ultimate King was God.

Psalm 2 demonstrates this. The king of Israel was on the throne only because God on His throne in the heavens placed him there. Go set the king on the holy hill of Zion.

However, God was not simply king of Israel. He is the king of the universe and everything in it. Psalm 95:3 demonstrates this absolute superiority and sovereignty, saying, “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” Why pray to Jehovah when their neighbors prayed to their pantheon of gods? Because Jehovah is the king. Even if those other gods actually existed, Jehovah is the absolute ruler of all things. Why settle for minions. Go straight to the source, the ruler, the king.

Don’t misunderstand. The psalmists were absolutely anchored in their belief that those other gods didn’t actually exist. Psalm 86:10 addresses the Lord, “For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God.” There are no others.

Finally, God was not simply the king out there in the heavens with some kind of ethereal rule over the universe. God was king of the psalmists.

“Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.” – Psalm 5:2

“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.” – Psalm 84:3

“I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.” – Psalm 145:1

As King, God had the right to tell the psalmists what to do. He was an integral part of their lives. At the same time, as King, He was their protector, their deliverer, their guide. God was not just out their in the heavens; He was part of their life. He was their King.

If we want to pray like the psalmists, we must let God be King in our lives.

(Come back next Monday to learn more about the psalmists’ relationships with God. Learn to pray to God the rock, fortress, and mighty tower.)

2 Reasons We Don’t Have to Pray Exactly Like the Psalmists

March 23, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 13 Comments

(Check out the index for all the posts in this series.)

Praying Like the Psalmists

“The only way to understand the psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying the words of the psalms with all its strength”—Deitrich Bonhoeffer.

I’ve spent a good bit of the past several months studying the Psalms as a guide for prayer, praise, and worship. I completely agree with Bonhoeffer’s sentiment. I think most of us do. Our modern hymns demonstrate we believe the best way to use and understand the Psalms is in prayer and song. Consider some of our modern songs:

“As the Deer” from Psalm 42
“This is the Day” from Psalm 118
“The Lord’s My Shepherd” from Psalm 23
“How Majestic is Your Name” from Psalm 8
“Unto Thee O Lord” from Psalm 25
“I Will Call Upon the Lord” from Psalm 18

The list could go on, but you see the point.

Having said this, there is still part of us that is overwhelmed at the thought of using the Psalms as our guide for prayer. There are 150 of those psalms to go through. On top of that, sometimes the psalmists use phrases with which we are unfamiliar. Like greeting cards, the Psalms often sound good to us when we read them, but they don’t seem to fit us when we actually say them. Not to mention, there are just some ways in which the psalmists speak that seem almost blasphemous. I’ve read some psalms (e.g. Psalm 88) that make me want to change locations when I’m done for fear that lightning will strike where I was standing.

Thus, there is a huge part of us that wants to pray like the psalmists. At the same time, there is a part that doesn’t. With that in mind, I’m going to devote our Monday spiritual springboard to prayer and the Psalms for a while. But, I want to begin in an odd place. I want to first set our minds at ease where we don’t want to pray like the psalmists. Hopefully, as we consider these things we can relax as we look to the Psalms and not be so overwhelmed. Then we’ll be free to gradually learn as much as we can about prayer from the Psalms.

Today, I want to show you 2 of the 4 reasons we don’t have to pray exactly like the psalmists. Next week, we’ll wrap up the other 2 reasons.

2 Reasons We Don’t Have to Pray Exactly Like the Psalmists

1. The Psalms are part of the Old Covenant not the New

Despite the usual practice of Bible printers to include the Psalms when they publish a pocket New Testament, the Psalms are not part of our covenant or the law of Christ. They are part of the Old Covenant law. Note John 10:34. While debating with the Jews, Jesus said, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?” Jesus quoted from Psalm 82:6. I certainly recognize the Psalms were not written as a legal code. I understand they are not part of the decalogue. I see that they are not written with “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.” Nevertheless, Jesus demonstrates they are part of that Old Covenant.

In Hebrew 7:12, we learn when there is a change of priesthood, there is a change of law. We are no longer under the levitical priesthood. Rather, we are under the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Our priesthood has changed, so has the law.

Romans 10:4 says Christ is the end or goal of the Law. When Christ came, He fulfilled the Law. He superseded the Law. It is no longer our pattern and guide for glorifying God.

Having said that, don’t forget Romans 15:4, which explains we can learn from what was written even in the days of the Old Covenant. I’m not suggesting tossing out the Old Testament. That would be silly. In fact, we cannot possibly understand the New without learning from the Old. We just need to keep the Old in proper perspective. Now that the Messiah has appeared, we are no longer under the schoolmaster/tutor/guardian (cf. Galatians 3:19-29).

The point being that we can learn from the Psalms, but we can be relieved from the idea that they are somehow the universal pattern for all praying for all time. We can learn timeless principles about prayer, praise, and worship from them. But we are not seeing our pattern for how to glorify God under the New Covenant.

Let me show practically why this is important. Psalm 5:3 says, “O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” If we want to pray, do we have to offer the morning sacrifice? If we have to pray exactly like the psalmists, we do. But this is not our pattern. Rather, we learn from this psalm within its Old Covenant context that sacrifice is what grants us access to pray to God. However, under the New Covenant, killing an animal is not how we glorify or draw near to God. We know Jesus is our sacrifice whose blood brings us into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-22). See from this how we learn from the Psalms timeless principles about prayer and praise but we do not follow them as our Law and guide for prayer.

2. The Psalms were written using a culturally appropriate genre, not a universal guide for all praying everywhere.

To claim we can only pray like the psalmists, would be akin to claiming we could only ever speak about judgment in apocalyptic. We would be taking a culturally appropriate genre and mandating it as the guide. In that case, we would be missing the real point in the Psalms. The real point is not that we have to use the psalmists’ genre to pray. Rather, we need to learn the lessons God revealed through that genre.

The genre of the Psalms is not an exclusively biblical genre. In fact, it is not even an exclusively Hebrew genre. Many scholars have pointed out that this exact genre was used among the Egyptians and Babylonians of the same time period. The genre of the Psalms is not the universal guide for the only way to pray or even the best way to pray. It was simply a form of prayer used at that time and God used that culturally appropriate genre to reveal His servants’ proper response to Him.

Some are thinking I’ve gone off the deep end and turned into a liberal theologian here. That is not the case at all. Isn’t this what God did with all of the Bible? He used people within their culture, in their background, their styles, their language, and revealed His will through that. That’s all I’m saying God did with the Psalms. He did not use this genre to say this is the only way to pray. He simply revealed His will through the background and culture of the people of that time.

We do not have to become masters at Hebrew parallelism, chiasm, or other characteristics of this genre in order to pray properly. We do not have to use the exact forms and phrases. That was all part of their culture. We have a different culture with different forms.

Consider one example. Psalm 102:1-2 says, “Hear my prayer, O LORD; / let my cry come to you! / Do not hide your face from me / in the day of my distress! / Incline your ear to me; / answer me speedily in the day when I call!” I have a very hard time with this or even remotely praying to God like this. In my culture, I should at least say, “Please.” I can imagine telling my kids, “Listen up!” like that, but I can’t imagine talking my parents like that, let alone my God.

What is happening here? It’s all about culture. Apparently, in that Old Testament culture and in the culturally appropriate genre, this could be said without concern. While I’m sure it is perfectly legitimate at the base level to recite this psalm in prayer, culturally, I’ll never feel comfortable demanding God listen to my prayer. Do I have a lack of faith? Am I weak because I don’t pray like the psalmists in this regard? No. I’m in a different culture. We have different means by which we show respect.

Consider an illustration. In John 19:26, Jesus addressed His mother saying, “Woman, behold, your son!” I wouldn’t remotely encourage modern sons to call their mother, “Woman,” just because Jesus did it. All by itself, it must not be wrong. But in our cultural context it is considered inappropriate and disrespectful. I think we need to consider the same point when we address God.

Wrapping Up

We are going to learn a lot of great information from the Psalms about praying. I can’t wait for us to discuss this and learn from each other as we converse about praying. But I hope we can set our minds at ease. We don’t have to pray exactly like the psalmists to go to heaven. We can relax and take as long as we need to learn from the psalmists.

Make sure you come back next Monday when we’ll wrap up this part of our Psalms study with two more reasons we don’t have to pray exactly like the psalmists.

Let me know what you hope to get out of discussing the Psalms. That will help guide where we go with this.

Praying Like the Psalmists: An Index

March 22, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 8 Comments

I hope you enjoy my series on praying like the psalmists. For easier navigation, I have added this index or table of contents so you can jump to whichever post you want to study, whenever you want to study it.

Please return to this index weekly. As each new post is added, a new link will be placed in this post.

Why We Don’t Have to Pray Just Like the Psalmists

Introduction to the Series and 2 Reasons We Don’t Have to Pray Just Like the Psalmists

2 More Reasons We Don’t Have to Pray Just Like the Psalmists

Believing in the God of the Psalmists

God is My Rock, Redeemer…

God is My Shepherd

God is Near

God is Love

Praying like the Psalmists

February 2, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

For centuries, Christians have looked to the psalms as a guide for prayer. No wonder, the raw emotion of the Psalms provides something for everyone no matter their situation or setting in life. Whether you are blessed beyond compare with health, wealth and salvation or you feel cursed and forsaken, the Psalms have prayers to echo what is in your heart.

Even Jesus relied on the Psalms in His prayers, quoting the laments of Psalm 22:1 and Psalm 31:5 while on the cross. In my recent studies of the psalms, I have learned so much about prayer and praise. However, the number one point I’ve learned is tattooed across the pages of these writings. If we will ever pray like the Psalmists, we must see God as they did.

God is My Rock…

Whether the psalmists were ascending to heaven or making their bed in Sheol (cf. Psalm 139:8) they could pray because they were utterly dependent on God. Psalm 18:1-2 describes it extensively.

“I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

The amazing thing about Psalm 18 is this psalmist had been near death and in distress. Yet, he called upon the Lord? Why? So many in this place feel God has abandoned them and decide to abandon God. Why did this psalmist keep praying? Because no matter how he felt, he knew deliverance could only come from God. No matter what he was facing, he relied on God and surrendered to God. Instead of assuming God had to do everything his way on his time, he simply trusted God to take care of him on God’s time table. So, he kept crying out to God.

The Example of a Distressed Psalmist

Consider Psalm 10:1, 4. The psalmist begins saying:

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide ourself in times of trouble?”

Listen to this psalmist. I remember after Bette Middler made the Julie Gold song “From a Distance” famous the many well meaning Christians who seemed to rebuke everyone by saying, “If God is watching from a distance, who moved?” That seems meaningful and spiritual to us, but this Psalmist would have said, “God did and I’m begging Him to come back.” This violates our sensitivities. We know Hebrews 13:5-6, which says God never forsakes us. Therefore, we fear taking up this psalmist’s cry in our prayers. We see this as despair and doubt which lead to sin. However, that is not how they are pictured in Psalm 10.

This psalmist actually contrasts the wicked and the righteous. The contrast is not that they feel God is not watching. The psalmist starts his lament with that feeling. Then he describes the wicked in Psalm 10:4-11. In vs. 11 the wicked justifies his sin by saying, “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” Just like the psalmist, he believes God hidden Himself. The difference is seen in Psalm 10:4. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.'”

Did you see the difference? In this psalm both the righteous and the wicked believe God has hidden his face. The wicked takes that feeling and decides God is not watching. He decides God must not exist. He uses this as justification to sin. The psalmist, on the other hand, feeling that God is hiding starts to seek for Him. By the end of the psalm, he lets his faith overrun his doubts and feelings. Even though he feels like God is hiding, he knows by faith God does see and will act. Psalm 10:14-15 says:

“But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.”

Why can this psalmist whose feelings are covered over with so much despair that he will accuse God of hiding pray this prayer? Because he truly believes God is king forever (Psalm 10:16). Because, despite his feelings in the moment, he truly believe God hears him and will act based on his prayer (Psalm 10:17). Though he doesn’t use the terms found in some other psalms, like Psalm 18:1-2 noted above. The sentiment is the same. Even in his despair he can pray because God is his rock, his refuge, his redeemer.

The Springboard for Our Spiritual Lives

These are not sentimental terms to fill our praise songs. They are whole-hearted beliefs that anchored the psalmists no matter what was happening to them and no matter how their situation made them feel. Since God was their rock and refuge, whether times were good or bad, they could rest in Him. They could cry out to Him. They knew He was there. They knew He would listen. They knew He would act. Perhaps not on their time table. But He would deliver.

When we have that faith, we will pray like they did.