The Psalms form the largest collection of one of the most unique genres in the biblical canon, namely, the genre of music and poetry. Evangelical Christians tend to overlook this genre for several reasons. In our post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment Western thinking, most believe that the more didactic parts of Scripture are more important because they are full of logical and propositional statements. Some think that poetry and music are somewhat less masculine. It’s a completely unorthodox version of music, worship, and masculinity. Most men would not like to meet King David in a dark alley; again, the greatest poet and composer this world has ever seen! Biblically speaking, we see a strong connection between singing, poetry, and masculinity. There are still those who do not realize the unique qualities of Hebrew poetry and music. For example: does Hebrew poetry tend to “rhyme”? thoughts and themes, rather than rhyming the sounds of words, although he does too. Is it for these and other reasons that we often have difficulty reading biblical poems or songs? Not to mention a book with 150 of them!
At the same time, and in a unique and culturally schizophrenic way, we are obsessed with devotion and specialized literature, we want chicken broth for our souls, the study manual for women and the devotional guide for men for the evangelization of golf. The food buffet has fewer options than a Christian bookstore has extrabidal devotional materials.
- We are a culture obsessed with devotion.
- One step back on canonical poetry.
- Do you begin to see the problem?Two changes in the Christian church have greatly contributed to the way Christians neglect psalms as devotional material.
First, Christians now have access to the Bible in a way they have never had before. From the printer to the mobile phone app, Christians increasingly have access to the Word of God. We must note that this is a wonderful gift from our kind God. But we must also consider how much the way the Christian community approaches the Bible has changed: until the Bible became present in all households and on all mobile phones, the predominant access to God’s foolproof word for the common Christian passed through the liturgical components. , especially the sung parts, of Christian worship. And until a few centuries ago, it was a diet composed almost exclusively of psalms.
Second, Christians in the last two millennia of the church of the new covenant are singing fewer and fewer psalms; there’s no way I’m against singing outside the psalter; I think we should include them in the directory, but so is it. It is undeniable that the singing of psalms is in decline in Christian worship, not at its peak.
So we have a number of things that work together. We have Christians obsessed with devotion and opposed to poetry who interact less and less with psalms in worship. It may be that these aspects of my caricatured assessment of evangelism resonated with you and that he likes to incorporate psalms into his life of devotion. How do you do that?
1) Find a plan to read the psalms. Your first step is to find a plan to read the psalms. A quick Internet search can be all you need to find the one you love. The advantage of reading psalms successively in, say, a month, is that they are not consecutive, so if you can’t do any of the readings, you can start where you left off without having to skip some parts. You can even read a single psalm a day and read all the psalms twice a year.
2) Use resources that show Jesus in the psalms. As important as finding a reading plan and following it is finding resources that show how psalms indicate Jesus’ person and work. The reasons why this is so important is that the authors of the New Testament regarded psalms as a crucial material in understanding who Jesus was and what He had come to do. There are about 147 direct references to psalms in the New Testament. There are almost the same number of psalm quotations in the New Testament. How there are psalms in the psalter! Psalms are fundamentally mesianic.
3) Mark your copy of the psalms. If there is a book in the Bible that deserves much to be marked or emphasized, it is the Book of Psalms, why not link the above suggestion to it and mark the 147 References of the New Testament?
4) Pray the psalms. That’s the key. Psalms are basically sung sentences. You may not be a psalm singer (see next point), but you should definitely be a psalm speaker. As you read the psalms, read them aloud, paraphrasing them as your own prayers. it will help you develop a healthy prayer life that uses Bible themes and vocabulary itself.
5) Sing the psalms. It’s a little harder if your church doesn’t do that or if you’re not very musical, but it’s also possible to find good resources on the Internet to help you do it.
6) Read the Psalms with others. Finally, reading the Psalms with others gives you a deeper perspective as you discuss what you are learning. If you’ve found a great book, why don’t you invite a friend to do it with you?Knowing that others are reading the same Psalms at the same time or in the same days can be a unique and uplifting practice.