Hello VE readers. How was your spiritual life in 2012?Specifically, how was your life of prayer in 2012?We did a survey with you some time ago and the answers were:
Apparently, most of you pray regularly, it’s really good!To be clear, isn’t it worth answering? If you pray only to eat (laughs). Anyway, we want to help you pray more and better in 2013.
- Have you ever stopped to think that God inspired an entire book of prayers in the Bible?Yes.
- We’re talking about the Psalms.
- Your answer is probably: “Yes?And you may very much like Psalms for their ability to express the full range of our feelings (victory.
- Praise.
- Confession.
- Crying.
- Etc.
- ).
- However.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
- In the Booklet Praying with the Psalms.
- Draws attention to something else (something I had not yet noticed):.
So if the Bible also contains a prayer book, it teaches us that God’s Word doesn’t just include the word that God addresses to us. It also includes the word that God wants to hear from us in order to hear us, because it is the word of his beloved Son. What immeasurable grace: God tells us how we can speak and have fellowship with him! And we can do this by praying in the name of Jesus Christ. Were the Psalms given to us to learn to pray in the name of Jesus Christ? (Praying with the Psalms, p. 13)
That is, the fact that the Psalms (and this applies to other biblical prayers, such as the Our Father, Paul’s prayers) are inspired means not only that God was speaking to us, but also that God was talking to us about how we should be. He talks to him, Bonhoeffer says:
“As we repeat God’s own words, we begin to pray to Him, we do not pray with the erroneous and confusing language of our hearts; but by the clear and pure word god has told us through Jesus Christ, we must speak to God, and He will listen to us (Praying with the Psalms, p. 11)
How to pray in the midst of trouble? Pray like David. How to confess your sins? Pray Psalm 32 (for example).
Let us be clear, however, we are not only talking about repetition to win God’s favor (which Jesus forbade in Matthew 6). We talk about the same thing you do when you sing a song: you make someone else’s words your true praise. God also make the Psalmist’s words your prayer.
There is much to talk about, but Franklin Ferreira touched very well on the subject in his article “The Use of Psalms in Christian Devotion”. We recommend reading.
Other texts we recommend would be
We will talk more about prayer in 2013, but we would like to provide you with three calendars to help you pray to the Psalter in 2013, each with a different length. The first one prays the 150 psalms in 1 month, the second in 3 months and the third in six, if you have never prayed for the psalms, I would recommend you start at 3 months, it has a psalm that you have to pray for in the morning. and another at night (but you can do it at any time you want; however, it is interesting to do it twice and not both at the same time). If your life is very busy, consider the 6-month schedule.
Then briefly read the psalm for the day, understand and meditate on it, then pray the psalm with your words. If something comes to mind when you pray, just include it in your prayer. As for the understanding of the psalm, don’t go directly to the application in your life. First, see how this psalm is fulfilled in Christ, then apply the psalm to your life through Christ (read more about this in? Preaching Christ in the Old Testament?). For example, Psalm 23: “the Lord is my Shepherd. ” This psalm is one of the true psalms, to which King David prayed and, therefore, it is a psalm that David’s son also prayed. Reflect on how Christ went through trials by trusting God, and how, through his death, we are called to be his shepherd’s flock. Then apply the confidence to say: The Lord is my Shepherd? the tribulations of your life. And pray for that. Don’t just ask. Praise Christ for what he has done and for who he is. Pray for your meditation on how Christ fulfills this psalm.