As one reads the Psalms one knows they are songs, yet it is obvious they are prayers and we often use them in our prayers, as our prayers. And when we see or remember that, we are struck by how prayer (and praise) flows out of a wonderment with God as He has revealed Himself to us.
And when we read the psalms, when we sing the Psalms, prayer seems to come naturally to us as we get caught up in the prayer of the various Psalmists. Which of course is why many believers over the centuries often turn to the Psalms as the pray – not only in quoting them in prayer but to start their own hearts to prayer. They are very helpful in ‘priming the pump’ when the discipline of prayer seems hard, when our souls feel dry.
I have yet to meet a believer who never struggles with prayer, not even this one as he looks in the mirror. We are all failures in some sense when it comes to prayer. We all fall short. It is all too possible even in the regular discipline of prayer to be prayerless, merely being good in the discipline, going through the motions.
But I don’t say these things to place a burden of practice upon you, or to make you feel guilty by neglect. I am very conscious in my own life how easy it is to get the melody of prayer backwards – thinking that our prayer lives gain us merit with God. As a result, when we are faced with the reality of our prayerlessness, we often feel guilty or get depressed. Salvation, however, is completely dependent on God, and the Christian life is no different.
As Michael Reeves explains “Prayer . . . is enjoying the care of a powerful Father, instead of being left to a frightening loneliness where everything is all down to you. Prayer is the antithesis of self-dependence”
No, prayer is primarily, in the first instance and a continual expression of faith. John Calvin calls prayer “the chief exercise of faith.” Where does faith come from? From “hearing the Word of God” (Rom 10:14-17). That’s why reading the Psalms is so helpful – you are reading the Word, being confronted with the glory and grace of our God, His mercy and lovingkindness, being driven to the God of the Word. And the same happens wherever you are in the Word. God’s Word points us to God, to Christ and to the Gospel – and here we have cause to praise, enablement to lament, encouragement to petition great things from His heart and hand.
The first question as we read the Word is Lord what are you showing me about Yourself? That will naturally lead to prayer in one or more of its many facets. “We should long that our eyes might be opened to see the beauty of the Lord and that we might be drawn afresh to want him—and then prayer is simply the articulation of our heart’s response.” (Michael Reeves).
With this approach let us encourage one another in prayer.
Zechariah 8:21 –
The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying,
“Let us continue to go and pray before the Lord,
And seek the Lord of hosts.
I myself will go also.”
I am looking forward to meeting you often at the throne of grace, to find you there ahead of me, to find you joining one another in prayer, to being together on the Lord’s Day in prayer and praise fed and shaped by God’s Word and enabled by God’s grace in Jesus Christ.