Praying Through Psalms

MY PRAYER FOR YOU is that this psalm will become a wonderful song of trust that you return to again and again. As you pray through it, rest in God's presence within and without. I pray that you know Jesus as your fortress and that your faith will not be shaken. If, as you have prayed this psalm, the Lord has brought to your mind places or people or things that you have put your trust in that a...

SO OFTEN WE FORGET to cry to God for help. We agonize over our troubles or set out to solve them on our own. Emotions overcome us, and we have no peace because we forget we have a Father in heaven who cares about every detail of our lives. What troubles have you hesitated to offer to God or forgotten to cry out to God about? Cast your burdens on him and rest in his sustaining love.

THE FOURTH SET of beads says, "Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make hast to help me." I have discovered that when the Lord delivers me from fear, or I have repented of a sin and feel much lighter, there is a sense of having "a new song put in my mouth by the Lord." Indeed, I walk with a new lightness that results in a hymn of praise in my heart. It is good to recall...

DEAR FRIENDS, WE ARE IN HOLY WEEK. I can think of no finer Psalm than Psalm 51 to pray through during Holy Week. Whether you pray this Psalm first thing in the morning or last thing at night it is a Psalm to meet our Lord in and ask him for our greatest need, to be washed from iniquity and cleansed from sin. I encourage you to attend Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and of course Resurr...

TODAY IS MONDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. I hope you have found a rhythm for Lent that has brought you nearer to our Lord. Praying a Psalm that leads us to repent is good for our daily lives, but certainly in Lent. I find it is a sweet way to close out my day. Psalm 51 provides a way to repent and to ask for the things the Lord longs to give to us: cleansing from sin, his presence, joy in hi...

THE PSALMIST BEGINS this prayer with a beatitude. "Blessed is the one" who is forgiven. As we press into this second week of Lent, a time of repentance, it is good to recall that we are forgiven, that our sin is covered by the blood of Jesus. We are Blessed when we are Christ's own. Paperback copies of 'Praying through Psalms,' can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Prayin...

TODAY IS MONDAY AFTER THE FIRST Sunday in Lent 2024. I invite you to begin or end your day by praying this prayer of repentance...'According to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my inquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.' All of these verses give a clear picture of what it means to be...

TODAY IS ASH WEDNESDAY the beginning of Lent. For the next 40 days the church prepares for Easter. I invite you into a Holy Lent, a time of self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, giving to worthy causes and reading and meditating on God's Holy Word. I will begin each morning in Lent by praying through Psalm 51 a prayer of the penitent, pray with me...repent with me.

THE FIRST VERSE of Psalm 34 always causes me to reflect, for the Lord's praise is not continually in my mouth. Sometimes I am led to repentance -- but always it is my prayer that it would be so, that his praise will be continually in my mouth. The Psalmist quickly gives a reason why the Lord is to be praised: "I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears."...

THIS HYMN is full of faith statements. The first set of beads says, "He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord." Sometimes it is difficult to see that the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord, so we need to take a closer look to spy out his faithfulness. Spend some time this week meditating on the truth that God is steadfast, that...

THE PSALMIST BEGINS this prayer with a beatitude, "Blessed is the one" who is forgiven. In verse 3 he takes us to the notion that as long as he kept silent and did not repent, he wasted away. When we continue in sin, we waste away; but when we repent, how blessed we are to walk in the knowledge that God forgives us. Psalm 32 is a good place to recognize that the voice of the Psalms often...

THE VERSE in the Cruciform Beads is core to our faith: " The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1). Place your fears in Jesus's hands. Imagine yourself doing that. After you put your fear in his hands, watch. What does Jesus do with your fear? If you are new to praying with beads you can learn more about them by returning to the introduction in this podc...

WHAT A GREAT WAY TO BEGIN THE NEW YEAR, CRYING OUT TO GOD FOR HELP!! Nothing is left out of this magnificent lament: to you I lift up my soul, let me not be put to shame, teach me your paths, make me to know your ways, remember your mercy, bring me out of my distresses, consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Amen. What part of this psalm will you carry with you today? Will...

PSALM 24 BEGINS with the reminder that "the earth is the Lord's;" he created it, he sustains it, he saves it, and he is the earth's owner. He is also the Creator of all who live on the earth. We depend on the Lord of heaven and earth because we live in his world. The gates and the "everlasting doors" the writer of this psalm is referring to are both the entrance to the...

PSALM 23 IS WRITTEN IN METAPHOR. When we look with our Christian lens, we easily see Jesus in this poem written so long ago. This poem can be both personal and a remembrance of how God cared for the nation of Israel. In John 10:11 Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd." Christians know that Jesus restores our souls and leads us in the way of righteousness. Jesus is with us in our troubles,...

BOTH PSALM 19 AND PSALM 119 instruct us that the Word of the Lord is the best place to learn the sacred way of living. James L. Mays says of this psalm, "The world (gives witness) to God. The creation manifests the glory of its creator. The psalm offer us...a vision of poetic imaginative personification. It is based on the notion, not uncommon in biblical thinking, that every created thing ha...

THIS IS ONE of my favorite psalms. I hope you will read the whole psalm and savor the hyperbole. Consider the second set of beads: "He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy." Your strong enemy could be a life event, emotions that are disproportionate to the circumstances in your life, or even a spiritual power of darkness. Imagin...

THE THIRD SET of seven beads in the psalm says, "keep me as the apple of your eye." Do you have trouble believing you are the apple of the Father's eye? If so, begin journaling phrases and verses in the following meditations that confirm this is true. Remember that Christ died for you and allow yourself to enjoy the truth that God has deemed you worthy of that sacrifice. Indeed, only...

PSALM 13 is the shortest prayer for help in the Psalter. It provides a wonderful framework for our cries to the Lord. It begins with "How long, O Lord?" I find I often approach the Lord in this way Usually my enemy is my own sin, sin I have struggled with in varying degrees for years. The Psalmist continues with what will happen if the Lord does not rescue him. He closes with wonderful s...

Dear Friends, I am re-releasing the psalms from 'Praying through Psalms...' Thank you for praying with me in this selection prayers. In Psalm 6 you will find the psalmist describing flooding his bed with tears, you may or may not relate to this particular description of being woken in the middle of the night. But anxious thoughts may wake you in the night and cause your heart to mourn, the...

THE PSALTER concludes with this: "Praise the Lord!" I leave this for all of us then: Praise the Lord!! Where will you praise him? Why will you praise him? With what will you praise him? PRAISE THE LORD!!

"ONE GENERATION shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts." We have been given the sacred trust of being a generation that passes on the faith, the knowledge of the One True God, Maker and Keeper of the earth. Ask the Lord for his guidance in passing on the faith. You can find Praying through Psalms A Guide for Contemplative Prayer Using Anglican Prayer Bead...

IT IS OFTEN DIFFICULT for us to believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet, this is exactly what the Lord would have us know about our creation. James Mays says that Psalm 139 is a 'doctrinal classic because it portrays human existence in all its dimensions in terms of God's knowledge, presence, and power. It reflects an understanding of the human as enclosed in divine reality...

REMEMBERING is a major theme in the Old Testament. In the Psalms we have the liturgy passed on to us in order to remember that God created and God saves. Think of your journey of faith. What are the stones of remembrance in your own life? What stories do you find yourself retelling? Ask the Lord to bring to mind those stories of remembrance you may have forgotten, or perhaps did not, at the time,...

PSALMS 120 THROUGH 134 are called the Songs of Ascent. These songs were sung when the people were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Jerusalem sits at an elevation of about 2,700 feet, thus the idea of ascending, going up to Jerusalem. The Psalms of Ascent are filled with assurances of faith and the joy of expectation in going to the house of the Lord, as in Psalm 122:1: 'I was glad when they said to...