The Art of Prayer
Where do our joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, triumphs and tragedies, meet with the plans and purposes of God? How do the day-to-day realities of our lives intersect with the story of God’s rescue? The book of Psalms teaches that prayer is where we bring our lives into conversation with God and prayer is where we explore our place in His story.
The Book of Psalms, located in the center of the Bible, is composed of 150 poems and songs. The authors of the Psalms, the psalmists, used these works of art to capture their emotions and experiences. They crafted psalms that confess their deep trust and others that express their simmering rage. They wrote psalms of delight and despair, of triumph and defeat, of past deliverance and future hope.
But the Psalms are more than a diary cataloging the psalmist’s thoughts and feelings. They are prayers. The psalmists brought their lives into conversation with God because they believed God was near, attentive, and responsive. This conviction–that their prayers mattered to God–was an inherited belief. Generation after generation of their ancestors had called upon God, relying on his guidance, deliverance, and care. And time and time again, God had proved faithful.
There is no more dramatic example of God’s faithful response to prayer than the Exodus. As the people of God endured centuries of slavery, their trust in God’s promises prompted them to pray. Deuteronomy 26:7-8 says it this way: “Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.”
God heard the cries of his people. He received their prayers and He acted in response, bringing them out of Egypt and into the promised land. This legacy of prayer undergirds the whole of the Psalms. The psalmists believed that their lives were meaningful to God, and that God gave meaning to their lives. With that confidence, they turned to God in prayer– whatever the circumstance. And as they looked back on God’s previous works of deliverance, they also looked forward, awaiting the promised King who would bring the fulfillment of all of God’s promises.
This summer, we will look to the Psalms as a guide for our own prayer. In this light, they instruct us in the practice of prayer. Yet, we will also be inspired by their beauty. In this light, they are like a piece of fine art. They are at once a masterclass and a masterpiece. They simultaneously instruct us and captivate us.
Our prayer is that through this series, we will be better able to bring the whole spectrum of our lives into conversation with God, entrusting our joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, triumphs and tragedies into His hands. And we trust that the same hope which sustained the psalmists will also sustain us and give us hope in Jesus, who is the promised King.
May 25, 2025
Psalm 1
June 1, 2025
Psalm 51
June 8, 2025
Psalm 23
June 15, 2025
Psalm 22
June 22, 2025
Psalm 16
June 29, 2025
Psalm 73
July 6, 2025
Psalm 107
July 13, 2025
Psalm 8
July 20, 2025
Psalm 49
July 27, 2025
Psalm 25
August 3, 2025
Psalm 63
August 10, 2025
Psalm 119
August 17, 2025
Psalm 150
Table of Contents
Meeting God in the Psalms
The wide array of prayers in the psalms gives a broad view into the character of God. Old Testament scholar, Paul House, writes that “no other Old Testament book has the theological and historical scope that Psalms displays. As a theological document, the book embraces the full range of biblical confessions about the Lord’s character, activity, and concerns. Here God is called Creator, sustainer, protector, Savior, judge, covenant maker and restorer.”
These confessions of God’s character emerged from the lived experiences of the psalmists. God was called upon as judge by a psalmist suffering injustice. God was praised as creator by a psalmist in awe of the night sky. God was reminded of his covenant by a psalmist waiting for God to deliver on His promises. And God was petitioned as Savior by a psalmist crushed under the weight of sin.
This is a model for us to follow. In every moment we are invited to ask: what does God have to do with this? How might He impact our work or our rest? How is He relevant to our family or friends? What can we share with God in times of joy and what do we need from Him in times of sorrow? Prayer is a way for us to grow in our understanding of God.
The Transforming Power of Prayer
Prayer is not just about moving God to change our circumstances. It is also about God’s work to change us. In Psalm 40 we read a wonderful example of this.
I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
David, the author of this psalm, captures both how God changes his circumstances, moving him from slimy pit to solid rock, and how God changes him, putting a new song of praise in his mouth. This knowledge should shape our prayers as we ask God to be at work both around us and in us.
Jesus in the Psalms
A central theme of the Psalms is the arrival of the long-promised King. The psalmist’s prayers are rooted in God’s covenant promises, and at the core of those promises is the messiah. But at the time the Psalms were written, Jesus had not yet come. The book of Hebrews says this about the Old Testament saints: “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” This means that the Psalms are full of waiting, longing, and hoping.
As people who live on the other side of the incarnation, we can read the Psalms in two ways. We can put ourselves in the position of the psalmists, identifying with their longing and waiting, seeing their prayers through their eyes. But we can also look back, seeing how God answered their prayers–in ways both expected and unexpected–through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus .
This means that there is a mutually informative relationship between Jesus and the Psalms. The Psalms help us understand Jesus, and Jesus helps illuminate the truest meaning of the Psalms.
Poetry in the Psalms
The language of the Psalms is poetry. Ada Limon describes the power of poetry this way: “One of the biggest things about poetry is that it holds all of humanity. It holds the huge and enormous and tumbling sphere of human emotions.” And Robert Frost puts it like this: “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and thought has found its words.”
This understanding should shape our reading of the Psalms. While we can learn theology and history from the psalms, while we can study and dissect them, we must first receive them as what they are: poems. These are works of art meant to express the “huge and enormous tumbling sphere of human[ity]” that each of us embodies.
The main poetic quality of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, where one line carries the same theme as the previous line. While this structure can be used to create contrast, it is most often used to create emphasis. As people trained to read critically, we may examine the parallel lines to find subtle differences. And from time to time, that might be proper. But most often, we should treat parallelism as a tool that allows us to see the same idea from multiple angles, like standing in different places when looking at a sculpture.
CS Lewis makes a wonderful observation about the fact that parallelism is a poetic device that does not disappear when translated: “It is (according to one’s point of view) either a wonderful piece of luck or a wise provision of God’s, that poetry which was to be turned into all languages should have as its chief formal characteristic one that does not disappear (as mere metre does) in translation.”
Structure of the Psalms
The book of Psalms is structured in five sections. Each book has a larger theme, and there is a progression through the five books that map the story of salvation history. Old Testament Theologian, Paul House describes the larger themes this way:
Psalms 1-41: The God Who Instructs, Elects, and Delivers
Psalm 42-72: The God who Establishes and Protects
Psalm 73-89: The God who Rebukes and Rejects
Psalm 90-106: The God who Remembers and Sustains
Psalm 107-150: The God Who Renews and Restores
As you read through Psalms, you will see headings that mark the transitions from one section to the next. For example, between Psalm 41 and 42 you will see this: Book II. This indicates the move from section one to section two of the Psalms.
Many individual Psalms also have a heading. They are written after the Psalm title, but before the first verse. Most Bibles put them in italics. Some of the headings name the Psalms author or historical setting. Other headings give instruction for the music and instrumentation that should accompany the Psalm. These headings are found within the text of Scripture, and can inform our reading of the Psalms. For example, the heading of Psalm 51 says this: For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
This context enriches our understanding of Psalm 51 as we recognize the gravity of sin being confessed and the depths of David’s shame.
Ways to Engage this Series
There are a few ways you can engage in this series, beyond Sunday. First and foremost, spend time reading and praying the Psalms. We recommend reading one Psalm each day, reading it slowly and reflectively.
Another great option is using a Psalm as an inspiration to write your own poem of prayer. For example, you could rewrite Psalm 23 in your own words.
Resources
Reflections on the Psalms –CS Lewis
Prayer -Tim Keller
Practicing the Presence of God –Brother Lawrence