Going Vertical

When I'm overwhelmed by the horizontal perspective of daily living, it's time to go vertical using the Psalms.  How the Psalms Verticalize Our Lives by Dane Ortlund at Crossway

Slow Down. Calm Down. Look Up.

The Psalms let us slow down in our very fast-paced lives and commune with God, meditating on who he is. They train us in verticalizing our lives.

So we’re going through our lives and everything is horizontal—our lives in general are lived on this horizontal plane. But the Psalms help us live life mindful of God. In other words, they help us live in an ever-prayerful way, in a way that is worshipful, in a way that brings every adversity to God, and in a way that brings every joy and thanksgiving to God.

This verticalizing of our lives calms us down and helps us live moment by moment in a way that is trusting the Lord and at peace with him.

Psalm Immersion

Time for a good Psalm soak!  Reasons To Soak Yourself In The Psalms by Chris Bruno at TGC

Just before Thanksgiving in 2015, I was having lunch with a friend, and we were discussing how we teach our kids the gospel. He mentioned he was focusing on the Psalms since he realized the current generation of Christians might be the least “Psalms-literate” generation ever.

As I reflected later, his point hit home. For centuries faithful Israelites read, sung, and memorized the entire Psalter. Jesus likely knew all 150 Psalms by heart. For generations stretching back thousands of years, the Psalms have been the hymnbook of God’s people. Indeed, until recently, being part of the church for any length of time meant regular and systematic exposure to the Psalms.

So I decided to read through the Psalms once per month for a year. As I did, my eyes were opened to fresh depth and richness. Here are four reflections.

1. The Psalms are messianic.

From the blessed man who delights in God’s law (Ps. 1) to the Anointed One cast off and rejected (Ps. 89) now sitting at God’s right hand (Ps. 110), the Psalms tell the story of God’s people in the first person singular.

And this story finds its true meaning and ultimate fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus the Messiah. As we read the Psalms, Jesus’s sorrows, victories, and saving reign ring clear. If we are united to him, we share in all those experiences. The Psalms becomes our hymnbook and our prayers because they were first his hymnbook and his prayers.

2. The Psalms teach us God’s people have always suffered.

One of the central threads running through the Psalms is that Israel and her king must continue trusting their God in the face of suffering. Psalm 88 is the only one without a turn toward hope; it reminds us that some days will be bleak, and relief may not come quickly.

Psalm 2 teaches us that throughout history the earth’s kings will take their stand against the Lord and his anointed. He who sits in heaven laughs at everyone who opposes him, and his people will ultimately experience deliverance. This is why Jesus’s lament on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1), is an expression of hope that God has not hidden his face, but has heard his anointed’s cry and answered him (Ps. 22:24).

3. God’s promise of redemption is not far from the surface in the Psalms.

The Messiah suffered in hope because he knew his suffering was the way God would redeem his people from slavery to sin and death.

As you read through the Psalms you’ll see repeated pictures, symbols, and reminders of God’s salvation for his people and judgment on his enemies. For example, Psalm 78 tells the story of God’s unrelenting faithfulness to rescue the Israelites from Egypt and bring them into the land he promised. Although they continued to rebel, God chose David to shepherd his people—and through the greater David, the Lord would one day redeem them.

Again and again, the Psalms point Israel back to God’s mighty works in the exodus (Pss. 18:20; 80:8; 105:37; 136:11). And these reminders anticipate the second exodus, when God would deliver his people from slavery to sin and death through the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

4. The Psalms remind us of God’s sovereign glory and call us to praise him.

The Lord is the sovereign ruler over everything: “Our God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3). Because of this, he is worthy of all praise and glory.

God will redeem his people through the Messiah, and this should drive us toward worship. I think this is why the Psalms close with a crescendo that is an increasingly loud call to praise (Pss. 146–50). We encounter an almost deafening cry to praise the Lord with trumpets, tambourines, dancing, shouting, and crashing cymbals. The book ends with the summons for everything that has breath to praise the Lord (Ps. 150:6). When we see God’s sovereign glory and salvation through the suffering of his Messiah, there is no other fitting response. 

Enrich Your Life

After spending a year getting to know the Psalms better, I couldn’t agree more with N. T. Wright’s conclusion that, while we should compose new hymns and songs, “to neglect the church’s original hymnbook is, to put it bluntly, crazy.”

If you don’t know the Psalter well, try spending a month or two or 12 in the Psalms. To read the Psalms in a month you’ll need to read about five per day. Most are pretty short, which should leave time for prayer, reflection, and reading elsewhere in the Scriptures.

Even on the day you read the 176 verses of Psalm 119, it won’t kill you.

Let’s join with God’s people through the millennia and again learn to sing the songs of the Messiah.

Praying the Psalms

Loved this post at Crossway Books called How To Pray Through The Psalms by Matt Tully. It was adapted from Praying the Bible by Donald S. Whitney. 

The Book of Praises

As a whole, the psalms comprise the best place in Scripture from which to pray Scripture. I base that on the original purpose for which God inspired the psalms. The book of Psalms—which means “book of praises” in Hebrew—was the songbook of Israel. The psalms were inspired by God for the purpose of being sung to God.

It is as though God said to his people, “I want you to praise me, but you don’t know how to praise me. I want you to praise me not because I’m an egomaniac but because you will praise that which you prize the most, and there is nothing of greater worth to you than I. There is nothing more praiseworthy than I, and it is a blessing for you to know that. It will lead to your eternal joy if you praise me above all others and above all else and to your eternal misery if you do not. But there’s a problem. You don’t know how to praise me, at least not in a way that’s fully true and pleasing to me. In fact, you know nothing about me unless I reveal it to you, for I am invisible to you. Therefore, since I want you to praise me, and it is good for you to praise me, but since you don’t know how to praise me, here are the words I want you to use.”

In other words, God gave the Psalms to us so that we would give the Psalms back to God. No other book of the Bible was inspired for that expressed purpose.

The “Psalms of the Day”

In light of this, I want to commend to you a systematic approach for praying a psalm each day. The approach did not originate with me, but I can’t recall where I first encountered the concept decades ago. It’s called “Psalms of the Day.” If you intend to pray through a psalm, using the Psalms of the Day approach helps you avoid thumbing through the middle of your Bible, randomly searching for a psalm that looks interesting. Too often, such an inconsistent process results in omitting many of the psalms. It also can slow your devotional momentum as you find yourself aimlessly meandering through chapters instead of praying.

With the Psalms of the Day you take thirty seconds or so to quickly scan five specific psalms and pick the one that best leads you to prayer on that occasion. It’s based on taking the 150 psalms and dividing them by thirty days (because most months have at least thirty days). That results in five psalms per day.

Or to put it another way, if you were to read five psalms a day for an entire month, at the end of the month you would have read through the entire book of Psalms. While reading five psalms a day is a great practice that many enjoy, that’s not what I’m advocating here. What I’m suggesting is that you take half a minute to quickly scan five psalms and pick one of those five to pray through.

If bringing math into prayer is making you skeptical, stay with me; I’ve created a simple, printable prayer guide that visually conveys all you’ll need to understand what I’m trying to describe.

Download my free Psalms of the Day Prayer Guide and start praying the Bible today!

"They Call Me The Wanderer...."

Why God Loves It When We Lose Our Way: An Argument For Wandering by A. J. Swoboda

The Psalms are deeply rhythmic.

Psalm 22 is a case in point. When we read the Psalm, we are often shocked to discover a kind of back-and-forth, bifurcated description of the path of faith. For example, David, the author, speaks in the first two verses of God’s seeming absence—“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Then, almost without blinking, David goes into ecstatic praise of God in verse 3 and 4. As if that weren’t enough, David returns to his lament—“I’m a worm, not even a man.” Then, again, back to praise and exaltation.

The piercing truth of this Psalm is found in the fact that, first, the author is deeply in touch with his emotions—a fact that remains deeply crucial for any person on the path of Jesus. These Psalms reflect—in the words of an Old Testament scholar—a kind of “free speech” before God

Truth be told: if someone came into most of our churches and spoke about God the way Psalm 22 speaks about God, we would think they need Prozac.

Such is a reflection on our uncanny and unrelenting unwillingness to admit most of our faith is quite fickle. This kind of fickleness is not isolated to Psalm 22. Look at the crowds in Jesus’ approaching to Jerusalem. In one chapter, they cry His praises—“Welcome to Jerusalem. You are the coming King, glory, glory, come!” Almost before the words of praise are out of their mouths, they turn immediately to kill Jesus in the next chapter. What was “Hosanna” quickly turns to “Crucify him, crucify him.”

In so many of the stories of wandering in the Bible, wandering is itself a narrative instigated by God.

We are the crowds. We are the fickle ones.

Consider for a moment what it would have been like for the reader of the Psalms to get through Psalm 22 and then read Psalm 23, a Psalm marked by beauty, grace and anticipation of God’s rest and grace. Life is like that, isn’t it? We walk through Psalm 22 and turn the corner to find a Psalm 23 experience. That is faith. That is what is like to follow Jesus.

C.S. Lewis picks up on this fact. When describing the rhythmic nature of the “poetic parallelism” as found in Psalm 22, Lewis is quick to point out that there is something about our attempts at following God in the rhythm itself. He calls Hebrew poetry like that found in Psalm 22 “a little incarnation.” His point? This kind of back-and-forth, topsy-turvy, unpredictable fickleness isn’t just the ramblings of a biblical lunatic—there is something about God in that rhythm.

Why is this all important? What does this all matter?

In my new book The Dusty Ones: Why Wandering Deepens our Faith, I contend that wandering isn’t always bad or a result of the lack of faith. Quite the opposite. In so many of the stories of wandering in the Bible, wandering is itself a narrative instigated by God. In fact, Hebrews 12 goes out of the way that to say all of the “cloud of witness”—our heroes of the faith—were killed, hated, sawed in two and never found a home. They “wandered” because “this world was not worthy of them.” Wandering, for them, was part of the God path.

God loves it when we lose our way. Not because He is mean. God is not mean. God is loving, gracious and really in touch with what is going on in us. No: God loves it when we lose our way because in losing our way we ultimately gain something.

A sufferer, a wanderer, a person who has yet to arrive, has a better time reading the Psalms because the Psalms are written by people who had not arrived yet. C.S. Lewis, for example, fell in love with a woman named Joy and in the course of their engagement, they discovered Joy had cancer. She died shortly after their marriage. His book A Grief Observed is one of the rawest and revelatory readings on suffering a follower of Jesus can read.

When Lewis read Psalm 22, he points out that Jesus said these words from the cross. And in the fashion of the ancients, Jesus only quotes the first line of the Psalm—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—as a way of saying that all of Psalm 22 was actually about Him. Lewis was struck by something, and we ourselves must take note of it: The Psalmist and Jesus both utter a question to God, “Where are you?” And in both cases, Lewis is apt to point out, no answer ever came.

God loves it when we lose our way because in losing our way we ultimately gain something.

No answer.

Why does God do that? I do wonder, as does everyone in their right mind, why does a good God let so much evil happen in the world in and in our lives? Sadly, the Bible offers no answer to this question. But, a counselor friend of mine told me once that when people who walk through trauma together—in a car accident, survive 9/11, lose a friend together—there is an inseparable bond forged between those two people that almost nothing can overcome.

They call it a “trauma bond.”

I don’t know why God doesn’t always give us an answer to why we walk through what we do. But, I do know that when I am willing to walk through trauma and evil and pain, I come out the other side deeply in love with Jesus. We “get” each other a little more.

Bible Shaped Identities

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How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity byDavid Powlison from Crossway on Vimeo.

Rewiring Our Self-Understanding

We often talk about Scripture as God’s self-revelation. But if every revelation of God is a revelation of myself in relation to God, then all of Scripture is continually in the business of rewiring our self-understanding.

Here are two examples that are particularly stunning and lovely: the Psalms and Ephesians.
The Psalms are one sustained portrayal and expression of an identity that is small before a God whom I both need mercy and refuge from, and a God who is great and worthy of all praise, adoration, and love. The Psalms never explicitly say, “Here’s an identity rejig.” But the whole book of Psalms rejigs your identity—every psalm, every prayer, every hymn of worship.

But my favorite “identity” book is Ephesians. Depending on how you understand the nature of what each sentence says about who you are, there are about fifty different identity statements in Ephesians. Every single one of them connects you to God. If he is Father, I am son. If he is the Holy One, I am a saint. If he is the one who indwells the temple, then I am part of that temple. If he is the possessor who is giving an inheritance to his children, then I am an heir owned by the one whom I will inherit from.

How To Read A Psalm

I have often said that Christians don't fathom the spiritual depth and importance of the Psalms. Here's a little help - How To Read A Psalm via Bible Study Tools

When I have preached on a psalm in a church, some people have mentioned to me that they were familiar with a verse from the psalm but they had not thought about the passage’s overall message. I have often wondered if believers have a good reading strategy for getting the most out of a psalm. With this post, I will point out a reading strategy that focuses on the three-part structure of a psalm (this post is adapted from Ryken’s Words of Delight, 197–201).

First,  the subject is generally contained in the first few verses of a psalm. A psalmist may be responding to a thought, emotion, or a situation. The theme may be stated in different ways. In Psalms 1 the theme is found in the first two verses. The psalmist presents his thoughts from the Law about the blessedness of a godly man. In Psalms 23:1 David’s theme is his theological thoughts about God’s rich provisions for him. In Psalms 11:1-2 David’s theme involves a situation where his trust in the LORD helped him through an apparent assassination attempt. In Psalms 124:1-2 the psalmist presents a situation reflecting God’s deliverance of Israel from an enemy. The controlling themes in lyric poems are found in the early verses.

Second, the development of the subject is the major part of the poem’s structure. The various authors of the psalms generally develop their subject in four ways. The first way is by using contrast. In Psalms 1 the psalmist sets up a contrast between the righteous and the wicked. This contrast emphasizes the blessedness of the godly. David’s trust in the LORD to handle his trial in Psalms 11 is contrasted with the advice to flee from Jerusalem. The second method of developing the subject is through listing items that are associated with the subject. Praise hymns generally catalog God’s characteristics and actions. Another example of this is found in a psalm of confidence, Psalms 23.  In this familiar example, David’s subject of God’s rich provisions for him (Psalms 23:1) is itemized by a number of God’s provisions such as rest, restoration, moral direction, and protection (Psalms 23:2-6). The third manner is by the use of relationship. The subject in Psalms 19 is the majesty of God (Psalms 19:1). David initially shows how nature reflects God’s majesty and then moves to a related item, God’s majesty as reflected in His Word (Psalms 19:7-14). The fourth way is through repetition. The theme in Psalms 133 is the blessedness of Israelites who are united in worship. The psalmist uses various images to develop his theme.

Third, a  psalm is rounded off by its conclusion. This may be in the form of a summation as in Psalms 1:6, “For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.” It may also be in the form of prayer as in Psalms 19:14 or an exhortation as in Psalms 32:11.

Reading a psalm in light of its threefold structure gives us a strategy to better understand a psalm’s overall message. And, as we comprehend each psalm’s overall message, may God grant that they guide us in our worship of him.

Praying Ugly

Does God welcome our "ugly" prayers? Check out Go Ahead: Pray Ugly by Kelly Trujillio:

Sometimes my prayers are ugly—uglier than the ugliest ugly cry you can imagine. Because sometimes I’m a mess. Sometimes I’m overcome with rage or filled with tension or shaken by tragedy. Sometimes I’m just not in worshipful-prayer shape. In fact, sometimes I’m such a mess that I’m not sure I can pray at all.

Thankfully, God, in his grace, accepts us in our brokenness. God welcomes my ugly prayers—and yours too. Scripture is full of examples of raw, honest prayer that was anything but sanitized and exemplary. Have you ever prayed like this?

• “God, don’t you see?!” Have you ever wondered why God hasn’t stepped in to rescue you from ongoing struggles? “O LORD, why do you stand so far away?” the psalmist prayed. “Why do you hide when I am in trouble? . . . Do not ignore the helpless!” (Psalm 10:1, 12).

• “I am so ashamed.” We may be burdened by shame over personal failures or the wrongs we see in our community. “Wash me clean from my guilt,” David prayed. “It haunts me day and night” (Psalm 51:2, 3). And Daniel prayed on behalf of his people, “Our faces are covered in shame” (Daniel 9:7).

• “I’m so angry!” When injustice infuriates us, we may come to God in rage. Consider what may be the ugliest prayer in all of Scripture: “Happy is the one who pays you [Babylon] back for what you have done to us. Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!” (Psalm 137:8–9).

• “I wish I were dead.” “I have had enough, LORD,” Elijah prayed in 1 Kings 19:4. “Take my life.” Another biblical prayer ends by saying simply, “Darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18). Even when everything in you just wants to give up and life feels utterly hopeless, you can turn to God in your desolation.

I think prayer is both the simplest and most difficult of the spiritual disciplines. It’s simple because it’s what our souls need and are naturally drawn toward: communion between creature and Creator. Yet it can be difficult when we’re too distracted, when we lack the will to pray, when we’re unable to muster up any words of our own, when it seems God isn’t answering our desperate pleas.

Are you wondering why God doesn’t seem to be answering your prayers? Read this issue’s cover story in which Diana Stone reflects on how tragedy redefined her understanding of prayer. Struggling to find the words to pray? Consider Joy-Elizabeth Lawrence’s exploration of the value we can find in praying the words of others. Stuck in a rut? Dive into Joy Beth Smith’s collection of creative prayer ideas.

We may come to prayer worshiping or wordless, full of gratitude or ugliness. But whatever shape we come in, God welcomes us.

The Text That Shapes Our identity

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity from Crossway on Vimeo.

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our identity by David Powlinson

Rewiring Our Self-Understanding

We often talk about Scripture as God’s self-revelation. But if every revelation of God is a revelation of myself in relation to God, then all of Scripture is continually in the business of rewiring our self-understanding.

Here are two examples that are particularly stunning and lovely: the Psalms and Ephesians.

The Psalms are one sustained portrayal and expression of an identity that is small before a God whom I both need mercy and refuge from, and a God who is great and worthy of all praise, adoration, and love. The Psalms never explicitly say, “Here’s an identity rejig.” But the whole book of Psalms rejigs your identity—every psalm, every prayer, every hymn of worship.

But my favorite “identity” book is Ephesians. Depending on how you understand the nature of what each sentence says about who you are, there are about fifty different identity statements in Ephesians. Every single one of them connects you to God. If he is Father, I am son. If he is the Holy One, I am a saint. If he is the one who indwells the temple, then I am part of that temple. If he is the possessor who is giving an inheritance to his children, then I am an heir owned by the one whom I will inherit from.

David Powlison serves as the executive director of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation and is a contributor to the ESV Men's Devotional Bible.

Moving On From The Same Old Things

How To Stop Praying the Same Old Things About The Same Old Things by Donald S. Whitney (author of Praying the Bible) HT:Crossway

Our Problem in Prayer
“Empty phrases” are ruinous in any area of spirituality, but especially in prayer. Jesus warned, “But when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

Such “empty phrases” can result from insincerity or repetition. That is, we might pray meaningless, vacuous words because either our hearts or minds are far away.

One of the reasons Jesus prohibited the mindless repetition of prayers is because that’s exactly the way we’re prone to pray. Although I don’t recite intentionally memorized prayers, my own tendency is to pray basically the same old things about the same old things. And it doesn’t take long before such prayers fragment the attention span and freeze the heart of prayer.

The Surprisingly Simple Solution

The problem is not our praying about the same old things, for Jesus taught us (in Luke 11:5-13 and 18:1-8) to pray with persistence for good things. Our problem is in always praying about them with the same ritualistic, heartless expressions.

In my experience, the almost unfailing solution to this problem is to pray through passage of Scripture—particularly one of the psalms—instead of making up my prayer as I go. Praying in this way is simply taking the words of Scripture and using them as my own words or as prompters for what I say to God.

For example, if I prayed through Psalm 27, I would begin by reading verse 1, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Then I would pray something like,

Thank you, Lord, that you are my light. Thank you for giving me the light to see my need for Jesus and your forgiveness. Please light my way so that I will know which way to go in the big decision that is before me today. And thank you especially that you are my salvation. You saved me; I didn’t save myself. And now I ask you to save my children also, as well those at work with whom I’ve shared the gospel.

When I have nothing else to say, instead of my mind wandering, I have a place to go—the rest of verse 1. “Whom shall I fear?” Then I might pray along these lines: “I thank you that I do not have to fear anyone because you are my Father. But I confess that I have been fearful about ______.”

I would continue in this way, praying about whatever is prompted, verse by verse, until either I complete the psalm or run out of time.

A Transformational Method

Praying through a passage of Scripture was the uncomplicated method that transformed the daily experience of some of the most famous men of prayer in history. Both Jesus (in Matthew 27:46) and his followers in the book of Acts (4:24-26) prayed words from the Psalms (from Psalm 22:1, and Psalm 146:6 and Psalm 2:1-2 respectively). Why not you?
Although you’ll pray about “the same old things,” you’ll do so in brand new ways.

You’ll also find yourself praying about things you never thought to pray—things that are on the heart of God.

You’ll concentrate better, and begin to experience prayer as a real conversation with a real person. For the Bible really is God speaking to you; all you have to do is simply respond to what he says.

Praying The Psalms

How to Pray through the Psalms adapted from Praying the Bible by Donald S. Whitney.

The Book of Praises

As a whole, the psalms comprise the best place in Scripture from which to pray Scripture. I base that on the original purpose for which God inspired the psalms. The book of Psalms—which means “book of praises” in Hebrew—was the songbook of Israel. The psalms were inspired by God for the purpose of being sung to God.

It is as though God said to his people, “I want you to praise me, but you don’t know how to praise me. I want you to praise me not because I’m an egomaniac but because you will praise that which you prize the most, and there is nothing of greater worth to you than I. There is nothing more praiseworthy than I, and it is a blessing for you to know that. It will lead to your eternal joy if you praise me above all others and above all else and to your eternal misery if you do not. But there’s a problem. You don’t know how to praise me, at least not in a way that’s fully true and pleasing to me. In fact, you know nothing about me unless I reveal it to you, for I am invisible to you. Therefore, since I want you to praise me, and it is good for you to praise me, but since you don’t know how to praise me, here are the words I want you to use.”

In other words, God gave the Psalms to us so that we would give the Psalms back to God. No other book of the Bible was inspired for that expressed purpose.

The “Psalms of the Day”

In light of this, I want to commend to you a systematic approach for praying a psalm each day. The approach did not originate with me, but I can’t recall where I first encountered the concept decades ago. It’s called “Psalms of the Day.” If you intend to pray through a psalm, using the Psalms of the Day approach helps you avoid thumbing through the middle of your Bible, randomly searching for a psalm that looks interesting. Too often, such an inconsistent process results in omitting many of the psalms. It also can slow your devotional momentum as you find yourself aimlessly meandering through chapters instead of praying.

With the Psalms of the Day you take thirty seconds or so to quickly scan five specific psalms and pick the one that best leads you to prayer on that occasion. It’s based on taking the 150 psalms and dividing them by thirty days (because most months have at least thirty days). That results in five psalms per day.

Or to put it another way, if you were to read five psalms a day for an entire month, at the end of the month you would have read through the entire book of Psalms. While reading five psalms a day is a great practice that many enjoy, that’s not what I’m advocating here. What I’m suggesting is that you take half a minute to quickly scan five psalms and pick one of those five to pray through.

If bringing math into prayer is making you skeptical, stay with me; I’ve created a simple, printable prayer guide that visually conveys all you’ll need to understand what I’m trying to describe.

Download my free Psalms of the Day Prayer Guide and start praying the Bible today!

HT: Crossway

Deeper Into Gratitude... and Sorrow

Found this in an interesting article/interview with musician Sandra McCracken on how reading the Psalms affected her song writing and prayer.

...Having an artistic personality type, I tend to have big feelings. Because I work within a creative vocation, I get to explore them fairly regularly in my writing and performing. But even with that vocational permission, I live most of my days on the surface of things. Most of us don’t have much time in the margins to reflect on what we are feeling or how we are acting out of those feelings and values. Often it takes painful life-disruption before we stop and reflect on what’s beneath the surface of the life we have built. We live with patterns of behavior and relate to others without being awake to our real fears or woundedness. In the past two years or so, I have practiced reading the Daily Office (a Christian tradition of reading through the Bible in three-year intervals), which includes a morning and evening psalm each day. I have been amazed at how the readings have faithfully brought perfectly timed perspective and sparked confession, awareness, wisdom, and healing.

I would often sit during these times of meditation with a journal, with my guitar, or at the piano and find that the Psalms gave particular voice to my emotion, my story, and my struggle. The Psalms gave me words when I didn’t have my own words. They prompted me to sing a new song when I couldn’t find my voice. They directed my heart toward God’s faithful, saving love. They have drawn me deeper into a life of gratitude, often by being willing to go deeper into honest sorrow. Through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit has guided my steps with truth and clarity. The Psalms teach me that I can be safe in his good providence even when everything around and within me feels like chaos. When we hear these ancient words, we are reminded that we are not alone. We are not the first to feel what we feel. There is perspective and humility and honor in joining together with those who have gone before us. And we are also reminded that we will not be defined by our present circumstances, but by the mercy of God who has committed himself to the full restoration of all things.

Start the Day Right

From @AnnVoscamp

Overcoming Hopelessness

Feeling hopeless? Read Psalm 108: The Key to Overcoming Hopelessness by George Wood,

When you're depressed, about the last thing you want to do is get out of bed and rise to face the morning. Here's a psalm to counteract hopelessness and help you welcome a new day with courage.

If you think the words of Psalm 108 sound familiar—they are. Look back to Psalm 57 (vv. 7-11) and Psalm 60 (vv. 5-12) and you will find Psalm 108 simply repeats the endings to these two earlier psalms. Psalm 57 begins with David hunted; the setting for Psalm 60 is David defeated. Yet, both psalms end, not in despair, but in confidence that God has a brighter day ahead. It's those positive endings that are joined together in this psalm.

Aren't you glad to know that tough moments in your life, when you feel trapped or beat up, don't last forever—that later you'll focus upon God's promises fulfilled rather than your present pain?

A Wake-Up Song

Are you so excited about living that you can't wait for the dawn of a new day? David is. He's up and singing, musical instruments in hand (v. 2), expressing the sentiments, "When morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries, may Jesus Christ be praised!"Maybe you don't face your days like that. You had a sleepless or troubled night, filled with dread or anxiety. The last thing on your mind is cheerfully getting up.

You really need to tune in to the fundamental truth conveyed in this psalm and all of Scripture. Your day will go better if you begin with praise to the Lord who made and redeemed you.

Remember the apostle Paul? In prison he wrote, among other things, the letter to the Philippians. It's a letter of abounding joy and the assurance that he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him (4:13). I used to be troubled by that phrase "all things," thinking maybe Paul was using a cliché. After all, there wasn't much he could "do" in prison—no preaching, church planting or mentoring of pastors. In fact, he could do very little within the confines of his cell. Then it dawned on me one day—the toughest, most difficult thing God ever asked him to "do" was prison. And through Christ, he found he could "do" even that. Surviving unjust incarceration was one of the "all things."

Are you going to compound your misery by having a miserable attitude or will you decide to sing instead (vv. 1-2; Phil. 4:4)?

What's there to sing about? That you're not lost or alone in God's great universe today, that you are part of a vast assembly on earth who lift their voice to praise Him (v. 3). The Lord has not permitted you to fall outside His grace by your own weakness, stubbornness or rebellion. He folded you to Himself even as you ran from Him—otherwise, how would you know His love reaches to the heavens and His faithfulness to the skies (v. 4)?Jesus' love is no come-on. He didn't cross His fingers behind His back when He said it. At no point has He considered retracting His love for you or breaking the bad news to you that He doesn't love you anymore. He loves you today. He loved you yesterday. He will love you tomorrow.

Open your heart and voice to God in response: "Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth" (v. 5).

Confidence for the Day

What gives you hope to live this day? Is it not God's past performance? Isn't the best predictor of what a person will do in the future what he has done in the past?

The psalmist reviews God's track record with geographical references to camping places (Shechem and Succoth) where the Lord sustained Abraham and Jacob (v. 7), as well as the names of a sampling of the tribal territories of Israel (v. 8) and historic enemies God has defeated (v. 9). All these references relate not only to God's past deeds but also constitute promises of present and future aid. With confidence David can ask for help because of what the Lord has already done (v. 6). The Lord's consistent character can be relied upon.

Challenges to Meet

David ends the psalm by recounting the most difficult task facing him—the fortified city of Edom (v. 10). Such a place lay impregnable because of its walls, battlements and defenses.

You may have your own Edom—an absolutely impossible situation. You don't have a clue as to how you can crack through the fortifications of your problem. David didn't know the "how" either, but he knew the "who"—the Lord Himself.

But, here's the catch. What if the Lord says, "Not you. You failed Me. You didn't listen to Me, so why should I pay any attention to you?" David faced that prospect head-on (v. 11), but did not let it deter him from asking the Lord for help anyway (v. 12). The very God who refuses to assist you when you are stubborn, rebellious and self-willed turns toward you when you are vulnerable, humble and penitent.

He'll give you strength to make it through this day (v. 13).

Authentic Prayer

Interesting question: Is politeness killing your prayer life? Read this piece by Christel Humfrey:

Christians in North America are generally polite pray-ers. We tend to pray correct, respectful words that we think God wants to hear. But let's be honest, many of our prayers are tentative, repetitive, and somewhat boring.

Intimate relationships require authentic feelings. Our innermost thoughts—however wrong or immature—are shared in trust. So why do we keep God at arm's length? Are we trying to be something we are not? Are we afraid to trouble Him? God is our Father, yet we often treat Him like a distant relative.I'm all for politeness with acquaintances. But real relationships require more. If my husband only spoke distant and polite words to me, our relationship would wither and die. I want to hear his struggles, his fears, his anger, and his joys. I want to process with him, not just hear his conclusions. I want him to trust me.

Be Authentic in Prayer

Recently, I was reading through Jeremiah, and I was struck by how real his prayers were. He didn't pretty up his words. He prayed heartfelt words. He brought his complaints to God and pleaded with Him.

"Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?" (Jer. 20:18)

"Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved" (Jer. 17:4).

What if we prayed what we really felt? Our words would come as no surprise to God, but we may be humbled when our foolish thoughts become words. Sometimes we feel things but can't really define or understand them until we speak them out loud. So we vent them to friends or shove them down deep not wanting to trouble God with our "little" cares. We make a critical mistake when we don't bring our troubles immediately to God. Not only does He care, but He also has the power to change things.

But the Christian can approach the Father with boldness (Heb. 4:16, Rom. 5:2). We are beloved children, not distant employees. We don't need to fear Him because the cross happened. Christ paid the penalty for our sin and clothed us in His own righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). So we take an uncomfortable leap of faith, not because we have confidence in ourselves, but because Christ is trustworthy, and God has adopted us as His own.Prayer brings us to a vulnerable place. We lay bare our hearts to God in prayer. Our carefully created persona is peeled back until we stand naked and exposed before a holy God. This is an uncomfortable—no, terrifying—thought without Christ's blood shed on our behalf. There is no pretending with God. He knows our thoughts before we speak them (Ps. 139:4). Every hair on our head is numbered (Matt. 10:30). He knows us. The real us.

Expect to Be Changed

When we bring our complaints and requests before our heavenly Father, something unexpected happens. We come to Him hoping for a change of circumstances and leave with a new perspective. We are changed by prayer. We see this pattern often in the Psalms. A complaint turns to praise through the course of prayer. If we apply this template to our own prayer lives, we may be surprised by the fruit it bears.

When it's just you and God in private prayer, why not be brutally honest? You can trust Him with your heart because He cares for you. Authentic prayer deepens communion. It grows assurance and inflames love. Go ahead and jump in the deep end with God. Polite prayer may be more comfortable, but authentic prayer transforms hearts.

Do you feel free to be honest with God in prayer? If you stopped being polite, what would you say to God?

"Righteous are you, O LORD, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper?" (Jer. 12:1)

Perhaps if we prayer with the authenticity of the Psalms, we'd have more authentic relationships with God. What a concept!

Lifting and Kneeling

From Robbie Seay at Desiring God- Be There To Respond:

The Psalms give us two reoccurring physical responses to God: Lift your hands and kneel down.

“Come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our maker!” (Psalm 95:6)

“But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.”(Psalm 5:7)

“So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.”(Psalm 63:4)

“Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!” (Psalm 134:2)

Because of the cross, these invitations to worship are not part of a formula or ritual that grants us access to God. They become honest, outward expressions of an inward surrender to God.

Pressing In

As you gather this Sunday with the people of God, hopefully you greet one another in the name of Jesus, and perhaps even have a good cup of coffee. But more than that, hopefully you’ll celebrate the grace and love of Jesus Christ. Rejoice in the salvation that God has made yours by way of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Know that the Spirit of God is with you, that he speaks through God’s word, that he intercedes for you according to God’s will (Romans 8:27).And whether you are a worship leader or an engineer, a teacher or businessman, a student or a nurse, let’s together put down the phones, and put down the coffee, and let’s press into God’s grace and be moved by it. Let’s be there to respond.

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A Gym for the Soul

"Although the whole of Scripture breathes God's grace upon us, this is especially true of the most delightful book, the Book of the Psalms. Moses, when he told of the deeds of the patriarchs, did so in a plain and unadorned style. But when he had miraculously led the people of Israel across the Red Sea, and when he had seen King Pharaoh with all his army drowned, he transcended his own normal style and sang a song of triumph to the Lord - just as through the miracle Moses' powers were transcended by God's.  Miriam the prophetess took up a timbrel and led the others in the refrain 'Sing to the Lord: he has covered himself in glory, horse and rider he has thrown into the see.' (Ex 15:21)

History instructs us, the law teaches us, prophecy foretells, rebuke condemn us, wisdom persuades us; but the book of Psalms goes further than all of these. It is medicine for our spiritual health. When we read it we find a medicine to cure the wounds caused by any of our passions. Whoever studies it deeply will find it to be like a gymnasium for their soul, where the different psalms are like different exercises set out before them. In that gymnasium, in that stadium of virtue, they can choose the exercises that will best train them to win the victors crown."

         - St. Ambrose of Milan

From Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church, #340

All Together Now....

"The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying (singing) the words of the Psalms with all it’s strength. "

              - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

HT:Desiring God

Psalms-David's Journals?

Do you Journal? Ever considered that reading the psalms is like reading King David's private prayer journal? From Journal As a Pathway to Joy by David Mattis at Desiring God:

Maybe you’ve never thought of journaling as a spiritual discipline.

It’s seemed like something only for the most narcissistic of introverts, or cute for adolescent girls, but impractical for adults. What, me? Journal? I’m much too occupied with today and tomorrow to give any more time to yesterday. You might be right. Maybe your idea of journaling is too heavy on navel-gazing and too light on real-world value.

But what if there was another vision? What if journaling wasn’t simply about recording the past, but preparing for the future? And what if, because of God’s grace in our past and his promises for our future, journaling was about deepening your joy in the present?

Perhaps no single new practice would enrich your spiritual life as much as keeping a journal.

No Wrong Way

A good journal really is what you make it. It can be a document on your computer, or just a good old-fashioned notebook. It can be formal or very informal, have long entries or short ones, and be a daily stop or just where you pop in on occasion. It can be a place for recording God’s providences, peeling at the layers of your own heart, writing out prayers, meditating on Scripture, and dreaming about the future.

The goal is not to leave an impressive catalogue of your stunning accomplishments and brilliant insights for future generations to read and admire. Die to that before picking up your pen. The goal is the glory of Christ, not your own, in your ongoing progress in his likeness, for the expanding and enriching of your joy. 

No Obligation

Even if many of the Psalms do read like divinely inspired journal entries, nowhere does Scripture command that we keep a journal. And as Don Whitney observes, “Jesus did not live and die for sinners to turn us into journal-keepers” (Spiritual Disciplines, 251). Unlike other spiritual disciplines, Jesus left us no model for journaling; he did not keep one.

Journaling is not essential to the Christian life. But it is a powerful opportunity, especially with the technologies we have available today. Many throughout church history and around the world have found journaling to be a regularmeans of God’s grace in their lives. 

 Why Journal?

With the eyes of faith, the Christian life is a great adventure, and a journal can be greatly beneficial in ripening our joy along the journey. There is always more going on in us and around than we can appreciate at the time. Journaling is a way of slowing life down for just a few moments, and trying to process at least a sliver of it for the glory of God, our own growth and development, and our enjoyment of the details.

Journaling has the appeal of mingling the motions of our lives with the mind of God. Permeated with prayer, and saturated with God’s word, it can be a powerful way of hearing God’s voice in the Scriptures and making known to him our requests. Think of it as a subdiscipline of Bible intake and prayer. Let a spirit of prayer pervade, and let God’s word inspire, shape, and direct what you ponder and pen.

To Capture the Past

Good journaling is much more than simply capturing the past, but recording past events is one of the most common instincts in it. For the Christian, we acknowledge these as the providences of God. When some important event happens to us, or around us, or some “serendipity” breaks in with divine fingerprints, a journal is a place to capture it and make it available for future reference.

Writing it down provides an opportunity for gratitude and praise to God — not just in the moment, but also one day when we return to what we’ve recorded. Without capturing some brief record of this good providence or that answer to prayer, we quickly forget the blessing, or the frustration, and miss the chance to see with specificity later on how “‘tis grace hath brought me safe thus far.” A journal also becomes a place where we can look back not just on what happened, but how we were thinking and feeling about it at the time.

But good journaling isn’t just about yesterday, but also about growing into the future....

Read it all at the link.

Soul Talk

We all need better self talk, or should I say soul talk. Read this from Ed Welsh at CCEF.org 

I once thought that the psalms were sung by a fine choir in God’s throne room. Then I actually read them, and they sounded more like the words a street troubadour who encourages the participation of those around him. Now I find that they are simply spoken and sung everywhere: in the darkness of night, in the early morning, in all the details of everyday life. And there are a handful of psalms in which the psalmists speak to themselves. These are the ones I want to consider. There are times when we must learn to speak to ourselves. 

Speak to yourself when you feel isolated and alone. This is from Psalm 42 and 43, which are the ones best known for how the psalmist speaks to his own soul. “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God.” One thing we know about being downcast is that, left to itself, the soul can only see the worst and is almost impossible to interrupt. As such, this simple reflection is impossible for us to do alone but it is very possible with God’s power. What a gift this is—to slow down that runaway train of despondency. 

Speak to yourself when you need a refuge from hard people. “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him” (Ps. 62:5). Isolation, especially when it comes at the hands of other people, is one of the hardest of human experiences. As a general rule, the harder the experience, the less natural it becomes to talk to the Lord because he too seems distant. So this is a time to put boundaries around that experience and quiet our soul before the Lord.
Imagine this. When your mind is racing with everything from anger to self-loathing, and your isolation intensifies them all, you quiet yourself because “On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God” (v. 7). Or, you keep aiming in that direction until your soul is, in fact, quieted. Once you interrupt your soul—that is the hardest part—perhaps you could access the entire psalm. It is filled with soul-quieting realities. If you stick with it, you will find yourself encouraging other people to interrupt the stream of doubt and unbelief in their souls (v. 8)

Speak to yourself when rest is elusive, and the past still haunts you. “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you” (Ps. 116:7). Something very hard happened to the psalmist and he was delivered, but he is still shaken—a kind of post-traumatic shock. He speaks to himself about how God acted, how God delivered him. God responded to his prayer—he did something good—and he does something good now. He keeps his mind focused on the acting-God. “Bountifully” is implied, “dealt with you” is what the psalm actually says, so the psalmist is essentially saying, “The Lord has dealt with me, which means that he never sits idly but he does something. And, of course, that something is evidence of his lavish love to me. The psalmist is telling himself about God’s past action to encourage his faith in the present. 

Speak to yourself when you don’t understand—and feel compelled to understand or compelled to fix something that you can’t fix.  “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Ps 131:1-2). We tell ourselves that we are not God. Instead, our job is to live out our calling with the matters that are right in front of us, and we trust the Lord for all those things we would like to control but can’t and shouldn’t. In short, “Humble yourself, O my soul, before my God and King. Humble yourself.”

Speak to yourself so you can be in sync with the universal chorus of praise. “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps 103:1-2, also Ps. 104, 146). This one is for every occasion.

I am not very good at these things yet. When I was a boy, I remember the first time I spoke a dialogue for some army men that I had set up. Hearing my own voice this way shocked me. Plus, my imagination had betrayed me by not letting me think that I could make these toy men talk. So I haven’t talked aloud to myself since. But this opportunity to talk truth to ourselves is so hopeful, so mature. I am working on it. It is another step to taking possession of the psalms and making them our own.

Fired Up From Meditating

Love this! "Warm Yourself at the Fires of Meditation" from Desiring God:

We were made to meditate. God designed us with the capacity to pause and ponder. He means for us to not just hear him, but to reflect on what he says.

It is a distinctively human trait to stop and consider, to chew on something with the teeth of our minds and hearts, to roll some reality around in our thoughts and press it deeply into our feelings, to look from different angles and seek to get a better sense of its significance.

The biblical name for this art is meditation, which Don Whitney defines as “deep thinking on the truths and spiritual realities revealed in Scripture for the purposes of understanding, application, and prayer” (Spiritual Disciplines, 48). And it is a marvelous means of God’s grace in the Christian life.

Meditation Made Christian

Since we were made to meditate, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that world religions have seized upon the activity, and new schools try to make use of its practical effects, whether to cultivate brain health and lower blood pressure. Christian meditation, however, is fundamentally different than the “meditation” popularly co-opted in various non-Christian systems. It doesn’t entail emptying our minds, but rather filling them with biblical and theological substance — truth outside of ourselves — and then chewing on that content.

For the Christian, meditation means having “the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). It is not, like secular meditation, “doing nothing and being tuned in to your own mind at the same time,” but it is feeding our minds on the words of God and digesting them slowly, savoring the texture, enjoying the juices, cherishing the flavor of such rich fare. Meditation that is truly Christian is guided by the gospel, shaped by the Scriptures, reliant upon the Holy Spirit, and exercised in faith.

Man does not live by bread alone, and meditation is slowly relishing the meal.

Meditation Day and Night

aybe it’s the multiplied distractions of modern life, and the increased impairments of sin’s corruption, but meditation is more the lost art today than it was for our fathers in the faith. We are told, “Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening” (Genesis 24:63), and three of the more important texts in the Hebrew Scriptures, among others, call for meditation in such a way that we should sit up and take notice — or better, slow down, block out distractions, and give it some serious consideration.

The first is Joshua 1:8. At a key juncture in redemptive history, following the death of Moses, God himself speaks to Joshua, and three times gives the clear directive, “Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6, 7, 9). How is he to do this? Where will he fill his tank with such strength and courage? Meditation. “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8).

God means not for Joshua to be merely familiar with the Book, or that he read through sections of it quickly in the morning, but that he be captivated by it and build his life on its truths. His spare thoughts should go there, his idle mind gravitate there. God’s words of instruction are to saturate his life, give him direction, shape his mind, form his patterns, fuel his affections, and inspire his actions.