Prayer: Praying the Psalms
Personal Prayer is the meeting place between the Eternal One and me; the Blessed Sacrament is the visible sign of my covenant with him. That is why I believe in personal prayer , and why every day I wait to meet him in the Eucharist. To pray means to wait for the God who comes. Every prayer-filled day sees a meeting with the God who comes; every night which we faithfully put at his disposal is full of his presence. And his coming and his presence are not only the result of our waiting or a prize for our efforts: they are his decision, based on his love freely poured out. His coming is bound to his promise, not to our works or virtue. We have not earned the meeting with God because we have served him faithfully in our brethren or because we have heaped up such a pile of virtue as to shine before Heaven. God is thrust onward by his love, not attracted by our beauty. He comes even in moments when we have done everything wrong, when we have done nothing, when we have sinned.
From The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto
Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. --Revelation 3:20
I doubt that I know of a passage in the whole Bible which throws greater light upon prayer than this one does. It is, it seems to me, the key which opens the door into the holy and blessed realm of prayer. To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts. This teaches us, in the first place, that it is not our prayer which moves the Lord Jesus. It is Jesus who moves us to pray. He knocks. Thereby he makes known his desire to come in to us. Our prayers are always a result of Jesus' knocking at our hearts' doors. From Prayer by O. Hallesby
The Psalms are Christianity's most universal prayers. They speak to everyone's need and experience. Make the Psalm your personal prayer --pray the Psalm. Some people are disturbed by the "bloodthirstiness" of many of the Psalms and have rejected them to their own spiritual deprivation. In fact, the Psalms can (and should) be used to remind us of the "enemies," that seek our destruction, that we should hate, and then to guide us into prayer that God may destroy them before they destroy us. In earlier times and places, the enemies were physical and concrete. Those who first heard the Psalms knew there were real lions, tigers, and serpents "Out there," and the tents they call home were slim protection from such enemies. But what about us? Are our lives free of "arrows" and "terrors" and "enemies" which threaten to destroy us? No, the "enemies" are just as many and as deadly, but they are now "in here," inside us, and they are more subtle and harder to escape --enemies such as the lust for power, laziness, spiritual boredom, worry, fear, unrelenting anger, extramarital relationships, pride, coveting. If we see the "bloodthirsty" Psalms as the expression of frustration and helplessness every Christian experiences as he or she struggles against the enemies unique to himself/herself and a desperate plea for God's justice and deliverance, then the Psalms can become some of our most power-full prayers. Spiritual growth requires that we do battle, not that we pretend the enemy is not there. In these struggles, the word of God is one of our greatest resources of prayers, hope, and direction --resources which may be wasted is we do not define our own wilderness and the enemies which lurk there.
I doubt that I know of a passage in the whole Bible which throws greater light upon prayer than this one does. It is, it seems to me, the key which opens the door into the holy and blessed realm of prayer. To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts. This teaches us, in the first place, that it is not our prayer which moves the Lord Jesus. It is Jesus who moves us to pray. He knocks. Thereby he makes known his desire to come in to us. Our prayers are always a result of Jesus' knocking at our hearts' doors. From Prayer by O. Hallesby
Scripture Study
Psalm 139
Psalm 148
Luke 11:2-4
Psalm 139
Psalm 148
Luke 11:2-4
From A Guide to Prayer by Rueben P. Job & Norman Shawchuck
Why has the Church always considered the Psalms her most perfect book of prayer? In the Psalms, we drink divine praise at its pure and stainless source, in all its primitive sincerity and perfection. If we are to pray well, we too must discover the Lord to whom we speak, and if we use the Psalms in our prayer we will stand a better chance o0f sharing in the discovery which lies hidden in their words for all generations. For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms. To put it very plainly: the Church loves the Psalms because in them she sings of her experience of God, of her union with the Incarnate Word, of her contemplation of God in the Mystery of Christ. If we really come to know an d love the Psalms, we will enter into the Church's own experience of divine things. We will begin to know God as we ought. And that is why the Church believes the Psalms are the best possible way of praising God. St. Augustine adds that God has taught us to praise Him, in the Psalms, not in order that He may get something out of this praise, but in order that we may be made better by it. Praising God in the words of the Psalms, we can come to know Him better. Knowing Him better we love Him better, loving Him better we find our happiness in Him.
From Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton
The phrase "learning to pray" sounds strange to us. If the heart does not overflow and begin to pray by itself, we say, it will never "learn" to pray. But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicing -- all of which the heart can do by itself -- with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simple to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with hi, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ. He (Jesus) wants to pray with us and to have us pray with him, so that we may be confident and glad that God hears us. When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly. Only in Jesus Christ are we able to pray and with him we also know that we shall be heard. And so we must learn to pray. The child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us. By means of the speech of the Father in heaven his children learn to speak with him. Repeating God's own words after him, we begin to pray to him . We ought to speak to God and he wants to hear us, not in the false and confused speech of our heart, but in the clear and pure speech which God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ. God's speech in Jesus Christ meets us in the Holy Scriptures. If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God. Now there is in the Holy Scriptures a book which is distinguished from all other books of the Bible by the fact that it contains only prayers. The book is the Psalms.
From Psalms The Prayer Book of the Bible by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
6 comments:
Most of you know I was converted in my adult life (29 years old) and I needed to have an understanding of the Word of God quickly and therefore, the Psalms was what I needed. They gave me understanding of specific sin and the promises and gave me hope while I completed reading the Bible. The part with "enemies" didn't create a problem as I felt my enemies pulling and tugging at me to return to the old ways and battling was daily. My spirit needed and hungered for the substance I could get from reading the Psalms daily. ...Marie
I have to be honest and say that I really didn't "agree with" or "like" the Bonhoffer bit. Maybe if I'd read all of it, I would understand better, but I'm not sure I agree with being told that God doesn't want to hear certain types of prayers, my fumbling prayers, my inaudible prayers, my incoherent and most heartfelt prayers. Yes, I agree we all need to learn to pray, and that the Psalms are a wonderful tool, but as for the rest. . . I'm not convinced with that. It turned Bryan off cold.
As for the rest, wow! Great stuff as usual! I was especially interested in reading the scripture and thinking about it from the prayer point of view. And I was glad to be reminded by the first one that God chooses to come to us regardless of what we are or have done! (Which makes me wonder again about Bonhoffer's learning to pray passage. . . )
Anyway, thanks again for another thought-invoking session, Mom!
Thank you, daughter-of-mine, for leaving a comment. One of the facets of wisdom is knowing what one doesn't believe or accept. Knowing a little about a Christian's calling and gifts are indeed helpful in understanding their opinion.
Here is the note on the back of the book: Dietrich Bonhoeffer here gives one of his secrets behind the powerful witness of his own life. He had learned to pray the Psalms and from them drew on the power of God in his years of imprisonment.
For those of you that may not know, Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor/theologian. He was imprisoned in April 1943 because of his involvement in political resistance to Hitler. He was hanged at a Nazi concentration camp in April 1945 at the age of 39.
I think you'll see how this quote of Thomas Merton's will tie in with this comment. "It need hardly be added that much water has passed under the writer's own private bridge since these notes were written, and the lines of thought that are found here have traveled in various unexpected directions in the intervening years." From the Preface of Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton.
I was taught years ago by a loving sister to use Psalms when praying (speaking with and listening to) my God. Thank you dear sister, sometimes we need to be reminded of things we learned early in our walk with God. This study has reminded me of all God brought me through by the use of the Pslams in my prayers.
I would benifit from a study on being lead by the spirit.
But I will be greatly interested in seeing what study HE leads you to - to benifit us all.
Thank you again, Sister.
I remember that special time, Susan. And although it was a most unsettled time for you, the Lord moved mightily and gave good memories right along side of the difficulties. PTL!
I agree with gypsi. I think God hears all of our prayers. The following is one of my favorite stories about prayer. Let me know what you think.
Nearly everyone believes in God and throws casual offhand remarks in his general direction from time to time. But prayer is something quite different. Suppose yourself at dinner with a person whom you very much want to be with—a friend, a lover, a person important to you. The dinner is in a fine restaurant where everything is arranged to give you a sense of privacy. There is adequate illumination at your table with everything else in shadow. You are aware of other persons and other activity in the room, but they do not intrude on your intimacy. There is talking and listening. There are moments of silence, full of meaning. From time to time a waiter comes to your table. You ask questions of him: you place your order with him: you ask to have your glass refilled: you send the broccoli back because it arrived cold: you thank him for his attentive service and leave a tip. You depart, still in companionship with the person with whom you dined, but out on the street conversation is less personal, more casual.
That is a picture of prayer. The person with whom we set aside time for intimacy, for this deepest and most personal conversation, is God. At such times the world is not banished, but it is in the shadows, on the periphery. Prayer is the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God firsthand, and then setting aside in time and making the arrangements to do it. It issues from the conviction that the living God is immensely important to me and that what goes on between us demands my exclusive attention.
But there is a parody of prayer that we engage in all too often. The details are the same but with two differences: the person across the table is Self and the waiter is God. This waiter-God is essential but peripheral. You can’t have the dinner without him, but he is not an intimate participant in it. He is someone to whom you give orders, make complaints, and maybe, at the end, give thanks. The person you are absorbed in is Self- your moods, your ideas, your interests, your satisfactions or lack of them. When you leave the restaurant you forget about the waiter until the next time. If it is a place to which you go regularly, you might even remember his name.
Eugene Peter “Run With The Horses”
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