The Bible Jesus Loved--Scot McKnight on Jesus Christ and Psalms prayer Christian praying church

We're sorry, but this content is no longer available on Beliefnet. You may enjoy the following related articles: The Lord Is My Shepherd One of the Bible's most beloved psalms comes to life in this audiovisual devotional Learn to Sing the Psalms An interactive audio series with instructions and clips The 23rd Psalm: A Study Guide Questions to reflect on as you read Psalm 23 Reimagining the Psalms An interview with poet Laurance Wieder Christian Prayers Find a prayer for every need in your life Paraclete Press . * Jesus was a master of the psalms. Wherever he heard them, in the synagogue and at the temple, he took them to heart, for the psalms spilled constantly from his lips. Because of this, anyone who follows Jesus into the church to pray will quickly learn that praying with Jesus means using the psalms: his entire life was bathed with psalms. * The Beatitudes pronounced blessings on people with words taken from the psalms. Thus, we know "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" by heart, but this is a virtual quotation from Psalm 37, which reads: "But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity." * When Jesus was confronted with arguments, he responded by quoting the psalms to his verbal opponents, as in this example from the twelfth chapter of Mark, when he was pressing home the significance of his opponents' rejecting the mission God had sent him to accomplish for their benefit: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." This is straight from the 118th Psalm, and Jesus sees his own destiny in those words. * Just before Jesus died, he quoted directly from the twenty-second Psalm: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" * When we read the Gospels, we gain the impression that the book of Psalms was one of Jesus' favorite books. How did he learn them? By participating in the synagogue. Those in attendance at synagogue were either reciting psalms or listening to psalms every week. The book of Psalms was the first teacher and the mentor in prayer for all of Judaism. Jesus followed the Jewish custom of learning the psalms, and he learned to make the psalms his own prayers. * Jesus prayed the psalms, and Christians have always followed his example: In the psalms they find their own voice and they discover the voice of the church at prayer. In an interview with Billy Graham for USA Today (May 15, 2005), Cathy Lynn Grossman records Graham's habit of praying psalms every day: * blockquote starts - His first and last words every day are prayers, and in between, prayers run like a generator in the back of his mind. "Let's just say Billy likes to stay prayed up all the time," Ross says, quoting the evangelist's longtime aide, the late T.W. Wilson. - blockquote ends blockquote starts - "I used to," Billy says, "read five Psalms every day-that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man." * It's hard now, he says, to maintain the devotional pace that once enabled him to go through the books of Psalms and Proverbs in a month and start over again. Now, it's a Psalm or two a day and Proverbs as he can. - blockquote enhds * Spiritual health begins to arrive at our door when we level with God the way the psalms do. Presbyterian pastor Mark Roberts, in Irvine, California, devoted his book on the psalms, No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer , to honesty in prayer. Here's his graphic description: * blockquote starts - Our typical approach to God brings to mind Olympic wrestling, in which every move is governed by detailed rules. Our communication with God is cautious, controlled, disciplined, and relentlessly boring. Fearful that we'll do something wrong or that God won't accept our true selves, we tame our prayers to the point that we actually hide our selves from the Lord….It's easy to see why even God might have trouble staying fully engaged in such a lifeless conversation. He wants us to come at him with everything we've got. - blockquote ends * That is, God wants us to come to him with no holds barred, no rules in play. Olympic wrestling has many rules; the sort of wrestling that takes place between youngsters in the wild has no rules: The goal is to win regardless of what it takes. That, Mark Roberts is saying, is more like what genuine prayer is like. Give God all you've got, and don't hold back, for only then are we being genuinely honest. The psalms, if we listen to them intently, reveal just that kind of prayer: Don't hold back; tell God what's on your heart and in your mind. * When Jesus prayed alone or with Israel, he prayed the psalms. The book of Psalms is the one book that joins at the hip, or should we say at the knees, the faiths of both Judaism and Christianity. The reason the two are joined by the psalms is that the psalms are the mentor for each in prayer. That's how Jesus the Jew prayed, and that's how we also are to pray. EXCERPT ENDS HERE-->