Tag: psalms

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Restoration is a beautiful thing.  I don’t often watch makeover shows on television, but if I am channel surfing and catch an old house which seems best suited for the wrecking ball getting restored to its original charm and beauty, I’m hooked.  We as people seem to resonate deeply with things being repaired and rejuvenated to looking brand new again.
 
            For that to occur, someone needs to have the vision to see the old become new.  If not, then the drab discouragement of a gray and dreary environment can easily take over, forgetting the original shine of how things once were.  In the context of today’s psalm God’s people once enjoyed the covenant and the promises of God.  But over time the relationship was not maintained and cared for; the people gradually slid into disrepair.  Centuries of sheer neglect brought a situation where it seemed that the only recourse was to do away with the people and begin again.
 
            The psalms have been the prayer book of God’s people for millennia.  Suffering and hard circumstances provide the backdrop for many a psalm.  Sometimes the difficulty is external – another nation oppressing the people.  But other times, like here in this psalm, the problem is internal – sheer neglect of God’s commands over time to the point that God is just plain angry over the whole dilemma.
 
            I certainly do not want to make God angry.  No, I much rather would like to enjoy his favor.  The work of prayer becomes the tool we need to begin restoring our broken lives and churches back to their original beauty.  God is patiently waiting for us to come to him.  And we must come to him, again and again.  Like the persevering of using the hammer, pounding nail after nail, so we must offer our prayers morning, noon, and night, day after day, crying out to God with the great cry of the church:  “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!”
             O loving and gracious God, bring restoration to my life, to my church, to my family, to my workplace, and to my community.  Things are not as they once were.  Send your Holy Spirit so that we might enjoy seasons of blessing again.  Restore, renew, revive and rejuvenate our disordered churches.  May your face shine upon us once again through the mighty name of Jesus.  Amen.

Psalm 100

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
            Serve the LORD with gladness!
            Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the LORD, he is God!
            It is he who made us, and we are his,
            we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
            and his courts with praise!
            Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the LORD is good;
            his steadfast love endures forever,
            and his faithfulness to all generations.
 
            The manner in which we approach God is significant.  No matter the circumstances, entering the presence of God by means of thanksgiving and praise helps us to rightly acknowledge that God is good.  And God will continue to be good because love is intrinsic to his character. 
 
            Perhaps there are days or extended periods of time in which we do not feel like God is good.  Chronic people problems; continued bouts of physical or emotional pain; out of control situations with no resolution in sight; these and many more realities may cause us to question God’s goodness, much less give us reason to praise his Name.
 
            But here is where this psalm needs to be as familiar and common to us as putting on our shoes in the morning.  Saying the psalm aloud on a daily basis, despite how we feel, is the kind of spiritual medicine we need to alter our sour dispositions and change the face of our bitter attitudes.  We could even declare the psalm multiple times in the day – not in a legalistic or magical sense as if it were some rabbit’s foot to ward off evil – but in the manner of allowing biblical truth and right theology to slowly and deliberately sink down deep in our souls.
            Lord God Almighty, I praise your glorious Name!  You are always good and your love endures forever!  May my character and my life reflect your grace operating within me.  Help me to have an attitude of thanksgiving in all circumstances.  To the glory of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

Praying the Psalms

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
           

 

 
            Historically, the Old Testament psalms have been the church’s prayer book.  The medieval church so valued constant prayer that many people in the middle ages made substantial donations to monasteries so that monks and nuns, largely freed from manual labor, could become “professional” pray-ers on behalf of the rest of society. Many of them lived a life of prayer, praying day and night.  Most Benedictine monks and nuns chanted all 150 psalms once a week in a cycle of seven daily “hours.” The first thing required of them was learning to read, if they did not already know how to. Next, they had to memorize the Psalms, which might take anywhere from six months to two years.
 
            In the New Testament book of Acts, when the original apostles were put in a position to clarify what their most sacred obligations were, they decided that they must give their attention to prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4).  The New Testament writers pray and quote the psalms more than any other book of the Old Testament.
 
            The best introduction there is to the psalms is to begin praying them because the psalms teach us how to pray.  The psalms are meant to be prayed and fully engrafted into the life of the believer.  Learning the psalms means praying them, and praying them means praying them over and over again.
 
            If you are not yet convinced why we ought to pray the psalms, let me offer some more reasons:
 
1.  Through praying the psalms we learn the promises of God and how to pray relying on those promises.  It is both appropriate and necessary to take God’s promises, remind God of them, and look for God to fulfill them.
 
2.  We learn how to pray together as a community, and not just as individuals.
 
3.  We discover that the heart cannot pray by itself because we often need to pray contrary to our hearts.  I am a believer and an advocate of pouring out our hearts to God; yet doing that in and of itself does not teach us to pray.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was part of the resistance to Hitler in the last century said, “The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”  The reason for this is because our hearts can be very deceitful, but if we can tether our hearts to God’s Word, we can pour out both our praise and lament according to biblical truth and not to things never promised to us.
            What is more, if we make it a practice to always follow our hearts, we may find ourselves only praying when we feel like it.  It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer. The truth is that, in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying. The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
 
4.  Praying the psalms teaches us to speak to God with confidence and joy, just like a small child boldly asking for what she wants in wonderful anticipation of getting it.
 
5.  Praying the psalms provides direction for our lives; it is the GPS for our souls.
 
6.  When we pray the psalms we join a praise and prayer team that has been going on for thousands of years by believers across the ages in all kinds of cultures.  They serve as a great cloud of witnesses testifying to the power of God to sustain and grow our faith, hope, and love.
 
7.  And maybe most importantly, in praying the psalms we discover the heart of God and adopt his heart as our heart.  When praying according to God’s Word and God’s Way, we get to know who God is and discover the prayers that he delights to answer.
 

 

            In other words, we bring our own situations and experiences to the psalms and permit the psalms to reshape our thoughts and our prayers.  This forms us into God’s people by re-directing our lives with God’s promises and plans.  The psalms are meant to transform us.  Repeated exposure to God’s Word and daily praying his Word through the psalms (even if it is small) will change the way we live our lives and will change the way the world works.