Psalms and Conversation
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
One of the most memorable spiritual experiences of my life occurred on the campus of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. I was attending a conference at the school when a tornado warning sent us to the basement of the building we were meeting in. As we waited for the all clear, we sang. The most deeply moving moment came as a hundred or so people sang “As the Deer.” The haunting melody echoed through the hallways and rooms of the lower level of the building as we felt the presence of our Lord with us that evening.
“As the Deer” was written by Martin Mystrom in 1984.[1] But it is based on Psalm 42, ascribed to King David, first set down some 3000 years ago.[2] Whether sung or prayed, the Psalms have been used in the devotional lives of God’s people for millennia. The Lord Jesus frequently used the Psalms in both His prayers and His teaching.[3] One of the most poignant examples of prayers from the Psalms are His sayings from the cross: Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and Psalm 31:5, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Probably the most famous prayer Jesus spoke was what is generally called “The Lord’s Prayer” found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:1-4. Jesus’s disciples requested that He teach them how to pray as He did. This is His answer, a model of the things we should include in our prayers.[4] It has, over the last 2000 years, become one of the best-known rote prayers in all Christendom. If, like me, you were raised in a Christian household and attended Sunday School and Vacation Bible School regularly, it was one of the first passages of Scripture you memorized and is still easily recited decades later.
But the intent of Jesus’s teaching was to illustrate the elements of prayer, not give us a an easily recited, routine prayer to be a catch-all for communion with God the Father. When you look at the bulk of prayers Jesus spoke, they are not formulaic but conversational, a man speaking to his loving Father. And this is how He encourages us to pray, bringing all the concerns of our lives in painful detail to our Heavenly Father just as He did. Scholars have identified at least thirty-eight times where Jesus prays, from going by Himself to pray (Luke 5:16; 6:12) to prayers recorded in relation to specific events such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead in John 11:38-44. One of the central messages of His earthly ministry relates directly to extemporaneous prayer, “ask and it will be given to you” (Matt. 7:7-8).
Clearly, looking at Jesus’s example, both rote and spontaneous extemporaneous prayers have their place in our devotional lives. Either one can become a mindless repetition of unconsidered words directed to God because we want to check the prayer box on today’s to-do list. And both can express our deepest longings and highest praise to the Father-Creator of all things. Whether we pray Scripture (like the Psalms), speak our concerns directly to the God who hears us as a child to his or her Father, or find a deep fellow-feeling in the prayers of the saints recorded throughout church history, as long as our prayers express our true devotion, humility, faith, and trust, they will be acceptable and pleasing to our God (Ps. 24:3-4; 51:17; 141:2; Heb. 11:6; James 1:6; 1 John 3:22).
(Photo credit: R. A. Stites, Surprise lilies Rogers, AR)
[1] See As the Deer Panteth for the Water – Hymns for lyrics.
[3] Examples of Jesus using the Psalms in his teaching include Matthew 61:16 where He used Psalm 8:2 and Matthew 22:44 using Psalm 110:1.
