#309 Praying with the Psalms

Leading the congregational prayer (or the prayers of the people or the "long" prayer, depending on what you like to call it) is one of the more intimidating parts of leading worship for me. Jesus warns us about babbling on in our prayers, yet there are so many things that I should pray for, both within and outside of the congregation. Jesus warns us about the perils of praying publicly, yet that's a part of my job. Throughout my ministry I have often used the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus teaches after those warnings as a guide for organizing my prayers.

But I think it's good to pray in different ways at different times, and the Lord's Prayer isn't the only prayer in the Bible. For one thing, God has given us a whole book of prayers, Psalms. Over time I have used more and more psalms as guides when I lead prayers. I started with Psalm 13, which has a simple pattern of lament, request, praise. I would read a couple verses of the psalm and then offer some of my own prayers of lament, request, and praise. Eventually I branched out to use a few other psalms, like 25, 27, and 42. I wouldn't always use every verse of the psalm, but I would read two or three verses to set a direction and then offer some related prayers of trust, thanksgiving, request, and so on.

Lately I've found myself reading Psalms in my personal devotions. I continue to marvel at the wide variety of emotions and tones captured in these prayers. So I've been trying a new approach to praying with the psalms. Lately I've been taking a psalm like 3, 5, or 9 and, without reading any of the verses, using its structure to organize my prayers. Sometimes I'll borrow some language or imagery, but my use of these psalms has been a little bit looser. I've found that starting with different psalms has helped me think about different things I can pray about (and sometimes different ways I can pray about those things). I've also noticed how often the psalm-writers express their trust in God while praying, so I've been trying to do more of that myself. Even after praying for several years now, I feel like I'm always learning more and more about how to pray. I'm glad God gave us Psalms to teach us.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#308 Motives

Sometimes, when I want to make myself squirm, I ask myself this question: Do I check in with my church members because I love them or because it's my job to check in on them? Honestly, it's normally a mixture of love and duty. At times love has the upper hand, and at times love isn't as much of a factor. Thankfully, there isn't much difference on church members' end (unless my attitude makes it very obvious that I'm only doing this because I know I should). However, I think the question is important because it gets to my motives. Doing things because I'm supposed to isn't inherently bad. In fact God uses duty to train us to do what's good and right: I've noticed myself come to love others more easily the more I practice caring for them. That being said, it is better for me to do things because I want to. God tells His people to "do everything in love" (1 Corinthians 16:14). We believe that truly good works are done not for selfish reasons or out of obligation but for God's glory.

So every once in a while it's good to check my motives. It's good for me to show care for others. Hopefully I do that even if I don't necessarily want to. But I hope, with the help of the Holy Spirit to grow in showing care for others because I truly care for them, because I want to honor God by imitating His care for us. God's work of leading me away from sin and making me holy doesn't end with my external behavior; it needs to get all the way to my heart.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#307 Reading Scripture Together

Last month Tess and I completed reading the whole Bible together. It was a long project. We started reading a chapter a day when Advent began late in 2020. (We were doing this along with our church at the time, but we moved during the middle of our reading plan.) What made our reading different than other Bible reading plans I've done is that we always read aloud. Originally we read one chapter a day, taking turns. But along the way we got derailed for stretches, especially after Jeremiah was born, so for the last few months of our reading we normally read two chapters a day—one for each of us. (We still finished about three months after we were first scheduled to get done.)

There were a couple of things I found particularly good about reading the Bible this way. First, reading aloud is slower than reading internally. Sometimes listening was a challenge, but reading to each other made us take more time with the Word. Second and better yet, we spent a few moments talking about each chapter. Mostly we commented on things that stood out to us. Sometimes we found connections with earlier chapters or with passages that I was preaching from at the time. Sometimes we wrestled to understand what we'd read or asked difficult questions about how this passage applied to our current context. I think by reflecting together we learned from each other and thought more deeply than we would have on our own. I love talking about the Bible with others, and Tess was a wonderful partner. I recommend reading and reflecting on God's Word with others to anyone who wants to give this strategy a try.

Grace and peace,

BMH