i have the incredible opportunity to study the Psalms with these guys. we’ve been working at it for about two years now. today we were in 36. it occurred to me this morning as we were working through the text that the Psalms are such a gift for our prayer life. the Psalms have concrete, propositional truths, mixed with emotional longings. praying like the Psalmist means we pray in a way that we don’t leave our emotions out…but we let them become informed by what we know to be true about God….and about us.
nothing revolutionary there…just some thoughts.
Oh, I love the Psalms…for an upcoming teen worship service, I’m having us write our own Psalms after reading a couple from the Bible. I’m hoping it goes over well, but mostly that the teens become endeared to the very emotion and truth you mentioned from the Psalmists.
I think sometimes that we can lean too far in either direction, emotion or truth, and miss the reality of a relationship with God. Does that make sense? I guess I’m saying that the Psalms show us it’s possible to have a real,impactive relationship with God.
andira, thanks for sharing. yeah i totally agree with you. its easy to go either direction. this group of guys that i study the Psalms with have pushed me to be really textual….which sounds silly. i think we all would like to be really textual. but its easy to bring a bunch of presuppositions to the text, instead of letting the text speak for itself. a guy name eugene peterson wrote a book about this called “eat this book” its been so helpful for me. sounds like you’ve thought really well about this stuff.
hope the worship service goes well.