Praying The Psalms (Andrew Murray)
Throughout the centuries, across denominations, continents, and cultures, the people of God have routinely found life in praying through the Psalms. Join us Wednesday mornings at 6AM at the church as we corporately sit with God in the wrestling, lamenting, adoring, interceding, hoping, thanksgiving… of The Psalms.
“THE Book of Psalms is the innermost sanctuary, the thrice Holy Place of the sanctuary of the Bible. In the rest of the Bible we receive instruction from God on the way to draw near to Him. In the Book of Psalms, God sets open the door of His secret dwelling-place, and He shows to us how His believing people come to Him, speak with Him, and enjoy fellowship with Him. There we see the throne of grace surrounded with suppliants, and we learn to pray. There is the grace of God manifested in the most glorious way…
Think of the Son of God. It is He who has taught us the use of the Psalms, and sanctified them to us. When in the heaviest stress of His conflict He Himself has to lament, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ was that not a word of the twenty-second Psalm written to meet His condition? And, when dying, He cried, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,’ was that not a word from another Psalm? And if the man Christ Jesus had need of the words of the Psalms to comfort and strengthen Himself in prayer to His Father, how much more must you, my friend, and I have our poor hearts prepared by these divine prayers to draw near aright to God.
The blessing arising from the use of these words, then, is great and sure—‘The word is nigh thee, saith the Lord, in thy mouth and in thy heart.’ God has in His grace so adapted the Word to us that wherever anyone takes these words into his lips and uses them, and then at once ponders them and expresses them, there a way is prepared for the Word to enter from the mouth into the heart. Through the gateway of the mouth the Word comes into the heart. You shall experience that the words of God are the living seed which germinates and shoots out roots, and springs upward and bears fruit. Your heart is the soil: you have only to open it, and you will experience that it is indeed the word of God which worketh mightily in you who believe.”
Murray, Andrew. 1896. Have Mercy upon Me: The Prayer of the Penitent in the Fifty-First Psalm Explained and Applied. Translated by J. P. Lilley. London: J. Nisbet & Co.