Praying through the Psalms is a spiritual discipline that I had started after Thanksgiving for my Old Testament class. It was a graded assignment to begin with since we had to keep a journal discussing literary imagery, allusions to OT and NT blah blah blah. (It is interesting but not important) SOOO for Lent my fiancee (so strange to say because we got engaged this past weekend) are praying through the Psalms together and I'd like to invite you ladies to take on this spiritual discipline if you are still looking to start a new one.
Praying the Psalms sounds WAY more intimidating than it is, you can do it I promise. Everyday I will pray the prayer that we're all praying together. I'll read through the Psalm once and reflect. I keep a journal when praying so I will scribble words or images that jump out at me. I will read it again and then go where the Spirit leads. Somedays I find hymns to sing that relate to the Psalm, other days I pray for people who relate to the Psalm, and other times I journal about the Psalm and how it has affected me. One thing I was confronted with when reading the Psalms was the anger found in them, I encourage you to read Psalms from another persons perspective when you encounter Psalms that are not clicking for you. (as in reading the psalm as a marginalized individual, country, sexual identity)
Todays Psalm is Psalm 51 and a hymn to go along with it is my favorite hymn Wash me Throughly by Charles Wesley:
Heather Hincher
Thanks Heather for posting this. I should have read your post more carefully before I posted! We are on similar wavelengths today in our prayer. One of the verses that speaks close to my heart from this Psalm is: "A clean heart create for me, God; renew within me a steadfast spirit." vs. 12. In order to be holy, I need to be cleansed. In one of my Old Testament classes in undergrad, we looked at the Psalms more in depth and reading from different perspectives really opened my eyes as well.
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