The Book of PsalmsSample

Real Life

The book of Psalms shows you the raw emotions, the reality, of the people of God. R. Bhakther Solomon said, “The Psalms are designed to teach us to do one thing: praise and worship. Though they reflect every human emotion, they do so in distinct and important ways. This book therefore teaches us how to be honest before God.”*

That’s what God wants most of all: honesty before Him. Tell Him how you feel. Don’t feel embarrassed or like you’re offending Him when you say, “Lord, I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I feel discouraged.” You’ll see that the Lord will answer your prayer.

Another man said, “Psalms is the preeminent place to see how to deal with your emotions and the condition of the heart. Psalms is God’s counselling casebook. Psalms is not God’s counselling textbook, it doesn’t contain a lot of teaching, but lots of actual cases of people struggling with anger, loneliness, doubts, emptiness, grief, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, every condition the human heart struggles and wrestles with.”

As a Christian, you can build throughout the year the spiritual habit of reading at least one psalm every day. Maybe you won’t be able to do it every day, but you can shoot for at least three quarters of your life. You may be thinking, “Reading the Psalms over and over again through the years? Don’t you get bored?” The Word of God is a book like no other; it is living and active. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” And when you read the Bible in a devotional way, in a prayerful way, with a desire to do the Lord’s will, I guarantee you that you can read the book of Psalms every day, or one psalm every day, and read it over and over again, and every time you are going to get something out of it.

It will amaze you that sometimes you will read the book of Psalms, and maybe you have already read it many times, and something will just pop out and you will say, “Where did that come from? I had never noticed that before.” Why? Because this is the living, powerful, energized Word of God, that produces energy in your life. It’s alive and it penetrates into our life.

Read it.

* R. Bhakther Solomon, Voice of Glory (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2017).