Praying the Psalms 2

4. RAMP up your prayers I recently read an interesting comment by George Muller.  He said that the first thing upon awakening, he would go to prayer, but sometimes it had taken him fifteen minutes or even half an hour to get "in the Spirit".  Then he decided to go to the Word of God first, and to read until he was led to pray.  This solved his problem.  After meditating on scripture first he was able to experience a more meaningful prayer time. George Muller once said he could think of 50,000 answers to prayer - so a pretty good role model. Go through the Psalms in sequence. Each prayer time, take the next Psalm. R - Read it through once. A - Analyse the poetry - check About Poetry for help.  Put it in historical context - what was happening when the Psalm was written - what was going on in the Psalmists life to bring out these prayers and petitions? Read it through again in light of what you have learned. M - Meditate on the Psalm, maybe the Psalm as a whole or maybe a single phrase that resonates with you today. P - Pray about what you have meditated on. You may stop there or you may continue freely in prayer, or read the next section of your regular bible reading (and R.A.M.P through them too) or pray intercessory prayers for your family, friends, colleagues,  church family, leaders and country - a list is good, I like lists. 5. Journal Keep track of what God is saying to you. If you are not good at this - start simple. A simple note of the date, the passage you were reading, the phrase that resonated and the application for you. 13 Oct 2014 - Psalm 1 on His law he meditates day and night I want to start meditating and praying regularly.

The Psalms are a rich repository of human experience, at times pleading, cursing, hoping, despairing, grieving, resting, rejoicing, praising, always from a position of profound trust in the saving power of God. Because of this wealth of experience in the Psalms they lead us to openly share our darker secrets, secret dreams and even “sinful” desires with God. People often speak of wearing a mask, that no one really know us deeply, ours fears and failures, hopes and dreams.We have a strong desire to be known intimately to express a range of experiences and feelings with another, but we struggle against inner voices that tell us to protect ourselves and limit what we share lest people see our true selves and pull away. We don't need to protect God from being too shocked at who we really are. Before a word is on our tongue He knows it completely Psalm 139:4. We don’t always have to be nice in our prayers. Psalms use words that express feelings incompatible with our ideas about a loving, merciful, and benevolent God. Words like “O God, break their teeth in their mouths; pull the fangs of the young lions, O Lord” (Ps. 58:8) or even more chilling, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!” (Ps. 137:9). While we can’t view these psalms as instructive, their strong words can help us become more aware of our own emotions – emotions lurking just out of conscious sight that might seem too dangerous for us to acknowledge in prayer. The psalms can encourage us to name those strong, less savory human emotions, to bring them before God so He can heal and restore. Prayer like this reminds us that God loves us not because we are good, but because God is GOOD. We can be free to rage and shout at God - his shoulders are broad enough to cope - He will still love us because He is LOVE.