I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand,
I shall not be shaken.Psalm 16:8
Through each sermon series of 2025, we have a consistent theme: what David called setting the Lord always before him. To “set the Lord before” us means continually remembering who Jesus is and who we are in him. We have previously used Psalm 23, Romans 8, and a study of a few spiritual disciplines (practices) to set Jesus before us. One of those spiritual disciplines is prayer. We devoted one sermon to prayer during our Keeping in Step with the Spirit series. It is one thing to hear a sermon on the importance of prayer. It is quite another thing to learn how to pray.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray by giving them the Lord’s prayer (Luke 11:1-13). But who taught Jesus to pray? Where did Jesus learn to set the Father before him as David did? Knowing that Jesus is fully God, it is sometimes easy to forget that Jesus was fully human, and like the rest of us, he had to learn to walk, talk, read… and pray. How did he develop the practice of prayer? How did he move so naturally between speaking to or serving people and talking with his Father? He, like most Jews of his day, learned to pray by praying the Psalms.
What are the Psalms?
The Psalms are a collection of prayers, poems, and songs written by various authors throughout Israel’s history, from its exodus from Egypt to its exile. Most were composed by David. The writers model how to approach God across the spectrum of human experience: rapturous joy, soul-crushing grief, deep need, quiet reflection, heartfelt praise, and awe at God’s majesty and worth.
I had little use for the Psalms when I first became a Christian. I wanted the narratives of Genesis and the Gospels or the straightforward teaching of the Epistles like Romans or James. Opening up Psalms and reading someone’s prayer or song did not appeal to me. At that point in life, I had not yet experienced the suffering the Psalms often bring before God. Yet the Psalms became a friend as I became more acquainted with significant suffering. God has used these songs and poems to teach me how to approach him when I am experiencing pain, joy, or nothing but apathy.
Learning & Practicing Praying
This summer, we will continue the theme of setting the Lord before us by using the Psalms to learn how to pray and practice praying. We will do that by looking at each Psalm from three perspectives.
- Author’s Context
Why did David, Asaph, or another author pray as they did? What was their context? - Jesus’ Context
Jesus is the Word of God incarnate, and His Spirit inspired writing the Psalms. As a man, he prayed the prayers he had inspired the original authors to pray. We will discover how these prayers connect to Jesus and how Jesus connects us to these prayers. - Our Context
How does something David prayed help me learn to pray today? Having learned about the original context and how it points to Jesus, we will learn to put the Psalms into practice. Each week, you can take the Psalm you studied and use it as a template and springboard for your prayer the following week.
Like any activity, we learn prayer by doing it. The Psalms give us 150 examples of Spirit-inspired prayer so we can say with David, “I have set the Lord always before me.”
