If you want your prayer life to be shaped by Scripture, the Psalms are filled with a rich variety of praises, hymns, laments, requests, and more. The Psalms also allow you to use the words and emotions of the Bible to gain more confidence in your own prayers.

We encourage you to take one Psalm a day and pray it back to God. This can mean praying the prayers of the Bible word-for-word as your own prayers, personalizing portions in prayer, etc. Use these questions as a guide.

Four Questions for Every Psalm:

1. What would it have meant for David, or the original psalmist, to sing the psalm? How would it have expressed his convictions, his hopes, his prayers, his praises in his original circumstances?
2. What would it have meant for old-covenant believers (such as Simeon and Anna in Luke 2) to sing this psalm?
3. What might it have meant for Jesus of Nazareth, as the perfect worshiper, to sing this psalm in his earthly life?
4. What will it mean for us, as men and women in Christ, as the church of Christ, to make this psalm our own today?

Adapted from Christopher Ash, “Psalms For You”