Praying the Psalms: Learning to Pray with God's Words - Paperback

by Lawrence P. Duffield (Author)

Strengthen your prayer life with the Bible's own prayer book. In a six-week program of about an hour a day, learn how to speak to God in a natural way, and how to listen for God's answers. Commentary by Martin Luther, C. S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others shows you how to blend the Book of Psalms with your daily prayers and lets you see how it can change your life. "Praying the Psalms - Learning to Pray with God's Words" includes an overview of the history and structure of the Book of Psalms, shows the different types of psalms and how they fit into your prayer life. You'll see how God's Words were heard across time, carried by the Holy Spirit to answer the prayers of people in very different situations and with very different needs. Praying the Psalms relates how Christians of all kinds use Bible based prayers to deepen their relationship to God. Christians as different as a runaway girl mystic of the Middle Ages to a Quaker abolitionist in the 1840's or a Christian martyr or to familiar commentators on today's Christian life. Along the way you will pray than 30 different psalms from familiar standbys like the Twenty-Third Psalm to lesser known laments like Psalm 13. You will experience the context and Scriptural background familiar terms and phrases like "Son of Man" and "How Majestic is your name", and learn the whole story of Jesus' words on the Cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". Psalms aren't just about words, even God's Words. Interspersed through "Praying the Psalms - Learning to Pray with God's Words" are dozens of illustrations of medieval psalm books, "Psalters", hand lettered and illustrated like so many masterpieces. Let your vision show you how much these prayers meant to Christians of the Middle Ages and beyond. "Praying the Psalms - Learning to Pray with God's Words" is more than a scholarly treatise, it is an introduction to a new way of communicating with God. Martin Luther, a Bible scholar of no small skill, says Psalms so pictures the conditions and nature of Christianity that "it might well be called the little bible" and that, once you begin to pray the Psalms, you will be reluctant to go back to ordinary prayer, because you'll miss the fire and grit of real prayer. See for yourself with this little introduction to a prayer practice to last a lifetime.

Author Biography

Lawrence Duffield is a lay scholar whose interest in the Bible story has brought him great satisfaction and let God shape his life in dozens of ways, great and small. His background is a smorgasbord of middle American jobs: soldier, fireman, police officer, graphic designer, strategic analyst, database manager, office worker, and now writer. He's been a Christian "ever since my Aunt Reike dragged us all off the farm to her church in Olathe, KS" and holds a Masters in Theological Studies with a specialization in church history from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. Mr. Duffield has taught adult bible classes for over 30 years now.