Page 51 - Psalms Ebook

know something. So it is that something that we are going after.

When you read about the great men and women of prayer you read about
praying Hyde. Martin Luther or George Mueller of Bristol England with
the orphanages. Corrie Ten Boom and Ian Bounds and some of these.
Even in the New Testament the Apostle James. Later on in history he
was called “old camel knees”, and the reason they called James “old
camel knees” is because he prayed so much that he developed huge
callouses from the hard floors. But even James did not know how to
pray. And Corrie Ten Boom did not know how to pray. And praying
Hyde did not know how to pray. And the Apostle Paul did not know
how to pray. We might get the false idea, because they are great people
and God has used them mightily, that they knew how to pray. But if
they were around today they would confess they were just beginners.
We were toddlers in the school of prayer, and we really did not know
how to pray.

It use to bothered me that I did not know how to pray. But I don’t let it
bother me and it shouldn’t bother you either. Here is an amazing thing.
No Christian knows how to pray. Prayer is one of the chief marks of the
believer in Christ. Even if we do not know how to do it, prayer is one of
our chief characteristics. The Christian is ever praying and ever praising
and ever warring and ever pouring out his heart and worshiping. I love
what James Montgomery said in his little rhyme.

“Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, the Christian’s native air.
His watchword at the gate of death, he enters heaven with prayer.”

Exactly right! Even though we do not know how to pray, we are always
praying, and you are always praying and I am always praying. I hope
when we get through Psalms you will see why that is. So here is the
question: How do the prayers in the book of Psalms help me in my
prayer life? How can they take me forward in the great truths of prayer?

Let me suggest a couple of simple principles on how to approach prayer
in the book of Psalms. The first is this. Every chapter in Psalms is a
song. It is a hymnal; it is a songbook. That is fact one. Fact two, there
are many prayers in Psalms. Here is the point. Every prayer in Psalms
is also a song. In other words, you cannot find a prayer in Psalms that
was not sung, and it illustrates the point that all prayer is praise, all
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