Page 63 - Psalms Ebook

Reading PSALMS to know God

Chapter 6 Prayer is Who You Are

Now, as we introduce our new material, I want to give an illustration of
that last point. That prayer is not what you say, it is who you are.
That God regards your whole life as prayer. I am going to ask you to
turn to Psalm 18 so I can illustrate that truth for you. Notice the heading.
I am talking about the part before verse one. The part that was written by
men. In my Bible it says,

“The Lord praised for giving deliverance. For the choir director.
A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD, who spoke to the LORD
the words of this song in the day that the LORD delivered him from the
hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said”.

Now let me say a word about the headings before I call attention to this
one. Are they actually part of the Bible? In other words, are these
headings inspired? We know verse 1 is inspired. How about the
headings to verse one? Well, I do not know about all the headings.
There are 14 Psalms that have headings, historical headings. Some ask,
“did man just put that there?” Did the translator put that there or is that
inspired? I do not know about all the other headings, but I know for sure
that this one is inspired. You say, well, how in the world do you know
this one is inspired if you do not know if the other ones are? I know
because Psalm 18 is repeated elsewhere in the Bible. The whole Psalm.
Every verse. Every word. In Second Samuel chapter 22, you have
Psalm 18. It is exactly the same. There is one difference. The heading
is not a heading in Second Samuel 22. It is verse one. That’s how I
know it’s inspired.

Look again at this inspired heading, it says: “A Psalm of David the
servant of the LORD, who spoke to the LORD the words of this song.”
Now wouldn’t you think if he spoke to the Lord that the Psalm would be
a prayer? Isn’t that what a prayer is? He spoke to the Lord the words of
this song. We would expect the whole thing, all fifty verses, to be a
prayer because it is addressed to the Lord. Certainly, it starts out as a
prayer. Look at verse one. Psalm 18:1, “I love You, O LORD, my

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