Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

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Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends: Doing“PsalmWork” Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends introduces the spiritual discipline of “psalm work.” Psalm work includes personal, pastoral, and public components. We pray psalms in our personal devotions, use them in pastoral care, and integrate them into our weekly worship (including prayer, teaching or preaching, and singing— also known as “psalmody”). The resources below provide guidance for using Psalms to watch over your own soul and over those for whom you will give an account to God (Heb 13:17). Tables 1 and 2 provide examples of how biblical leaders have used Psalms for soul work and soul care. Table 3 illustrates three ways church leaders have taught their discipleship communities to pray using Psalms during the past two thousand years. Tables 4 and 5 provide a place to record your own progress at praying Psalms across the years and decades God grants. Table 6 provides an overview of different kinds of prayer we learn in the King’s treasury. Hundreds of biblical leaders used the Psalms for personal soul work, pastoral soul care and public worship. Two important examples include King David and Jesus. First, consider King David, a man connected by name to some seventy-five psalms. Seventy-three psalms have a title (“of David”) that connects them to David, and the New Testament adds Psalm 2 (Acts 4:25−26) and Psalm 95 (Heb 4:7). Clearly, David loved the praises and prayers Table 1: Biblical Examples of PsalmWork from the Life of King David