Professor Barrs also gave us some brief thoughts about prayer from the Psalms.
1. The Psalms are so helpful since they teach us we can tell God anything we like. Psalm 10, for example, starts with a complaint. This challenges us to set aside pretension and tell God exactly how we feel.
2. It is rare to hear this, but Jerram said that he likes the imprecatory Psalms. He said there are people that we should want to see judged if God does not save them. The fully sanctified saints in the book of Revelation are asking and longing for for God to judge the wicked.
Ponder the amount of sexual slavery in the world today. 50,000 women alone are brought into the US every year against their will to be sexual objects. This is truly a wicked reality. Those who enable and structure their lives around this should be judged. We should pray that God would stop this wickedness through his judgment on those who perpetrate it. The Psalms show us that we should be free to pray for God’s judgment AND for his conversion of sinners.
3. The Psalms give us wonderful words of praise and lament that can be used when we don’t have any words to say. Use the script of the Psalms for your praying.
1 comment:
>>The Psalms are so helpful since they teach us we can tell God anything we like<<
Let's be careful here. Really? Anything we like? You mean like, "God, you are tempting me"? Sure, technically, I guess we can, but it may be sin. I understand the gist of what you are saying, that we find in the Psalms several psalmists crying out to the Lord, complaints, fears, anger, sorrow...but the psalmists (with rare exceptions) ended their cries with praise. Are we doing that? Let's not forget who we are addressing, the God who says, "should you not fear me, should you not tremble in my presence?"
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