Bible Recap Week 17

In this episode, we dive into how to study the Psalms and why they’re meant to be experienced as prayers, not just read like a textbook. What do you do when you don’t have the words to pray? The Psalms give us language for every emotion—joy, fear, anger, and hope. Using a simple framework—read, recognize, trace, see, and respond—we learn how to engage Scripture in a more personal and powerful way. If you’ve ever struggled to pray, this episode will help you find your voice by borrowing the words God has already given.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So you can live like Jesus. Like Jesus. I love spending time in the world with you like this. So let's get started. Hey everyone. Glad you're listening today to another episode. This is actually episode 17 of this podcast that was started beginning of 2026 as we read through the Bible together at Water's Edge. It's been a joy for me to be able to host each of these 17. I'm going to be taking a few weeks off from the podcast, and Pastor Julie will be stepping in, and I'm looking forward to hearing her insights as she reads through the Bible as well. Today I want to do something a little different. I'm not going to look at a specific story or a section until later in the podcast. But as we've started looking at many different psalms as David is writing this poetry, as he's experiencing these things, one of the things I love about this is we're reading about this the story of David, and then we're also being able to read like a part of his journal as he's going through these experiences. And that's been very insightful. I was talking to Lisa this morning about uh how intriguing I have that uh to handle the scripture in that way. So I've entitled this episode, How to Study a Psalm. Um I want to start with a simple question. What do you do when you don't have the words to pray? When you're frustrated or you're overwhelmed or maybe even a little angry with God, but you don't know how to say it. A lot of us have been taught how to think about God, but not always how to talk to Him when life gets real. And that's where the Psalms come in. The Psalms are not just chapters in your Bible, they are prayers. They are raw, they're honest, uh, they're sometimes messy conversations with God. And here's the big idea for today the psalms teach us how to bring our real lives into relationship with a real God. Now, before we jump into how to study a psalm, we need to understand something very important. Psalms are different, they're not like Paul's letters, um, they're not logical, it's not a structured argument, um, they're not like the gospels because they're not telling a story about Jesus. The psalms are poetry, the psalms are prayers, um, the psalms use worship language, which means this. If you read a psalm like a textbook, you you'll miss it. If you have more of an engineering mind as opposed to a fine arts mind, psalms may be very uncomfortable for you. But if if we can learn to read a psalm like a prayer, they come alive. So today I want to give you a simple practical way to study a psalm, not just to understand it, but to actually experience what's happening in the psalm. So here's the framework uh we're gonna use, and it really is simple enough um to to remember. First, read, then recognize, then trace, see, and respond. Read, recognize, trace, see, respond. Let's walk through it. So when you come upon a psalm, you start by just reading the psalm. Just read it slowly. If you can, read it out loud. It helps. Let it hit your ears, not just your eyes, and don't rush to analyze it. Don't don't stop and think, oh, what does that mean? Just listen to it and pay attention. Pay attention to the emotions that you hear. Uh pay attention to repeated phrases. Um usually there is a there is a hitch in the psalm that that shifts the tone of it. So let the psalm speak before you try to understand it. That's the first thing. Read. Second one, recognize. Asking yourself, what kind of psalm is this? Because not all psalms do the same thing. Um, some psalms are lament, and that's just crying out in pain. Uh, some psalms are praise psalms, they're just celebrating who God is. Uh, some psalms are are thanksgiving, and and we begin to see the difference between Thanksgiving and praise. Uh, thanksgiving is just gratitude for what God has done. Praising Him is celebrating for who He is. And then there are some psalms that are wisdom psalms, and they they teach us how to live. It's like a father speaking to a son. Here's something really important. A lament, because in our society we don't lament well, we complain, but that's not lamenting. Um, lament is not a sign of weak faith, it's actually faith under pressure. So when someone says, How long, oh Lord, that's not rebellion. It's a it's a relationship. It's a it's how long am I gonna experience this? And how long is it gonna take for me to get out of this stage in life with my children? How long it's a lament, it's not a complaint. The third thing is trace, and this is one of the most important steps. Tracing the movement of the psalm because psalms uh move, they're they're not static, they're not reporting, they they move. So usually you'll see a flow um in a psalm. It it usually will start off like calling out to God. Um usually it will name the problem. There's an asking for help, and then there's a choosing to trust in Him. That you see that that ebb and flow of a psalm. Um so ask yourself uh these three things. Where does this psalm start? So what is if it's a psalm of David, where where does this psalm of starting in David's life? And then where does it end? And then what changes in between? As a uh as a pastor counselor, pastoral counselor, not a not a licensed counselor, not a counselor that has any type of credentials other than my ordination, when I when I have counsel, and I don't do a lot of counseling, but but it's it's always refreshing to talk to uh mostly I'm talking to pastors, and and I'll I'll follow this flow of their life of okay, where does this issue start? Where's it starting? And then as I re rethink the session, how does it end and where where did it change in the middle? Um because I'm I'm looking for that ebb and flow of Pastor Eric, I need to talk to you about this. And then as I ask questions and prod a little bit and uh and you know, maybe maybe hint and drop some hints or give advice or something like that, and then they walk out and they're like, Man, that was very, very helpful. Thank you, Eric. I I want to say, okay, what changed? What was it that changed in the midst of that conversation? Because Psalms, like counseling, it's an emotional journey, it's not just a theological statement. Okay, number four, um look at uh when you're looking at a psalm, look at the imagery. Um also uh often speak with uh pictures like God is a shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd, he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, um, the Lord is my rock, the Lord is a fortress. They these aren't just ideas, these are experiences that uh say David uh was experiencing. They they they just weren't like poetic things, they were they were real pictures that he was painting, and and they were things that he was learning himself about God because every psalm is revealing something about who God is. We would call it in the Bible recap um God shots. Every psalm gives us a picture of God, and then finally, the uh um that's where it all leads is is the response. So we don't just study the psalm, we pray it. We pray that psalm, we make it our own. You can pray uh something like God, here's what I'm facing, or here's what I need, or uh, here's what I'm choosing to trust. The goal isn't just understanding, it's transformation. So let's let's look at let's look at a psalm. Um, and we looked at Psalm 13. If we just if you can open your Bibles or if that's not you can go back and look at it this later, but it starts like this how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? Wow, that's not polished, is it? That's not honest. Or I mean that that is that is honest. So so as we walk it through, recognize this is a lament. He's not David is not complaining. He's he's saying, How long, O Lord, am I gonna deal with this? Is it feels like you've forgotten me? Are you gonna forget me forever? And then he asks, consider and answer me. And then something begins to shift in this psalm, and he says, but, and those are uh so are keywords, uh but is a key word, then is a key word, um, if is a keyword. So all of those kinds of things are so important to watch. But here's what's po powerful nothing in the situation has changed, but David realizes I trust in your steadfast love. The situation didn't change, nothing changed, but he comes out of it with something in his heart that says, I'm gonna continue to trust in your unfailing love. The psalm moves from in Psalms 13 moves from despair to trust, not because life got easier, but because he remembered, there's that word that we mentioned almost every episode, he remembered who God was. And that's what the Psalms do for us. They don't deny reality, they can make us uncomfortable, but they lead us through life. Now, as a follower of Jesus, we we don't just read the psalms, uh, we read them through the eyes of knowing the Messiah. Um another another thing to consider is Jesus also prayed the Psalms. In fact, on the cross, uh he prayed um Psalms 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Forsaken me, which means Jesus didn't avoid the language of suffering either. He entered into the suffering. And more than that, uh he is the true righteous one. So we see Jesus showing up in the Psalms. That's Psalms chapter 1. He's the true righteous one in the Psalms. He's uh He's the suffering voice of the lament in Psalms, because no one suffered more than Christ. Um, he's the reigning king when when David talks about uh kingship in in uh royal psalms, they call them. Um so Jesus doesn't just teach us the psalms, He He fulfills them. So here's what I want to challenge you today as our time comes to a close. Um I I I want to encourage you to just take one psalm, just one, read it slow twice, and walk through this process and then turn that psalm into your own prayer. Because here's the truth: you don't need better words to learn how to pray. You don't need to borrow other people's prayers, you don't need to sound like uh uh you know this great prayer, uh prayer warrior. Um that's what the Psalms gives you. It gives you permission to be yourself. Uh the Psalms give you language, it gives you a language to identify what your pain is, it gives you permission to ask questions, um, it shows where your joy comes from and and who you are trusting in. Someone told me uh just last week that self-focus is the fertilizer, is the best fertilizer for fear. And so when we are self-consumed, it drives fear in our lives. But when we are are we when we are consumed by who Jesus is and the power of the Spirit, it it takes the focus away from us, it dissipates fear, and it brings joy and confidence. Let me leave you with this today, friends. The Psalms teach us that you can bring your whole life to God, all of it, and still move towards his loving arms. Not perfection, we're not talking about perfect faith. You don't, you're not gonna always, you're not, it's not gonna help you clean up all your negative emotions, uh, it's not gonna remove all doubt, but real, honest, moving toward God kind of faith. And that's the kind of relationship God invites you into a movement of your relationship with God, not stagnant, but one that moves, and that requires us to be honest with God in our prayer time, in our in our reading of the Psalms, um and and just as we as we think about our own life and we look for it in the Psalms, um, I think you'll discover this great confidence that that uh uh we are called to have in God. I I want to close with a prayer today. Lord, teach us to pray. Give us language, words, pictures when we don't have it. Meet us in our honesty and lead us into trust. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God bless you. Thanks so much for listening to the Water's Edge Bible recap. I look forward every week to walking in the Word with you. You can find more information about Water's Edge Church at www.watersedge.fa. And you can listen to our weekly message on any platform under the Water's Edge website by downloading the Water's Edge app.