MINISTRY / Perspective from the Psalms
Have you noticed how there is an overabundance of digital stimuli available to us in our modern world? Advertisements flash at us while we’re online trying to simply focus on emails or news articles. Reels attract our attention and lure us into rabbit holes of laughable antics. Games elevate our attention by dumping dopamine shots into our brains. Social media platforms inflate our ego with likes and comments.
Meanwhile, our spiritual life languishes for lack of time listening to God.
15 Days in the Psalms?
During the Chinese New Year celebration, we are encouraging you to add your prayers to ours, asking the Holy Spirit to spread the good news about God’s Son to China. If you’re on our email or mailing list you’ll get frequent reminders to spend quality time talking to God in intercession. If you would like to view our resources, including prayers for each day, click/tap here or below: 15 Days of Prayer.
On a spiritual level, we won’t be wasting our time or allowing the world’s many voices to steal our attention when we set this kind of goal and pursue the commitment to pray for others.
Part of improving our prayer life is listening to God’s Word, both for instruction and for motivation. Dr. Martin Luther, when asked by his barber how to improve his prayer life, answered with a rather lengthy reminder to first hear God’s voice and then we will know much more clearly what to ask for and what to speak about as we express our concerns to him.
Probably the greatest question about praying is simply this: What do I say? Luther answers that enduring question. As a matter of fact, the whole letter to his barber is an answer to that question (see the booklet below). The answer is simply this – pray the Catechism and pray the Scriptures, particularly the Psalms. That seems to be a foreign concept to many Lutherans today, but it is the fundamental part of how Dr. Luther taught prayer.
So, it might be good for us to learn how to first spend time with God’s Word and then pour out our hearts in response to what we have heard.
Resources to enhance your prayer life
We are including a couple of extra resources here during our emphasis on prayer to help you.
15 Days in Psalms (website) OR PDF
15 Days of Prayer (for China)