One Of The Most Important Spiritual Habits I Practice

I thought I’d share one of the most influential spiritual habits I try to implement every day. I can’t take credit for this idea, my dear friend Sarah Bradshaw shared it with me a few years ago, and it’s truly been revolutionary in my walk with the Lord.

I read 5 Psalms every day.

Digging into the Psalms is one of my favorite parts of spending time with the Lord. It prepares my heart for the day, reminds me of God’s character and fixes my gaze firmly on heaven! Reading the Psalms every day has taught me to grieve, taught me where true joy comes from, taught me to be honest with the Lord, and ultimately has taught me about my Father.

But the most important thing that reading the Psalms every day has done for my soul is taught me how to pray. In the Psalms, we learn how to wrestle with God with unfulfilled desires, we learn how to bend our emotions around His truth, we learn how to find joy in God’s presence, and we learn how to praise the King!

There are 150 Psalms and if you read 5 a day, you’ll read the entire book of Psalms every month. I cannot overstate how influential this practice has been for me. There’s a depth of intimacy and honestly in the Psalms that no other book quite captures in the same way. 

John Calvin has my favorite description of the Psalms. I have it scribbled in my Bible, and it’s a good reminder of the purpose of the Psalms – training our hearts for emotional maturity!

“An anatomy of all parts of the soul. All the range of emotions are expressed; the Psalms weave an emotional fabric for the human soul. These inspired lyrics take us by the hand and train us in the proper emotion. They lead us to emotional maturity.”

Below are a few more of my favorite quotes about the Psalms.

“The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time…we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God’s own Word, precisely because here we encounter the praying Christ…because those who pray the psalms are joining in with the prayer of Jesus Christ, their prayer reaches the ears of God. Christ has become their intercessor…” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Romans gave Luther his theology, but it was the Psalms that gave him his thunder.” – Steven Lawson

“The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.” –C.S. Lewis

** This post originally appeared on Patheos.com, but I updated it a bit!