Confession: I've been a user...
(by Keith) I have a confession to make. It's not something I am proud of, but I hope that by doing so I might help others who have gone through the same thing. So here it is...
I have been a user of the Psalms.
Until recently, I have read the Psalms, looked through the Psalms, or even taught the Psalms only when it suited a particular purpose. For example: Say I was leading a time of worship and wanted to read from the Bible about God's glory among the nations. I would flip to the concordance, look for "glory" or "nations," find all the listings in Psalms, then read them until I found one I liked. Before long, I would have a passage I could "use" for my purposes.
By reading the Psalms only when I needed them, I had gone from being a student of God's Word to ...a user.
Truthfully, I think it's been a lifelong habit. I always thought Psalms were nice and poetic and everything, but never really got a lot from them.
Then recently, I was reading a book where the author spoke about viewing the world through the eyes of a godly man. He pointed to the Psalms as containing language to express the richness of how God sees the world. That made sense - David was a man after God's own heart, so he probably saw the world in a pretty unique way. The author writes: "If you bury yourself in Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life."
Right there, I stopped reading and wondered to myself: "Then why am I reading this book instead of reading Psalms?" I literally put down that book, picked up my Bible, and let it fall open to the middle. That was two weeks ago, and I am beginning to understand what he means.
So begins my recovery.
