Pray a Psalm Right Now

We learn to pray by praying.

Waiting for Spring. Personal photo, 2025.

About a month ago, I encouraged you to pray the Bible in 2025.

I want to return to that idea now and walk through praying a psalm. In the book Praying the Bible, author Donald Whitney highlights how psalms cover the whole range of human emotion and experience. Because of that, no matter what we’re experiencing, there’s a psalm that can provide great “liftoff” for our prayers.

Even so, using a biblical text like a psalm as a tool for prayer is unfamiliar to many believers. Isn’t it more authentic, some assume, just to “pray from the heart?”

The best way to grow in your prayer life is by praying, however you choose to do it. Think of praying Scripture as just one tool in a prayer toolbox you’ll put together over a lifetime.

Try what I describe below. If it doesn’t click with you right away, try it again later. Maybe give it a go with a different psalm. Don’t give up too quickly. Growth in our prayer lives is a gift from God, yet it’s one that we only receive over time through persistent effort.

Here’s a short outline of what follows:

1. Read Psalm 27:1-4

   1. Invite the Lord to teach you to pray using his Word. Read it slowly. If the Lord brings prayers to mind, pray them. If not, just continue reading.

   2. I’m using the ESV translation here. If you prefer a different one, by all means use that.

2. Read Psalm 27:1-4 again, this time with my prayer suggestions included.

   1. Some might find my prayer responses helpful, especially those who are newer to this practice. They’re not meant to be soaring, poetic prayers, just plain-spoken responses to God’s Word. It’s just an example of how you might pray the psalm.

3. You may choose to read the verses again, praying in your own words. Or you might continue to pray through the rest of Psalm 27.

4. A consideration for praying this psalm that’s very applicable to other psalms as well.

Well, let’s get started!

Part 1 — Read Psalm 27:1-4

As I said above, just read it slowly. If you’re moved to pray at any point, pray. But don’t feel like you have to. Just let the Word start to work on you:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me

to eat up my flesh,

my adversaries and my foes,

it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war arise against me,

yet I will be confident.

One thing I have asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to inquire in his temple.

Part 2 — Read Psalm 27:1-4 with optional prayer responses

Read these four verses again, this time with my prayer responses included. There’s nothing special about the prayers I’ve written here. They’re just an example. The words that you’re moved to pray may be quite different.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

Lord, help me remember to bring all of my fears to you. Help me to trust that, in you, I have nothing to fear.

When evildoers assail me

to eat up my flesh,

my adversaries and my foes,

it is they who stumble and fall.

God Almighty, thank you for the everlasting victory I have in you. Thank you that those who oppose your purposes will fail in the end.

Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war arise against me,

yet I will be confident.

Father God, I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be in ancient Israel’s army, with enemy soldiers camped all around. And here, your Word says, ‘I will be confident.’ That kind of confidence seems out of reach. It seems impossible. Change me, Lord, so that whatever life throws at me, I have that kind of confidence in you.

One thing I have asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to inquire in his temple.

Lord God, I’m struck by how it says I can dwell in your house ‘all the days of my life.’ I think sometimes about how I’ll be in your house after this life is over. I know I’ll see you then. But this says all of that is here and real right now in some sense. Help me understand what that means, Lord. And help me to live like I really believe it.

Part 3 — Taking The Next Step with Praying Psalm 27

At this point, you can choose from a couple of options. If you haven’t tried much of your own prayer yet, go back to Part 1, with just the Scripture, and try praying through it with your own words. If you’ve gotten the hang of that, or just want to move on to some new verses, continue to pray through Psalm 27 using your own Bible.

Keep in mind that you can also pray a psalm for someone else. It’s no harder than praying one with your own requests. Like Psalm 27, a lot of psalms are written in the first-person and lend themselves to the kind of prayer I wrote above. But it’s good to form the habit of praying psalms for others too.

Part 4 — Evildoers? Foes? How do I love my enemies when I’m praying psalms?

All of God’s Word reveals timeless truth. Yet it’s also the case that Old Testament books like Psalms come from a world very different from our own. Some of the moral messages in psalms can even seem to contradict Jesus’ own teachings.

It’s not possible to summarize the relationship between the Old Testament and the New in a blog post. Likewise, piles of books have been written on how Jesus fulfills the promises and prophecies of Psalms. To work through these ideas, what we need is a church community, with leaders of character, sound theology, and wisdom.

That’s a bit of a digression, but it’s an important point. And it’s worth bringing up here, because if you make a habit of praying psalms (as I hope you’ll do), you’ll find they do raise a lot of questions.

Psalm 27:2 raises some, for example:

When evildoers assail me

to eat up my flesh,

my adversaries and my foes,

it is they who stumble and fall.

Who are these evildoers? Well, the author of this psalm, David, might have had Israel’s enemies the Philistines in mind. Or possibly even his own father-in-law Saul, who threatened David’s life more than once.

But where does that leave you? How do you pray in response to a verse like this? David’s enemies are long dead, after all—or are they?

Centuries later, consider what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6:12:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

This is saying that, as the church, our ultimate battle isn’t against people, even truly terrible people. Instead, it’s against cosmic powers, or evil spiritual forces. Some of these demons do, of course, influence sinister events and wicked people. But our struggle is still ultimately a spiritual one, not “against flesh and blood.” And we never know who might one day repent and follow Jesus alongside us.

If you’re newer to Christianity, or if spiritual beings like angels and demons sound far-fetched, any of the Gospels can be helpful. My suggestion would be to read Mark. You’ll quickly see that Jesus believes there is much more to our reality than meets the eye.

It’s fitting that we’ve landed in Ephesians 6. This chapter describes the armor of God, or the means of spiritual protection for believers. The chapter is worth reading in full, but I’ll highlight just a couple of verses in hopes of tying this post together.

Here’s Ephesians 6:17-18a:

Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit. . . .

The sword of the Spirit, we’re told, is the word of God. And it’s closely connected to “praying at all times in the Spirit.” At times, praying through a psalm might feel dry. It might feel confusing. Your mind might wander. But as you persist, you’re advancing the Kingdom of God, pushing back against unseen spiritual powers, in ways that we can only begin to imagine.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

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Thank you for all the great questions and suggestions on the topic of praying the Bible. In time, I hope to circle back to as many of these as I can. For a lot of people, I think spreading these ideas out over a number of posts will actually be most effective. It can be helpful to take one consideration, incorporate it into your prayer life until it becomes intuitive, and then take on another.

Of course, if you’re eager for more to dig into right now, Donald Whitney’s book is a great option.

If you have other books on prayer you’d recommend, please share them in the comments. God bless and have a great week!