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In you, Lord my God, I put my trust…Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths (Psalm 25:1,4).

The psalms of the Old Testament are the church's prayer book. This doesn’t mean that these are the only prayers or songs we offer, but that we allow them to be our prayer teachers. They will teach us how to pray the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father who is in heaven..."

Many psalms come out of the depths of broken, harassed, or desperate hearts. They seem to explode out of the psalmist; we can feel their pathos and desperation. Others, like Psalm 25, are more deliberate; they have been brooded over and carefully constructed.

This psalm has 22 verses. It is an acrostic, meaning that each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This prayer is not offered "off the cuff'. It comes to us only after careful meditated crafting. We often think that praying needs to be spontaneous. That is an illusion. The psalter teaches us that a prayer which is thought out and stylistic is as spiritual and effective as spontaneous expressions of the heart.

I have found that praying along with saints long deceased helps expand the content of my prayers. It is very easy for our prayers to shrink to the narrow confines of our own lives. Listening to and praying along with others (even those no longer on this earth) can help us discover the depth and breath of Jesus’ prayer “your kingdom come”.

Psalm 25 comes out of a time of trouble; thus, it is not prayed with a smile or exuberant joy and certainly not with a detached indifference. In this season of anguish, the psalmist explores for himself what it means to lift up his soul to the Lord (1).

So, what can we learn about "lifting up our hearts to the Lord" from this prayer? We notice that significant parts of the psalm reflect on the "way of the Lord." This pray-er believes that the way of the Lord is the right way to live and therefore he wants to be taught how to live it. He recognizes that there are different ways to live. He doesn't necessarily know God's way, so he wants to learn. Trusting in God and lifting our souls up to Him means that we seek to walk in His ways.

I wonder how many of us respond to adversity this way. It might not have been the psalmist’s first response either. Yet, as she wrestled with the troubles she faced, she came to that space where this became the desire of the heart. Maybe you have had that experience too. Our first reaction to stress is “Get rid of it, God”. But as we wrestled in prayer, the Spirit brought us to a place in which obedience became our primary desire.

Such movement in prayer brings with it a recognition that we have not always followed God's ways. It may even be that some of the psalmist’s current problems have arisen because of disobedience. So, what does he do? Does he try to hide this reality? No. He confesses it and asks the Lord to forgive. Forgiveness is possible because in His love, the Lord forgives.

Trusting in the Lord does not mean instant success. The psalmist has staked his life on doing life God's way. If he goes down in defeat, he will experience public shame. He fears that shame even though he knows that in the end God will be proven to be right.

In the long run, God will set His people secure in the land (13). Jesus makes a similar statement: "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). We recognize this may not happen until the new heavens and the new earth. Are we willing to live in obedience to God until that time?