Praying David's Songs as an Avenue to a Deeper Prayer Life

Day 63: 2 Samuel 19-24

2 Samuel 22 offers a beautiful prayer of David. At this point, God has delivered David and Israel from the hand of Saul and other enemies and so David sings a song of praise to the Lord.

David opens the prayer in this way: "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—from violent people you save me." David's prayer continues to praise and honor God for all that God has done.

We can learn many things from David's prayer:
1. David retells all the things that the Lord has done for him. This re-telling of the numerous things God did for David helps David reflect on the goodness of the Lord. When we pray or sing songs to the Lord, we, too, are reflecting on what God has done in our live. We are verbally (and mentally) processing the wonderful things God has done for us.

2. David's successes--and ours too--are because of God's doing, not our own.

3. We can look to God to do what he can do--be our refuge and our strength. What have we to fear with God at the helm of our ship?

4. We can learn a lot about the character of God by the way David describes him.

5. We can pray this prayer/song of David, too. Sometimes it's difficult to know what to pray for or to know how to pray. 2 Samuel 22 offers a beautiful avenue into prayer, and I just prayed it myself. What a beautiful poem. Sometimes our prayers are either dry or cliche, and it helps to be reminded how prayers can be beautifully composed. Just look at many of the Psalms as examples.

May all of us continue to grow in our prayer lives with the Lord. 2 Samuel 22 offers a wonderful example of what to pray.