Life lessons—they’re those things learned from experience.
The psalmists shared from their experience many valuable lessons for doing life with God.
Many of the life lessons they impart are in the way of godliness—of living a God-centered life.
Their prayers illustrate this. And the canvas upon which they painted these teachings were the two key traits of the godly: a delight in God’s word and leading a prayerful life.
In preparing to teach from the psalms, and reading through the entire psalter many times over, I compiled a list of the life lessons the psalmists consistently expound.
I stopped at an even dozen:
The psalms reveal much about who God is and teach that He can be trusted.
The psalmists recount God’s faithfulness in the nation's history.
They instruct us to wait hopefully.
We learn from the psalmist's experience that worship overcomes fear, worry, and distress—because God-centered prayer leads to praise…and inner peace.
God is worthy of our praise, no matter the situation.
They learned the valuable life lesson that the love of God endures forever. Something they longed for others to know, as well.
They demonstrated the importance for God’s people to pray in community.
They realized the delights, benefits, and necessity of God’s Word.
We learn from them that praying the psalms builds faith and hope, even in the most dire of circumstances.
From their experience we learn that we can approach God in every season of life—whether in exuberant joy or the darkest pit of sin.
They teach us how to honestly live life before the Father. Their experience gives us permission to wrestle before God with our thoughts and questions. And further shows that God receives our every human emotion.
The psalms teach about blessedness—what it means and what it looks like in daily life.
The Book of Psalms contains lessons for life.
And the lessons shared by the psalmists are those they learned by experiencing God in very personal and profound ways—experience which creates a yearning to live such a psalmistic kind of life.