We need to express gratitude and worship to keep growing into strong and mature believers. One of the great challenges we face is getting from a troubled heart to a heart full of praise. The Psalms can help us make that transition.
The child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us. By means of the speech of the Father in heaven his children learn to speak with him. Repeating God’s own words after him, we begin to pray to him.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945, in Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible
The prayers in the Bible are not magic words, nor mantras, but models which can guide us as we pray.
