Good Shepherd Community Church

Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." These words address participation in Christian assembly and tells us to use Psalms. We should read them, pray them, sing them and teach and preach them. Three recently used psalms demonstrate this. The psalms reviewed are, first of all, Psalm 130, a prayer of lament and petition resulting in a self exhortation and a group exhortation. For the next service we turned to Psalm 105. However, Psalm 105 and 106 are actually one psalm of poetic historical narrative of God's dealings with his chosen people, the Hebrews, Israel. The psalm is an exhortation to praise God and a teaching device to encourage spiritual renewal in light of God's faithfulness. Lastly, we used Psalm 86, a prayer of David in the form of lament and petition to Yahweh, the Lord. It is a heartfelt prayer of deep relationshi