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My sophomore year in college, my friends and I decided to spend two hours in prayer for the salvation of the unsaved high school students we were working with. We decided to meet at church, and the only free space that evening was a large janitor's closet that smelled strongly of detergent and disinfectant.

So we gathered in that closet to pour out our hearts to God. We prayed every which way we knew: we praised God and confessed our sins and lifted up the names of all the students we could think of. Then we praised and confessed and interceded some more. When I looked at my watch, just 15 minutes had passed! The next hour and 45 minutes of prayer were the longest and slowest I had ever experienced.

I came to pour out my heart to God and discovered there wasn't much to pour out. It would be years before I understood why I saw prayer in the same way I saw the Psalms at that time—only as a tool to help me ask God for what I wanted. The problem was that I wanted so little! What I didn't understand was that learning to pray was learning to desire the things God wants to give, and then asking him for them.

It isn't that our desires are unworthy to express to God in prayer. He is our loving and compassionate Father, and he listens to all we say with a kind and wise heart. But he knows better than we do what we need—and better yet, he desires things for us that we may not even desire for ourselves.

Since that "closet episode" in college, I've learned a few more things about prayer, especially from the Psalms.

James Boice said learning to pray is a little like learning to play the violin with the virtuosos. No instrument sounds worse in the beginning stages of learning; it's all screech and scratch. But if the student is determined to play well, he checks the program guide for the classical music station and notes when the violin concertos will be aired. He buys the score for each concerto and does his best to play along. At first he sounds terrible. As time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the virtuosos. But all along, as he groans on his instrument, the orchestra plays the music beautifully—his poor performance is caught up and completed in the music of the masters.

So it is with prayer and us: By praying the Psalms back to God, we learn to pray in tune with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It is no accident that the great prayers of the Book of Psalms are also songs. They are the sheet music, the score and libretto of prayer. They are the building blocks for the music of eternity.

I am learning to pray in harmony with the Psalms, but I must admit, I got off to a slow start. I became a Christian at age ten, but it wasn't until decades later that the Psalms began to teach me to pray. So although I'm now well into adulthood, you are reading the words of a new convert. I'm still wide-eyed and breathless and maybe a little over the top with enthusiasm when I talk about their value.

The psalms that first got my attention were those that always seemed to be the right thing to pray, no matter the mood or situation. I call them the "one size fits all" psalms. For example, Psalm 103 is always the right thing to pray—always true, always fitting, in every time and place:

Let all that I am praise the Lord;
with my whole heart, I will praise
his holy name.
Let all that I am praise the Lord;
may I never forget the good things
he does for me.
He forgives all my sins
and heals all my diseases.
He redeems me from death
and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things.
My youth is renewed like the eagle's!
(NLT, used throughout)

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10