The Psalm Grid - How to Pray the Psalms Daily

 

I'd like to share with you the method that I use to pray the Psalms throughout the day.

Tracking and quantifying prayers is not the ideal way to operate. God would have us pray without ceasing. We should fly to prayer in every time of trouble, without prompting or encouragement from some goal-setting apparatus. Yet while the spirit indeed is willing, the flesh is weak, and I have found this strategy to be very helpful to refocus my day on the Psalms and remain consistent with the practice.

This particular method is what works really well for me, but it likely will not be quite the same for you. Consider incorporating some of these ideas into your own reading and prayers, and modify them to suit your needs.

Step 1 - Get a Pocket Notebook

I recommend Log and Jotter (logandjotter.com) and the Sharpie S-Gel 0.5mm pen. Log and Jotter allows you to choose your interior paper ruling, and I have always liked graph paper the best. However, a dot grid will also work fine for this method. Pocket notebooks (which I have written about previously) are my home base for all kinds of note-taking and journaling throughout the day, and the Psalm grid is typically the first thing I set up each day.

Start each day at the top of a clean page, labelling the date and day of the week. Now you're ready to make your grid.

Step 2 - Set up your grid

Choose how many Psalms you would like to pray each day. I started out with 10, then did 12 for a while, then 15, then 24. 12 offers a great balance in terms of time commitment, and it took me a solid two years to get any level of consistency with that. 

Lay out your grid to contain twice as many squares as the number of Psalms you will pray. This allows you to take two squares to write the number of each Psalm. For example, I make a 4x12 grid, with four rows each holding 6 Psalms. Each Psalm takes up two squares (horizontally). For a long time I made a 2x12 grid.

Every time you pray a Psalm throughout the day, you will mark that Psalm's number in your grid. But which Psalms will you pray?

Step 3 - Choose a plan

We live in a time and place blessed with endless Bible reading and prayer plans. It will take trial and error to figure out which one works best for you. My Psalm plan has four facets:

Pray through the Psalms in 30 days. This takes up a few of my Psalms each day, and it's a great way to give you the wide exposure through the whole book on a recurring basis. Plans are readily available online. I use a  modified version (see left) of the plan in CPH's Treasury of Daily Prayer.

Memorize. I typically work on 1-2 Psalms for memorization at any given time. For example, when I was working on Psalm 7, there was a week or two when I would have Psalm 7 show up in my grid at least three times a day.

Sons of Solomon. This is an ecumenical prayer habitus for sons of God that centers around the Psalms and Proverbs. We aim to pray Psalms 123-131 at various times of the day. They are nice and short, good for quick breaks or transitional times, as well as morning and evening prayer

Miscellaneous. Sometimes I want to hit an old favorite. Sometimes I'm curious about a Psalm I used to know better. Sometimes I've found a Psalm particularly helpful for me during a season of life.

My Psalm grid is filled with a mixture of these four elements every day. My Dad just picks a new Psalm and sticks with it throughout each day. Find routines that work for you! I track which day I'm on in the 30-day plan at the top of each notebook page, and which Psalms are assigned for that day.

Step 4 - Pray the Psalms

This is what it's all about, and it's easy to get caught up in the planning portion. Try not to overthink your plan; instead, focus on actually spending more time praying the Psalms.

Use every opportunity you have to pray a Psalm. Commutes, morning and evening quiet time, work breaks, and family devotions are all good places to get into this habit. You'll be amazed at how often you can refocus on God's Word and sanctify your work, when you are looking for opportunities to do so. 

I have found that reading or singing the Psalms aloud is much more effective at engaging the mind and heart than trying to read them silently. In situations where noise is inappropriate, even a whisper is better than nothing. Keep a Psalter of some kind with you as often as possible, and call often on your memory bank of Psalms as you build it up. My tool of choice is the Gideons ESV Pocket Testament, supplemented by a nicer ESV leather edition of the Psalms when I'm not on the go.

Step 5 - Do it again, and be consistent

This is the hardest part, and God-willing I will write another post soon on how I tackle this part of the puzzle. But remember, the more Psalms you pray, the more Psalms you will want to pray. Just get going each day; the most important thing is to start with something - it doesn't matter so much what precisely it is. When you're in the Psalms, or anywhere in Scripture, God is watering you like the rain that falls down from heaven.

Plant yourself by the streams of water - plant yourself in the Word of the Lord.

Update - February 2024

Since this has become the most-viewed post on the blog, and I have some updates and thoughts related to this post, I figured I'd add it here instead of writing a separate entry.

First, I left off in the summer with the intention of writing more about that ever-elusive Step 5. I have improved since then with the consistency, but not to the extent that I feel comfortable writing about it yet.

Second, some personal updates on my Psalm practice. I continue to pray 24 Psalms a day. I tried 30 for a while, and it worked to some extent but was probably a touch beyond my sweet spot, and also numerically less clear and satisfying, as there are not 30 hours in a day. I love doing the 24-Psalm schedule, and comparing my number of completed Psalms to the (military) time of day to see if I'm on track to finish. Also, just recently, I've begun going through the Psalms every 21 days as part of the 24 daily Psalms. I was doing every 30 days since summertime, but I'd like to really make steady progress on memorization and this seems like the clearest way to do it. 

Third, some changes adjacent to the Psalms. In lieu of piling on more total daily Psalms, I now supplement the 24 with four daily readings: The Ten Commandments (meditating on each in prayer), The Nicene Creed, The Lord's Prayer (Trying to Pray about each petition), and a weekly reading that changes for each day of the week, but stays the same from week to week. This is how I fill out my Bible exposure with Old Testament history (1 Kings 18) and prophecy (Isaiah 52-53), as well as the four Gospels (Matthew 28, Mark 15, Luke 12, John 6), and the epistles (Romans 6). These seven readings are assigned and repeated on the seven days of the week, with the goal of learning them by heart along with the Psalms. I try to read more widely than this in Scripture, but with the above structure, I'm at least hitting a wide variety of good stuff every week, while repeating so much of the really good stuff. I also switched from the Gideons back to the pocket LSB, slicing and inserting the above Bible passages and some other resources into its pages. I've missed having the hymns along with me, and now that is remedied.

I think that's all we'll add for now. Like I mentioned at the top of the original post, pull what works for you and start doing it - don't worry so much about the minutiae of your plan; those things should fall into place as you go. This is meant as a guideline or example on one method that works for one person, from which you may glean instruction or inspiration for your own time spent in the Word of God and prayer. 

Lord-willing, I will add another update in April with some helpful information about staying consistent in the Psalms and overcoming the various distractions of the devil, the world, and the flesh by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.