One of the things I absolutely love about the Psalms is that Jesus prayed them. This morning I opened up Psalm 103:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits.
I paused to absorb the lines. Then I reread them, considering how Jesus might have prayed them. There were some immediate differences. For one thing, when Jesus said, “And all that is within me, bless His holy name,” all that was within him did. And when Jesus said, “And forget none of His benefits,” he didn’t implicitly preface the words with “I wish I could …”
Although I don’t know what went through Christ’s mind when he prayed, I can readily grasp that his prayers—using the exact same words—were different than mine. His heart was where mine wants to be. Which is why praying as if I were more like Jesus helps me see how to become more like him. And that helps me praise God better.
