Do you need help seeing how all of the Old Testament points to Jesus Christ? Do you ever struggle knowing how to pray? Are there times you just don’t know what to do with your feelings?

I know these are all true for me, and if they are true for you also, then I heartily recommend Psalms for You by Christopher Ash. Ash is a Writer-in-Residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK, and has written several other books on teaching the Psalms.

In Psalms for You Ash has chosen 32 Psalms, grouped in pairs, and wants us to see how Jesus shapes the way we understand them and how we can apply them to our lives. The selected psalms are intended to give an overview of the various themes in the Psalms. Chapter titles include “The King’s Trust,” “Pain in Exile,” “Going Up to Zion,” and “The Final Hallelujah.”

Ash has two major goals for the book. The first is to help us learn from the Psalms how to pray. I remember years ago when Pastor Pat encouraged the church not to open the Bible and play “Where’s Waldo,” looking first to see what the scriptures say about me.

Ash agrees that oftentimes the verses we select can become “an echo chamber of my own desires and thoughts” and do not get to the heart of what God by the Spirit of Christ is saying.

Ash helps us to see Christ in the Psalms, both in Christ’s sufferings and in Christ’s glory. Focusing on Jesus helps us keep him, his kingdom, and his people at the center our prayer.

The second goal is to help us learn to feel. This raised a caution flag for me at first, but as human beings we do have emotions that God has given us to express.

The Psalms can help us learn to express those emotions in a God-honoring manner. Let me quote Ash here – the Psalms, by the Spirit of God’s help, “reorder our disordered affections so that we feel deeper desires for what we ought to desire, more urgent aversion to that from which we need to flee, and a greater longing for the honor of God in the health of Christ’s church.”

In each Psalm, Ash will ask several questions to help us get to the meaning of the Psalm. First, who is speaking? Second, what did the psalm mean for the old-covenant people of God? And third, what did it mean for Jesus, and what does it mean for us as the new-covenant people of God now?

The book could be used as a reference for the Psalms included in it, and I have done that for a bible study I take part in. But the real value is to read the book cover to cover and rejoice in Christ Jesus, our righteous king who has accomplished all for our salvation and even now leads us in worship by his Spirit.

To those who belong to the family of God through faith in Christ, Jesus says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” Hebrews 2:12. That changes our worship doesn’t it?