When You Don't Have the Words: Praying the Psalms
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With the Psalms, we always have words to pray
God wants to hear from us. So he gave us the Psalms.
Sometimes we can’t find the right words to express our grief, longings, or even our joy. But in the Psalms, God gives us words to give back to him. The Psalms are deep and vast, speaking from every season of the soul. As we pray the Psalms, they form us. They teach us how to pray and what to pray.
In When You Don’t Have the Words: Praying the Psalms, Reed S. Dunn shows how the Psalms enrich our prayer lives. Dunn gives a deeply practical guide, relating to the challenges we face with praying the Psalms, and highlighting how they can reshape and enliven our prayer.
Praise for When You Don’t Have the Words
I have prayed the Psalms for over thirty years, and I have yet to read a book that more closely resonates with my experience than this one. If you want to know how the Psalms will reshape your prayers, sufferings, hopes, and beliefs about God, then this is the book for you.
—Chad Bird, 1517
I have read a lot of works on the power of the Psalms in prayer, but this may be the most warm, honest, practical, and Christ-centered guide I have read. As a fellow struggler and all-too-often delinquent in prayer, I found Reed’s invitation to Psalmic prayer to be generous and kind; his desire to help me draw near to Christ to be earnest and authentic; and his advice to be practical and wise. This will be the first book I will recommend to anyone who has felt like a failure in prayer and longs to encounter Jesus in every page of Scripture.
—Abe Cho, Redeemer City to City, New York
This accessible book on praying the Psalms is packed with insight and wisdom and is bound to be of enormous help to readers intent on deepening their faith and their prayer life. I warmly commend it!
—Iain Provan, Regent College, Vancouver
- Part 1: A Psalmic Orientation
- The Ancient Path
- The Psalter as Spiritual Formation
- How to Pray the Psalms
- Part 2: The Psalmic Experience
- Choosing to Believe
- The Rock of Our Refuge
- Prayers of Righteousness
- Praying Against Evil
- The Silence of God
- Relating to God
- Meeting God
- Title: When You Don't Have the Words: Praying the Psalms
- Author: Reed S. Dunn
- Publisher: Lexham Press
- Publication Date: 2025
- Pages: 224
- Format: Logos Digital, Paperback
- Trim Size: 5.25x8
- ISBN: 9781683598060
Reed S. Dunn is the pastor of Redeemer Hudson, New Jersey. He cares deeply about pastoral care and spiritual formation.
Reviews
1 rating
Aaron Lee
7/24/2025
In When You Don’t Have the Words: Praying the Psalms, Reed S. Dunn shows how the Psalms enrich our prayer lives. This book demonstrates how the Psalms are the perfect instrument to shape our spirituality and guide us to our Lord. Dunn begins by explaining that the Psalms are not just Israel’s handbook—they are Israel’s prayer book. Each psalm is an invitation to have a particular spiritual experience with God. Praying All the Psalms I was most challenged to learn that praying all of the Psalms is as important as praying any of them. Instead of picking and choosing which Psalms I want to pray in my life, I now want all of them to shape and mold me. Dunn describes developing a kind of muscle memory for praying the Psalms—meaning they come to mind naturally through regular practice. The Psalms help us live in the Spirit. This is true spirituality: being close to God, no matter where we are. Dunn calls this a kind of spiritual stability—the ability to regularly pray through things that would usually derail us. In fact, the tree in Psalm One is a picture of that very stability. Believing God Through the Psalms What I found most interesting was how praying the Psalms changes our experience of believing God. We believe in both the natural and the supernatural. We begin to see God as an active participant in our lives. So much of the time, I want to recognize the hidden hand of God. I now believe the Psalms are my way to get there. The Psalms show us that God is our refuge in many ways. Praying the Psalms frees us to run to God instead of trying to fix ourselves. The Psalms help us become self-forgetful—in a good way—turning our attention Godward. They point us to the righteousness of Christ, the reality of evil, and God’s ultimate victory over it. And when God seems silent, the Psalms give us words to say when we feel separated from Him. How God Shapes a Soul The book ends on the note that the Psalms help us relate to and meet with God. After reading this book, I am motivated to make Psalm reading a regular part of my routine using The Kathismata Psalter. I am eager and ready to see how God shapes my soul through the Psalms. I received a media copy of When You Don’t Have the Words and this is my honest review.