Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In this beautiful little book, Bonhoeffer guides the Christian to the Scriptures for lessons in how to pray. He affirms that the Lord's Prayer is the primary prayer of the Christian, which he asserts contains every prayer that a Christian ought to pray. Bonhoeffer also makes a startling but wise claim that jolts us out of the narrowness of our focus in prayer: "The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart." Thus we find the book of Psalms to be a rich treasury of prayers that are part of God's inspired word, and therefore a true place to learn how God would have us pray.

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Paperback, 88 pages

Published 1974 by Fortress Press (first published 1959)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, christianity, religion, nonfiction, christian living, prayer, old testament, christian

Book Quotes

“But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicings–all of which the heart can do by itself–with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Talk about one’s own guilt can be just as far from the Word of God as talk about one’s innocence.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It is characteristic of the faith of the Christian that through God’s grace and the merit of Jesus Christ he has become entirely justified and guiltless in God’s eyes, so that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8: 1 ). And it is characteristic of the prayer of the Christian to hold fast to this innocence and justification which has come to him, appealing to God’s word and thanking for it. So not only are we permitted, but directly obligated–provided we take God’s action to us at all seriously–to pray in all humiliation and certainty: “I was blameless before him and I kept myself from guilt” (Psalm 18:23); “If thou testest me thou wilt find no wickedness in me” (Psalm 17:3). With such a prayer we stand in the center of the New Testament, in the community of the cross of Jesus Christ.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“heaven,”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Nicht was wir gerade beten wollen, ist wichtig, sondern worum Gott von uns gebeten sein will. Wenn wir auf uns allein gestellt wären, so würden wir wohl auch vom Vaterunser oft nur die vierte Bitte beten. Aber Gott will es anders. Nicht die Armut unseres Herzens, sondern der Reichtum des Wortes Gottes soll unser Gebet bestimmen.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Beten heißt ja nicht einfach das Herz ausschütten, sondern es heißt, mit seinem erfüllten oder auch leeren Herzen den Weg zu Gott finden und mit ihm zu reden. Das kann kein Mensch von sich aus, dazu braucht er Jesus Christus.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.

Overshadowed by his life and death, his theology and his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has nevertheless remained very influential.

He seems to have undergone something of a personal conversion from a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity to a dedicated man of faith, resolved to carry out the teaching of Christ as he found it revealed in the Gospels.
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