Why Psalms?

As my first post – I wanted to give you an idea of why I chose this path through psalms to help with my recovery.  Let me begin by saying I had started down the path of the 12 steps before and failed.  So, I generally knew that I need the help of God, or at the time, a higher power.  I also knew that I would have to become better at praying in order for God to help.  I also knew from my previous attempts that I would not be successful if I focused on “not doing the negative” – I would have to have a new, and positive activity, to focus on.  So instead of saying “don’t act out”, “don’t drink”, I would say -  time to pray, time to re-write psalms.

At one point in the past few years a pastor at our church mentioned reading one psalm every day is an excellent way to learn how to pray.  I kind of saw it as a training course in prayer, similar to training for a marathon or triathlon.  Only now, in hindsight, do I see how true this is.

I also knew from previous successes in battling addiction that I would need something that lasted at least 90 days.  Somehow 90 days in significant for the mind to make a significant change like this.  After seeing that there are 150 psalms I knew that this would fit the bill.

Finally, I needed some negative reinforcement to help keep me on track.  For that, I decided that in any point over the next 150 days if I acted out on either of my sex addiction or alcoholism I would need to start over at Psalm 1.  That was a big factor in my success of the first 30-60 days.
Once I started with Psalms then I started to see God work in my life.  Help started to appear and I began to see real progress in my life with many aspects  – not just my addiction…well I invite you to watch and see.