"The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time...we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God's own Word, precisely because here we encounter the praying Christ...because those who pray the psalms are joining in with the prayer of Jesus Christ, their prayer reaches the ears of God. Christ has become their intercessor...
In the Psalter we learn to pray on the basis of Christ's prayer. The Psalter is the great school of prayer...the whole sweep of the Book of Psalms was concerned with nothing more nor less than the brief petitions of the Lord's Prayer. In all our praying there remains only the prayer of Jesus Christ...The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become."
When I realized some years ago that Jesus is the primary voice in the Psalms, they took on even more significance for me. Now when I read them, I think of Jesus and hear Him praying them, and with my imagination, I enter into His prayers by faith.
A helpful book along these lines is Patrick Reardon's Christ in the Psalms (here).
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