I am old, so I’ve been around a long time. I’ve been ardently seeking and following the Lord for the past four and half decades. For many of those years I made it a daily habit in the mornings to rise early and pray through a psalm. I would start with Psalm 1, and about 150 days later, finally get to Psalm 150, and then I would start all over again. Since I usually prayed one line of a psalm at a time, followed by a discussion with God about what it meant and what it meant to me and what He wanted me to see there, it was not unusual that it might take me an hour or more to pray through a psalm. When I would get to Psalm 119, I would wince and usually hurry through it because it was so long, and frankly, (although I would not want to say this out loud so anyone could hear me) boring.
If I am speaking frankly and honestly, there was another bothering reason I tended to shy away from Psalm 119. I am a huge advocate of the doctrines of Grace. My favorite book in the Bible was Galatians. My most valued book outside the Bible is Martin Luther’s Commentary on Galatians(just right ahead of J.I. Packer’s book, Knowing God). Some verses that give me great comfort are passages such as Hebrews 8:13, “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” and Colossians 2:14, “having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” And then there were the places where Paul made it clear that the Law of Moses kills us (like Second Corinthians 3:6). So, why would I want to spend much time focusing on Psalm 119 which is a very long section of the Old Testament that I assumed talked exclusively about the benefits of the Law/Commands/Precepts/Statutes of the Old Covenant (as given by Moses)? Why would I want to look intently into something that was obsolete and killed me? I didn’t. (Although I did not really know what to do with that nagging statement of Jesus in Matthew 5:18-19, where He says, “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” I had various theologically sound ways of explaining away this statement, or at least diminishing the obvious emphatic value Jesus placed on it, but it was still a nagging passage.)
And then a few years back, I was fervently praying to Jesus asking Him if He would reveal to me what His daily prayer life was like. I had learned that if you really want to know someone, study His prayer life when no one is listening. At least I knew that was the way it worked for me, and I had heard others say pretty much the same thing. So, the reason I was requesting this was to get to know Him better. (I was seeking to follow the “advice” in John 17:3.) I knew from New Testament passages that Jesus often would go to a secluded spot early in the morning and pray. So, my request was, “Lord, would you tell me what you prayed about during those times?”
The Holy Spirit clearly impressed me to delve deeper into Psalm 119 and I would find the answer to my question there. I have spent just about every day for the past few years prayerfully pondering Psalm 119 with Christ, and asking Him a lot of questions about why He prayed each verse, one octet per day. Psalm 119 has 22 octets, so it would usually take me a little less than a month to get all the way through Psalm 119 like this, and then I would start it all over again. I estimate I have prayed all the way through Psalm 119 this way about 40 times. Each time, the Holy Spirit revealed new and deeper insights into the person of Jesus Christ and the person of YHWH. It never got old. Eventually, I had learned so much about Jesus from this exercise, that I felt compelled to share some of those insights with others. Hence, this book.