I was ordained in the PCA in 2003, and since then I have noticed an encouraging uptick in psalm-singing in corporate worship across the PCA and other Reformed traditions. But has that corporate psalm-singing resulted in increased private (and corporate) psalm-praying? 

Reed Dunn, the pastor of Redeemer Hudson in Union City, New Jersey, would say the psalm-praying has not increased. He has written “When You Don’t Have Words: Praying the Psalms” (Lexham, 2025) to help disciples of Jesus learn to speak to God using the words he himself has given us for the very purpose of drawing near to him in prayer. 

Dunn shows that the whole Psalter is a vital and oft-neglected tool for spiritual formation, and he dives deeply into how to pray even those psalms that seem to be off limits to us because of their spiritual posture and actual requests.    

As a teen, I was encouraged to read a psalm each day and even to use that psalm in my prayers. Dunn helped me see that I have done far more reading and studying of the psalms in my lifetime than actually praying them. Thus, “When Don’t Have Words” was the best sort of book: it made me want to change my practice and also provided encouraging motivations and concrete suggestions for doing so. 

Dunn argues persuasively that even when the psalms don’t appear to fit our current spiritual experiences, they are fitting us for a relationship with God and providing us with spiritual reflexes and muscle memory that prepare us for experiences that are bound to come in due time. Praying the psalms enables believers “to practice living in the Spirit” and thus gives us the spiritual stability and skills we need to navigate whatever our pilgrimage in this fallen world might bring our way.

He discusses three different “methods” as we seek to pray the psalms: the personal approach, the literal approach, and the reflective approach. In the personal approach, we pray the words God has given us in the psalm, but we change the pronouns to first  and second person to make our prayer more direct and intersperse our own requests as we see appropriate. In the literal approach, we pray the very words exactly as we find them in the Scriptures. This is a harder way to pray, but Dunn suggests that when we do so we are joining the ancient people of God, participating in their stories. 

Finally, in the reflective approach, we use the psalm as an outline, praying our own words in response to the words of God. Whichever approach we take, Dunn encourages us to remember that we are speaking to the living God, so we must always seek to mean the words we say rather than merely reading them. To that end, his reflections at the end of each chapter not only seek to explain a specific psalm, but they help us see how to draw near to God through that psalm with understanding and devotion.

To me, the most helpful portions of this book were Dunn’s discussions of several experiences we have as we pray the psalms. He discusses the experience of belief; of being in need of a refuge that only God can truly supply; of celebrating our righteousness in Jesus Christ and being conformed to his righteousness; of facing enemies (not only individual opponents of the faith, but the devil and our own flesh); of dealing with God’s silence and apparent abandonment; and of relating to and meeting with God himself in psalmic prayer. 

His chapters on the psalms of righteousness and the imprecatory psalms alone are worth the price of the book. Everyone who has read through the psalms has raised an eyebrow at these parts of God’s Word, and everyone who has sought to pray the psalms has struggled to know if or how they are appropriate to be prayed today. Dunn doesn’t say everything there is to say, but what he does say is challenging, insightful, and practical.     

At times Dunn is more appreciative and less critical than I am of Christian authors outside the Reformed tradition. Yet despite that objection, I recommend his book, especially if you are struggling with the command and invitation to pray. Dunn is a skilled practitioner who will take you on a guided tour of this wonderful means of grace. When we don’t have the words – and even when we do – “When You Don’t Have the Words” will encourage and enable us to open our Bibles to the center and use the words God has supplied.

Caleb Cangelosi serves as senior pastor of Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church in Ridgeland, Mississippi.