When you begin singing Psalms -- when you sing them in their entirety, not little happy snippets that are collected here and there for praise choruses -- but when you start singing the psalms systematically and regularly, you understand something about our reformational heritage. You find yourself singing things you've never sung before in your life. And you may have been a Christian 30, 40, 50 years, but you're singing things you've never sung before in your life. One of the differences you will notice right away is the Psalms are composed by someone who had enemies. And these enemies show up in the Psalms.
The pop evangelical today is just becoming dimly aware that there is such a thing as an adversary and we don't quite know what to do. And part of the reason we don't know what to do is we don't know the Psalms. If we knew the Psalms, what do you do when confronted by the enemy? You pick the Psalm that's most appropriate. But most Christians don't know anything about the Psalms. They don't know how to sing the Psalms, they don't know how to resort to them when they're confronted with all sorts of peril and difficulty.
- D. Wilson, in his lecture on Anne Bradstreet from the 2000 History Conference
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