Discipleship often happens when we aren’t looking. It happens in everyday decisions and off-handed comments. In fact, the Bible says we will answer for every careless word that comes out of our mouths (Matthew 12:36).
Discipleship happens as our kids watch us interact with a restaurant server or a store cashier. And in today’s Internet-connected world it can happen across the globe when we experience the fruit from others’ lives and actions.
Discipleship also happens within friendship. This is “iron sharpens iron” kind of discipleship. When friends bond over shared experiences or shared interests, those friendships can deepen spiritually as well. Friendship is yet another context where discipleship happens.
Recently, people had a chance to peer inside a friendship like this with a short film titled “The Psalms” featuring Eugene Peterson and Bono. Peterson, translator of The Message, and Bono, lead singer of U2, have formed a friendship over the past 15 years as a result of their mutual love for the Psalms.
Like friendship and discipleship, the Psalms themselves have their own formative power. “I think the Psalms are important,” Peterson says in the film, “because for some people, like me, at 12 years old, they showed me that imagination was a way to get inside the truth.”
Getting inside the truth is important, for Peterson, because honesty is important. And praying the Psalms was a way to become more honest with God. Later Peterson says of this kind of prayer that “it’s not smooth, it’s not nice, it’s not pretty. But it’s honest, and I think we’re trying for honesty, which is very, very hard in our culture.”
Bono agreed. “The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he’s feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion. And it’s that that sets the Psalms apart for me.”
One of the deepest ways that iron can sharpen iron is through honest prayers like those found in the Psalms. Praying together with friends has a way of opening space for honesty and realism. A friendship marked by prayer, and prayers shaped by the Psalms can become a powerful tool for discipleship.
You can download a FREE copy of Eugene Peterson’s translation of Psalms 1–40 here.