12 Favorite Psalms: Verses That Encourage Hope

12 Favorite Psalms:
Our list of verses meant to encourage your heart and bring hope in a life that is often full of hard things.

My husband and I sit together most mornings and share scripture and have a prayer to start the day.

Many mornings, our shared scripture is from the Psalms.  We follow a Bible reading plan from our Sunday School book for Daily Readings, but it’s not unusual to stray from the plan and read a psalm instead.

There’s just something about the Psalms.

When the Daily Reading is a little obscure, or we need more for the day, there’s always a Psalm that will fill the bill.

And the most often of all, the Psalm we pick is Psalm 23.  No surprise there, right?

Psalm 23 is the most read Psalm ever.

You know how, when you can’t sleep in the deep, dark hours of the night, and instead of counting sheep, you talk to the Shepherd…

How often do you hear something like this…

“I had a nightmare so I googled a verse, and I read (Psalm 23).”

The Psalms are comforting and encourage hope and just get it right.

Psalm 121 is the second most popular Psalm.

From 2010 to 2013 Bible Summary tweeted a summary of a Bible chapter every day.  It’s no surprise that Psalm 23 was retweeted the most often.  The second was this summary of Psalm 121.

A few years ago, Lori was inspired to compose a song:

Beyond these hills, lies sweet tranquility,
Beyond these hills, lies pastures green and free,
Take courage fellow soldier, stay on the upward way,
Beyond these hills lies home; Beyond these hills lies home.

Lori Becker

Was God preparing her?

He knew something she didn’t.  He knew that in the next few years, she would need His promises and His hope during the hard things their family would face.

Hard things like losing her son in a freak farm accident and her too-young-to-die mother to cancer.  My eyes leak just thinking about her story.  So much suffering…

But she’s looking upward with hope.  Because God is deep in her heart, and He inspired her to write the song that she would need.

10 Psalms that Encourage Hope

Here’s a list of the rest of the Psalms of Hope we chose:

1. Psalm 13:6
2. Psalm 27:13-14
3. Psalm 37:1-6
4. Psalm 42:5-6a
5. Psalm 51:10-12
6. Psalm 33:19
7. Psalm 34:17-20
8. Psalm 71:1-6
9. Psalm 62:5-6
10. Psalm 121:1-2;7-8

Which are your Favorite Psalms that encourage hope?

I would love to hear what your favorite Psalms are, and the story behind your choice.

Stories like these are what keep our courage and hope strong. And keep us looking beyond the hills for our strength.  We have the Psalms of the Bible, yet the stories of today are important, too.

One afternoon while visiting my 97 year old Mother in her room, I took my watercolors along.  I was determined to learn to paint the modern style of watercolor roses.  With all my years of oil painting meticulously shaded roses, it was a hard thing to shape roses onto watercolor paper.

However, the design for our watercolor Roses Annual Planner Calendar came to be. Each page features a Psalm of the month.

May these Psalms encourage hope in these days of hard things.