Psalm 38

Jun 14, 2022

Oh what joy for those

"Come quickly to help me,

O Lord, My Savior."

- King David, Psalm 38:22

"Mental Health is a strange concoction of knowing I may never get my act together...But...that I am loved by the God who created me as though I did."

- A Pastor

Up until a few years ago, I played racquetball with another retired pastor named Farrell. Farrell is 85 years old. When people ask me, "Are you a good racquetball player?" I tell them, "I'm a great racquetball player, as long as my opponents are 85 years old." (Smile) Farrell's wife, Ellen, has dementia. One day, he said to me, "Harry, today Ellen looked at me and said, 'I don't know who you are… but don't you forget how much Jesus loves you.'" "Harry," he said, "She is so filled with love, it's like she's forgotten all the things about me that used to drive her up a wall." “Wow!" I replied, "We should all have a little dementia."

In Psalm 38, King David is having a "No Good Very Bad Day." Psalm 38 is one of seven penitential psalms where David is expressing profound sorrow for his personal failures and sins:

O Lord, don't reject me in your anger

or discipline me in your fierce disappointment.

My guilt overwhelms me.

It is a burden too great to bear.

- Psalm 38:1,3

I think, if you asked him, David would tell you that, today, he's not feeling like a very good Christian. Ever feel like that? Ever feel like your failures have disqualified you from God's love? Or that your faults have trumped His forgiveness? Or that your chronic errors have driven Him from you?

Ever find yourself thinking, "I fail way too much and sin way too often to be a good Christian!" God called David, "the Apple of His eye" (Ps.17:8). Not because David was so good, but because he was so honest in his relationship with God. David could admit his failures to a God he knew loved him and cared for him no matter what. On a better day, David would declare:

The Lord is like a father to His children,

tender and compassionate to those who love Him.

He has removed our sins as far from us

as the east is from the west.

Psalm 103: 12,11

What if being “The Apple of God's Eye" - that is, the center and focus of His love and protection - begins with the admission that we will never have our act completely together, but we are loved by God as if we did! If, today, like David, you're just “sick and tired” of a personal failure that you can't fix, remember… You're loved by a Savior who’s chosen a little dementia when it comes to your sin and mine. In Isaiah 43:25, God said:

"I, even I, am the One who erases your transgressions,

for my own sake,

And remember your sins no more!"

- Isaiah 43:25