For This House
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
August 19, 2024 | 8 min read
Abigail Larsen
Would you agree that we live in troubling times? For the Christian in 2024, it can feel like the evil in the world is slowly closing in around us. There are many powers, people, and catastrophes that we could easily fear. But the Bible has all the wisdom we need to face these threats without fear, and some of that wisdom is found in Psalm 37:1-3.
Ten years ago, I would not have said that trusting the Lord was something I struggled with. But as it turned out, I just had not had the opportunity to see certain pockets of my heart yet. When I became a mom in 2014, I quickly realized that I was indeed very prone toward fretfulness, and I needed a lot of help to get to its root. Fast forward a few years, and the chaos of 2020 brought on a fresh wave of fear for me to work through.
Psalm 37 fortifies our hearts and prepares us to have a response to whatever comes, keeping us grounded in what we know about God and His calling for us.
The Hebrew word for “fret” is translated in different ways throughout the Old Testament, most often as “become angry”, but based on the context here, I like the translation “to fret”. The idea being communicated is to be distressed, agitated, or upset. We might picture a person wringing her hands in frenzied distraction.
This command in itself is a precious window into God’s heart that reveals how well He knows us and our tendencies. He understands that we will look at wicked people and be prone to fret about them, and may even envy their perceived ease. But God does not just tell us to stop fretting, He gives us a reason for this command that is easy for us to understand, and brings significant comfort.
Why shouldn’t we fret or envy the wicked? Because they will wither quickly.
In Psalm 73, Asaph bemoans the fact that it appears that everything goes right for the wicked. In verse 12 he says, “Behold, these are the wicked; and always at ease, they have increased in wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence.” In these verses, Asaph is envying the wicked, which is what we’re told not to do in Psalm 37:1. Asaph says in verse 16, “When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight.”
But then this beautiful Psalm makes a huge shift. Verse 17 says, “Until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. Surely You set them in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment!”
Does this verbiage remind you of Psalm 37:2? They will wither quickly and fade?
In contrast, Asaph says in verse 23, “Nevertheless I am continually with You. You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel you will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory.”
What we are seeing here is a stark contrast between the end for the wicked and the end for God’s children. Here on earth, when we think in a temporal way, it seems as though the wicked get away with everything and the righteous are the ones who suffer—and that perspective could lead us to fret and envy. But God wants us to take a step back and look just a little bit further down the road to eternity. There, we can see that the end for the wicked is destruction, but for God’s children, “God is our portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
Do you see God’s compassion in this? He understands our humanity, and the way we are prone to look at the wicked and think only of this short life, and He lovingly instructs us to step back and recognize how fleeting everything on this earth really is. He wants us to take comfort in the fact that justice is coming.
What might fretting because of evildoers look like in your life?
It could be obsessing over the headlines or being more concerned with knowing what’s going on in the world than with knowing what is in the Word. It could be talking about what you’re afraid of more than you pray about it, or having a tendency to share bits of scary news with friends more than you share encouraging truths.
Ask the Lord to help you identify and uproot any fretfulness in your life.
Our second command is in the first part of verse two: “Trust in the Lord.” This text is contrasting fretting and being envious with trusting the Lord and doing good.
We cannot be in an internal tailspin of worry and angst and simultaneously be trusting the Lord. We can be fretting one moment and trusting the Lord the next, and then right back to fretting again; much of the Christian life is spent resetting our thinking and moving ourselves back from a place of fretfulness to a place of trust. This is a regular, sometimes hour-by-hour practice for me.
I am not saying that if you ever fret, then you don’t trust God. But you cannot be doing both at the same moment. Wringing our hands in worry cannot coexist with the kind of “trust and do good” picture David is painting for us here.
Why can we and should we trust God? Here are just four reasons:
In some ways, the whole Bible is an argument for why we ought to submit to and trust God. We could write pages just about the character qualities that make Him worthy of our trust.
Take time to consider truths about God that make Him trustworthy, and add to the list.
Verse three says, “Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.”
Again, these commands are the opposite of fretting and envy. When we are fretting, or busy being concerned about what other people are getting that we’re not, it debilitates us from doing good.
The word fret reappears in verse 8: “Do not fret, it leads only to evildoing.” We see here that fretting leads to evildoing, which is obviously the opposite of doing good.
The phrase “cultivate faithfulness” is also translated as “befriend faithfulness” or “live securely” or “feed on His faithfulness.” Whatever the exact translation ought to be, in its context it conveys an idea of stability and groundedness that is rooted in our trust in the Lord.
This verse is almost like a biblical version of the secular phrase, “Bloom where you are planted.” It evokes an image of doing what we can with what we’ve been given and making the most of exactly where God has placed us in this moment.
The woman who does good and dwells in the land is a woman who is not cast into despair by the evil that is happening around her, but is simply walking through life one day at a time with a posture of trust in the Lord and obedient service to Him. She recognizes that she cannot add a single hour to her life by worrying, so instead she busies herself in doing good.
“Do good” may look like a Christian ruler presiding over the land in righteousness, but more often it probably looks like praying for an unsaved family member, bringing a meal to someone who is hurting, sending an encouraging text to a friend, or instilling gospel truths into little hearts day after day.
The woman we are instructed to be here in verse three is described in Psalm 1 which I’ll abbreviate and paraphrase in female form here:
“How blessed is the woman who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…but her delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law she meditates day and night. She will be like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water.”
This is a picture of a woman who is not tossed about by the unrest around her, but is firmly rooted in what she knows to be true of God as revealed in His Word.
How blessed is the woman who does not freak out about the evil around her, but trusts in the Lord and does good. Proverbs 31:25 says, “Strength and dignity are her clothing, And she smiles at the future.” The woman who fears the Lord rather than men does not fret over the future, but smiles at it, because she knows she is secure.
As we look at the evil that seems to be growing more rampant and hitting closer to home, it would be easy to go into self-protection mode and simply try to survive our way through life instead of seeking to thrive for God’s glory. But our physical safety and comfort—or that of our families—are not to be our goal for our short stay here on earth.
We are to make the most of our time here. We are to do good, dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness, trusting the God who gives us the grace to do just that.
Abigail is a happy wife of 13 years and mother to four precious treasures. She is grateful for the way the gospel of Jesus Christ has a direct impact on marriage, motherhood, and all of life. When she’s not busy homemaking, homeschooling, or reading, you might find her running her small business, handcrafting natural products for other families just like hers. You can follow her life and business adventures on Instagram @ordinaryjoymama.