Singing Psalm 38 when all else fails
- Apr 20, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 18, 2025
Your own actions fail you, your health fails you, your senses fail you, your plans fail you, and even your family and friends fail you. To whom can you go for help? Will God be with you even when all else fails? Will the Lord seek you even though on paper, you look like a failure, you don’t like being with yourself, and no one else wants to be with you?
Before you can answer those questions, you must know the answer to these questions:
How is God like us, and how is God unlike us? Have you weaned yourself off of dependence on your own righteousness, health, senses, and even your friends? Could it even be that these trials are happening for that very purpose?
People – when all else fails
People tend to write each other off when all else fails, when they see negative history repeat.
But you can become someone who can use a provoking situation to precipitate an illuminating conversation. Someone purposely and admittedly places something on your path with the motive to provoke, trigger, or elicit an angry, irritated, or frustrated response, and instead precipitates a discussion on how God sees the heart behind the action, how the devil tempts in hopes to destroy, and how natural consequences often give a small for taste for how the evil planned for others is turned back onto the one who purposely plans evil against someone else.
The devil doesn’t mind using a small infraction to take this heart, harden it into stone so that it never changes direction, so that the stone grows bigger and harder, setting the stage in this mind to conceive more and more evil. Nothing would make him happier than to set the stage to make people miserable in this life and for all eternity.
When all else fails, you don’t write this person off. You want better for this person because of Jesus. You want this person to come to Jesus who makes it easy to turn from the heavy yoke of evil to his light yoke of gentleness, humility, and rest in hopes that this person would seek to do good to those among whom he lives and works. You want the sadness he is experiencing around the natural consequences to produce good by a transferring of the gods of self to the good and great God who created him and everything else.
You want a heart change, that though he intended to do evil, the Lord would turn him using the very evil he intended and bring about good for him and for many. Your hope is that God would save him from himself, and turn his heart of stone into a heart of flesh. You want for him to love God, care for others, and, aware of his schemes, hate the devil, and his own sinful nature and desires.
God – when all else fails
God can see not only repeat history but also into the heart where he looks for contriteness. Where others might not trust you again, you can trust that God knows the precise moment when you turned from evil to good or where you turned from idolizing the prospect of a good gift he might give you, to worshiping the giver of all good gifts.
You can trust him to not only bring this about in his good time, but to put into play whatever it takes when all else fails to heal you and save you, body and soul. And when you look to Jesus when all else fails, you have all you need to trust him. Your realize you need to look to him first and not wait for when all else fails.
Jesus went through what looked like the biggest failure, death on a cross, to bring about the greatest victory, resurrection life for all that would trust him. Jesus is in the habit when all else fails, of taking your ‘failures’ and using them as breakthroughs and opportunities for bringing about good.
Singing Psalm 38 for hope when all else fails
You can entrust your plans and your reputation to him though now you might be called to endure pain, shame, jeers, taunts, and votes of ‘no confidence’ from those whose opinion you value perhaps more than God’s. You are in the process of weaning yourself off of people’s approval that left you half-starved anyway to real nourishment from the pleasure of your Maker who completely satisfies.
This is a faith-filled process that is in itself an invaluable gift for you to savor when all else fails, and as you ponder the assuredly positive yet unknown outcome, you can laugh at the days to come.
But for you, O Lord, do I wait;
it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.
For I said, “Only let them not rejoice over me,
who boast against me when my foot slips!” ~ Psalm 38:15-16
April 20, 2022
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Heart ♥️ reflection
March 24, 2025
“Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” ~ Isaiah 55:6-7
“Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” ~ Matthew 25:11-13
Question: Can I settle things with Jesus after I die or when he returns, if I don’t get to it by then?
Heart reflection: There will come a time when it will be too late to seek the beauty of the Lord’s face. If it’s only at the end when you see that he is Lord that you call to him, “Lord, Lord” and ask to be let into the marriage feast, it will be too late. If he never knew you, you will not be let in. Those around Noah didn’t believe him; those around Lot thought he was joking. Like the foolish virgins, they were unprepared to answer their maker’s call. They didn’t listen to or love God‘s messengers whose message they ignored. Their tribe of lesser things took precedence over God and dulled the senses that were given to them to marvel at him. Blinded by what promised satisfaction but delivered only destruction, they didn’t recognize that the sweet aromas, delicious tastes, tender touches, pleasing sights, or delightful sounds of food, family, friends, and the outdoors are moment-by-moment gifts from Jesus. Be open, vulnerable, and affectionate with the Lord now while you have the opportunity. Be willing to listen to one another and bear with each other in love when you disagree with one another. Jesus wants you to make it a point each day to know him and, though he knows you better than you know yourself, he wants you to intentionally make yourself known to him. He created you to love him back and to love one another as he loves you. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the time to connect with your Savior and Lord and those he has given you to love. Your primary work is to see him by faith as you trust his care for you. After death, there is only judgment. When you are found hiding in Jesus and not from him when you die or when he returns, there will be no doubt that you know him. When, in response, you honestly give your whole heart to him, there will be no doubt that he knows you.
“You, O LORD, I have been trusting;
Lord, my God, You’ll answer me.” ~ Psalm 38:15
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The Psalms—Q&A
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” ~ Matthew 7:3
This is likely the most useful question ever posed when taken to heart. Perhaps it is only the Lord Jesus who can ask it 100% purely. Even as I read and start to contemplate it, my mind quickly turns to think about someone else.*
How can singing Psalm 38 help me grow in my affection for God and in my connection with others?
What is the first part of unwrapping the gift of repentance?*
“I iniquity acknowledge;
Deeply troubled by my sin.” ~ Psalm 38:18
Am I more deeply troubled by the sin of others or by my own sin?**
“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” ~ 2 Corinthians 7:10
Of what worth is humble curiosity before your ever present maker and remaker?
“LORD, I pray, do not forsake me;
O my God, stay near to me.
Hurry! Come at once to help me!
O my Lord, my Savior be!” ~ Psalm 38:21-22
“Wrath my flesh and bones distresses,
Gives no rest because of sin…
Like a burden, their oppressions
Weigh me down with constant dread…
…my own folly…pain…grief dejected,
All day long I mourning go…
…burning…no soundness…
Feeble, crushed, I’m ever groaning
In my spirit’s restlessness.” ~ Psalm 38:3-8
Jesus beckons,
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:28-30
What difference does it make whether you take something for yourself or whether you wait for it to be given to you as a gift?
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ~ Matthew 28:18
“If work is to find its right place in the world, it is the duty of the Church to see to it that the work serves God, and that the worker serves the work.” ~ Dorothy L. Sayer from an article on how marketing rarely rests and how to redeem it:
Engage and grow together!
“Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.” ~ Proverbs 27:17
December 19, 2025
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