The Antidote to Fretting

The Antidote to Fretting

by Wayne Dailey
Senior Pastor, Bethel Revival Center
43 Norwood St.
Everett, MA 02149

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The Psalms were forged out of trials and tests of faith. They are meant to help us deal with the frustrations and problems that come our way in this life.

Psalm 37:1
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

What are the first two words in this psalm? Fret not.

King David was inspired to write this psalm. Do you suppose he ever fretted? Let me ask you another question: Do you fret?

God is saying in verse one that we are not to fret over evil doers. Fretting is not the answer. This psalm tells of God's dealing with David, that He might bring him to the place of learning not to fret.

Why fret because of evil people who do damage to others, seeming to have no respect or concern for anyone but self? Why be envious against the workers of iniquity? Fretting and envying: These two things ought not to be in our lives.

When someone frets, they walk the floor and wring their hands. They're ever frustrated because they see something going on that they can't do anything about. They fret continuously over such things. It's what they are ever thinking about, what they are ever talking about.

Psalm 37:2
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Don't worry about those evildoers! Don't fret about them. Watch God work. They'll eventually be cut down like the grass. They will eventually be taken out of your way. But you've got to leave them with God. Let Him take care of it. Instead of your fretting, trust Him.

Psalm 37:3
Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Fretting about evil doers won't help you. Just trust the Lord, and He will take care of it.

Tell God Your Needs

When you have a need, do you trust in the Lord? Or do you let everybody you know hear about it?

Listen, the first place to start telling someone about what's happening to you is in your prayer closet. Tell the Lord about it, and then He will stir some action. He will help you. But you need to learn to trust Him.

Someone is praying, and God is at work to dispatch help. Someone is in need, and God is looking for that one whom He can use to meet that need.

In this life, we realize that when we need bread, God doesn't fly a bread truck down from heaven. He uses one that's already down here; He uses the things that are here to supply our needs with.

If we're in need, in trouble, vexed, God will start moving on someone who is willing to do something to help.

Many don't hear God. They don't listen. And if they felt it was God asking them to do something, they wouldn't want to hear.

We should always be in the realm where God can speak to us, where He can take hold and use us.

Delight Yourself in the Lord

Psalm 37:4
Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Here's a verse of Scripture we could all deal with and take deep into our hearts.

God is wanting to do some things for us. And He wants to bring us into a relationship where He will do these things for us. But there is something we need to do first: We need to delight ourselves in Him.

"To delight" is to take some action of your own to make yourself happy. Delight yourself in the Lord . . . and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

We see here where some action on our part can be used of God to promote Him to do something in the realm of helping us, giving us the very desires of our heart.

So, delighting ourselves in the Lord is the step that can bring back to us the very desires of our heart.

Do you have desires in your heart? Who doesn't? But here's a realm where a desire must be taken hold of, and time must be given in delighting oneself in the Lord, being happy in Him. Let your delight be in your relationship with Him.

Open your mouth to praise and magnify Him. Worship Him, and give Him honor. Glorify His Name, delighting yourself in Him. Do this, and God will rise to give you that desire of your heart.

Rather than fretting about what you don't have, if you delight yourself in what you do have, delighting yourself in the fact that you have a relationship with the Lord, then He will give you the desires of your heart.

Picture David in a trying time — where he doesn't know quite what to do — sitting down to play his harp, praising and worshiping God. Then a knock comes on the door, and there's the very thing he desired!

Commit and Trust

Psalm 37:5
Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.

If you want to pray and get results, if you want to see God move on your behalf, if you want to receive the things you desire of Him, follow David's instructions. He had learned to pray and seek God when he was young. And he also learned to commit his way unto the Lord, trusting in Him.

Hey, you have to lay it out there, putting your trust in the Lord for that thing you need. Commit your way unto the Lord, trusting in Him.

If you commit it to the Lord, you are on the right track. Just come to that realm where you'll quit meddling with it and begin to commit it: laying it at the feet of Jesus. Do something other than fretting about it, something other than stewing in your heart about it.

Cast Your Cares on the Lord

I Peter 5:7
Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.

How important it is that we learn to cast all our cares upon the Lord.

Can the Lord handle all that . . . with each of the Christians around the world casting their cares upon Him on the same day? Can He take care of all those things? How many calculations can He handle in His head at one time?

There's no limit to what God can handle. Each of us is important to Him. And as each of us cries out to Him, looking to Him in time of need and trouble, He is able to handle all of that . . . and a whole lot more.

Do you like to just talk into the air? Or do you like to talk when you know someone is listening?

I know God is listening when we pray. He wants to hear us pray. And He wants us to pray in the realm of His will. He wants us to pray about those things which are important to us: that we would bring our cares to Him and cast them at His feet, leaving them there and trusting in Him.

He said that if we would do this, committing our way unto Him, then He would bring it to pass. He's assuring us of an answer.

Things do trouble us. But we all have to learn how to take hold of the Word of God, letting it be used and made manifest in our lives, where we're ever committing our way unto the Lord: every day, in every thing, committing our way to the Lord.

Do you get up in the morning and hurry off to work? Wouldn't it be better to stop before you leave home and commit your way unto the Lord? There's your answer! God's Word would tell you this is the way. Try it; it might make the day change so completely.

So, when you've got something on your heart and you need God to move, give Him the opportunity and He will bring it to pass.

God Will Bring Forth
Your Righteousness

Psalm 37:6
And He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

God will turn the brightness of His glory — of His light, of His righteousness — God will turn this up as a bright light to you, so your judgment will be as the noonday.

The noonday is the brightest time of the day, a time when the sun is right overhead. God will brighten things up for us just like that brightness. Why? to make your righteousness come forth as the light.

God will make you a good man, a good woman. He will make you to abound in being a righteous person. Your righteousness will begin to blossom like the light in the good things that you do.

The Bible teaches us about our good works in more ways than one. God wants us to realize there is the importance of good works. He has called every one of us unto good works:

Ephesians 2:8-10
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Ordained? You mean I get a card that authorizes me to do good works?

He's not talking about being ordained into the ministry. He's talking about ordaining you to do good works, putting it in you to do good things, putting it into your heart.

He ordains us to good works. It's what He wants our life to be filled with.

Now, good works don't save us. We're saved by grace through faith, by the cleansing of the blood of Jesus. We're saved by the work of Christ, not by our works. But good works are to follow after salvation. Works come because we are saved: our faith being seen by our good works.

God Will Bring Forth Our Judgment

. . . and your judgment as the noonday — Psalm 37:6b.

Under the Law, God set judgments to show the children of Israel things they should do in taking care for the poor and needy, for the orphans and widows in the land: those who had no means to take care for themselves.

Picture yourself being back in the days when there were no doctors, no hospitals, no welfare checks, and where orphans had nobody to care for them: no mother, no father.

It was given to the children of Israel that if they would give to the poor and needy, then God would return the blessing unto their own heads, and their lives would come forth as the noonday.

The farmer with his large field could never completely harvest it. He would be considered a greedy dog if he completely harvested his field. He was to always leave the corners of his fields unharvested.

Why leave the grain standing in the corners?

The greedy man says, It's mine! I'm going to store it in my barn. But the spiritual man — the man who loves God and regards the judgments of God — leaves the corners of his land so the poor and needy can come and partake of them.

Love Fulfills God's Laws

We've got to bear in mind what it means to keep those judgments of God. We're not under the law, but love will do what those judgments in the Old Testament commanded God's people to do. Love is the fulfilling of the law, isn't it? If we love God as we should love God, that's what it will produce in us.

What He told them to do by commandment, we'll do because of God's love in our hearts.

Hard hearts resist God. Israel had a difficult time back in those days with hardness in their heart. They tended to be a people with stiff necks, a resistance against obeying God.

Then, there were also the faithful: those who loved God. They took those things to heart in order to be all that God wanted them to be.

David was one of those types. He believed the poor and needy should be taken care of. And each of us should believe that too, that our righteousness will come forth as the light.

When is it too much for me to help you when you're in need? Or for you to help me? I don't think there's a place where we find a stop sign to the point where we go just so far in doing good, but no further.

Psalm 37:7
Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Notice, verse 7 is back to dealing with fretting: Fret not because of evil doers (verse 1). Fret not because of him who prospers in his way. Fret not because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass.

Don't allow yourself to be affected by all that goes on in the life of that other person! Keep yourself in the love of God. Keep your faith and trust in Jesus. Do what is put before your hand to do, and do it faithfully, as unto the Lord.

Yes, obey from your heart what God has laid out for you to do in the New Testament. If you take the New Testament teaching to heart, you'll find that it is love which is given to fulfil all these things.

James 2:8
If ye fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well

Have a Tender Heart

This is what most of those in the Old Testament lacked: a tender heart of love.

Jesus spoke of this in Matthew:

Matthew 19:4-8
And He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

Because of the hardness of their hearts!

They couldn't get along with their women. They were hard on them, and their women couldn't get along with the way they drove them with hardness. A hard-hearted person doesn't desire to help anybody in anywise, not even his wife, because his heart is hard, insensitive to others.

This was Israel under the law, and it was a hard thing to be married to such a man. He would lord it over his wife, ruling with a heavy hand, ever fighting and squabbling, not able to get along peaceably and lovingly.

God warns about having a hard heart.

I wonder what it is that causes people in America today to have marriages like this, divorcing left and right, time and again. It's even filtered into many churches today. People today are very hard. They've hardened their hearts and can't get along with each other. It's the same problem that Israel had.

Moses suffered (allowed) divorce, but Jesus points us way back to the beginning where God made Adam and Eve one flesh. That's the place where marriage got started, and God gave something good for them.

A hard-hearted person wrestles and struggles in a marriage that winds up being torn apart after a year or so. A man and his wife break up and go their way and then look for someone else, always hoping that they'll find someone who can tolerate their hardness and live with them. That's what they're looking for. So, they go marry again to make another life miserable, and it isn't very long before they have to leave that one because of their hard heart.

Listen, God didn't give us a hard heart. He gave us a new heart, a heart of flesh. The covenant that we're under, in the New Testament, brought us a new heart and a new spirit, brought us into a new life in Jesus Christ.

God gave us a good heart. Let's allow it to work in us every day. Let's not fret ourselves about evil doers, about those who vex and trouble others. Let's quit fretting and do what we're called to do.

Love fulfils the law of God! That's the great governing force of our heart. It's what makes a Christian's life so worthwhile. We have what the world cannot have — apart from their turning to Jesus — because that thing we have is spiritual.

Oh, there's a love in the world. We had a little of that before we found the Lord. But did we have what we have now? Did we have the true love of God? This love isn't the love of the flesh but the love of God, given to us in Christ Jesus. And this love is given to abound in each heart and life.

Let's be thankful today for the love of God.

I had a preacher tell me one day: The trouble with you is this: You're just too tenderhearted! I didn't know what to say. A preacher is telling me I'm too tenderhearted? What does he think I should be?

I opened the Scriptures to Ephesians and showed him this verse:

Ephesians 4:32
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

He never said anything more about it, because he was missing the mark. I guess he thought I needed to get in the flesh and straighten a few people out!

You can't straighten people out in the flesh! And if you try, you may get a few teeth knocked out! You don't go at it with hammer and tongs. That isn't the way to straighten your wife out.

What's the old remedy? If I beat her enough, she'll either leave me so I can get another one, or she'll straighten out! As Christians, we don't beat one another . . . or we shouldn't. We're not to fight. It's not Christ-like. It's not the way of love.

If you truly love your wife, she won't get far out of your sight. You won't want her to be too far away; not because you're jealous, but because you love her, because she's important to you. You're bound together by love's strong cords.

If you find this message has dealt with you, know that, like old Job, God can make your heart soft, where you are able to be forgiving and loving.

Job 23:16
For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me