Psalm 38 Continued…
If God disciplines his children – and David in our Psalm clearly thinks he does – what is the purpose of God’s discipline? It obviously varies from occasion to occasion, and from person to person, and probably no one but the individual involved is able to state God’s purpose with a great degree of confidence.
Others can suggest and counsel, but they must take care not to pontificate, as Job’s friends did. David personally confesses that sin is behind the discipline. The writer of Hebrews quotes Proverbs 3:11-12 and draws out the purpose of divine discipline, meted out of love, to be spiritually refined (Hebrews 12:5-11).
This Psalm is a prayer from beginning to end and David is laying out his problems before God in prayer. The Lord has not yet come, and David’s suffering calls for a rapid response. But this Psalm ends not with a period, but with a dash –
In his children’s book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis has a character named Eustace who becomes a dragon (reflecting his selfish heart). Eustace does not want to be a dragon, so he keeps trying to peel off his scales, only to find another layer beneath. Then the great lion, Aslan (representing Jesus), comes to Eustace. He recounts:
“Then the lion said – I don’t know if it spoke – you have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay down flat on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.”
God’s discipline can be painful…as David so clearly expresses in this Psalm. But when we see the potential God sees in us, then it is simply a joy to lay down before Him and invite Him to do His work in us!
PRAY
Father thank you for your love for me!