Pray the word with David Platt as a resource from Radical.net.

Psalm 38, it's really challenging just to pick one verse from the Psalm because there's such a

progression from beginning to end in it. So let me read a few different verses, make just a

couple of comments and then lead us to pray according to the Psalm as a whole. So here's how it starts.

Psalm 38, verses 1 and 2, O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger nor discipline me in your wrath

for your arrows have sunk into me and your hand has come down on me. I'm going to jump ahead

to verse 5. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. I'm utterly bowed down and

prostrate all the day I go about morning. So just put these initial verses together and you see

that David here in this Psalm is overwhelmed by his sin and foolishness by his disobedience to God.

And so he gets down all the way to verse 18 and he says all the way to verse 17 and he says,

for I am ready to fall and my pain is ever before me. I confess my iniquity. I am sorry for my sin.

So this is a powerful picture of conviction that leads to confession. He is so

overwhelmed by his foolishness, his sin against God in a way that leads him to confess that sin.

I confess my iniquity and with contrition, I am sorry for my sin. So see this progression,

a conviction that leads to confession and contrition. Not just, okay, I acknowledge I did something

wrong. I'm so sorry that I've lived in foolishness that I've made unwise decisions that I've

sinned against you. And then he gets to the very end. And this is how the Psalm ends, verse 21

and 22, do not forsake me, O Lord. Oh my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me. O Lord,

my salvation. Do you hear that? Flowing from conviction and confession and contrition,

we can just kind of keep the eliteration going here, but it's here in the Psalm,

verses 21 and 22. It's a celebration of God's grace and God's mercy. He says,

don't forsake me, O God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me. O Lord, and here's the

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