The Poison of Fretting: Psalm 37:7
Introduction: The Age of Agitation
We live in an age of perpetual agitation. Our entire culture is built on a foundation of spiritual restlessness. We are told to hustle, to strive, to worry, to climb, and to be perpetually discontent with our lot. And nowhere is this more evident than in our obsession with what other people are doing, particularly those who appear to be getting ahead by cutting all the corners we are commanded to honor. The ungodly seem to be winning, and our social media feeds are a constant, curated highlight reel of their apparent triumphs. Their houses are bigger, their vacations are more exotic, their political influence is greater, and their schemes, for all their wickedness, seem to be working.
And so, the Christian is tempted to fret. To fret is to allow a low-grade, corrosive acid to eat away at the soul. It is a form of spiritual heartburn, a sour churning that comes from looking at the world horizontally instead of vertically. It is the sin of forgetting who is actually running the show. When we fret over the prosperity of the wicked, we are not simply having a bad day. We are questioning the wisdom, the justice, and the very sovereignty of God. We are, in effect, accusing God of mismanagement. We are looking at the story He is writing and suggesting that we could have drafted a much better plotline.
Psalm 37 is a potent antidote to this poison. It is a psalm for the long haul. David, writing as an old man who has seen a thing or two, provides a master class in godly stability in a world that is anything but stable. He does not deny the reality of wickedness or the apparent success of those who practice it. He looks the problem square in the eye. But he refuses to let the temporary state of affairs dictate his theology or his emotional posture. He calls us to a radical, counter-cultural quietness before God, a settled confidence that is rooted not in our circumstances, but in God's character. This one verse, verse 7, is a three-part prescription for the agitated soul.
The Text
Daleth
Be still in Yahweh and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who carries out schemes of wickedness.
(Psalm 37:7 LSB)
The Posture of Faith: Be Still (v. 7a)
The first command sets the foundation for everything that follows:
"Be still in Yahweh and wait patiently for Him..." (Psalm 37:7a)
The Hebrew word for "be still" here is not a command to do nothing. It is not a call to quietism or passivity. It means to be silent, to cease striving, to stop thrashing about. It is the stillness of a disciplined soldier holding his position, not the stillness of a sluggard on his couch. It is a command to stop the internal noise, the frantic calculations, the panicked internal monologue that so often passes for prayer. It is to deliberately silence the carnal chatter so that you can once again hear the voice of your commanding officer.
And notice where this stillness is to be found: "in Yahweh." You are not to be still in yourself, in your own stoic resolve. You are to be still in the covenant-keeping God. It is a relational stillness. It is the quiet confidence of a child who knows his father is in the room and has the situation under control. The world is screaming, your flesh is screaming, the devil is screaming, but you are to find your quiet place in the Lord Himself. This is the same command God gave to Israel at the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's army bearing down on them: "Yahweh will fight for you, and you shall keep silent" (Exodus 14:14).
This stillness is then coupled with active waiting: "and wait patiently for Him." Waiting on the Lord is one of the central disciplines of the Christian life. It is faith applied over time. Patience here is not a grim, teeth-gritting endurance. It is a hopeful expectation. The word carries the idea of longing, of looking forward to something with confidence. We wait for God to act because we know that He will act. His timetable is not ours, but His timing is always perfect. To wait patiently is to confess that God is sovereign over the clock. He is never early, He is never late, and He is never anxious. Our impatience is a form of practical atheism; it is a declaration that we believe time is slipping out of God's control.
The Prohibition of Envy: Do Not Fret (v. 7b)
Having established the proper posture, David now gives the central prohibition, getting at the heart of our discontent.
"Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way..." (Psalm 37:7b)
To fret, as we've noted, is to become heated, to be incensed. It is a hot, agitated envy. And what is the cause? It is "him who prospers in his way." This is the man who is getting things done. He is successful. His business is booming, his influence is growing, his plans are coming to fruition. From a worldly perspective, he is a winner. And we are tempted to look at his prosperity and contrast it with our own struggles, and the comparison breeds a poisonous resentment.
But the text is precise. He prospers "in his way." His way is not God's way. His path is broad, and it leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13). The problem is that we often have a bad case of temporal astigmatism. We see his immediate success, and it looks very large and impressive, while our own promised inheritance seems very far off and abstract. We forget that his prosperity is like a cut flower in a vase. It may look vibrant for a day or two, but it has been severed from its life source. It is already dead and will soon wither. The righteous, in contrast, are like a tree planted by rivers of water, whose leaf does not wither (Psalm 1:3). The key difference is the root system.
Fretting is a fool's game because it grants legitimacy to the world's definition of success. It accepts the premise that the man who dies with the most toys wins. But Scripture tells us that this kind of prosperity is a snare. It is God giving the wicked over to their own idolatries. Their full barns are a judgment, not a blessing. As Asaph learned in Psalm 73, their feet are set in slippery places, and they are cast down to destruction in a moment. To envy them is like envying the well-fed appearance of the Thanksgiving turkey on the last Wednesday in November.
The Source of the Problem: Wicked Schemes (v. 7c)
Finally, David identifies the moral character of this worldly success. It is not neutral; it is actively malicious.
"Because of the man who carries out schemes of wickedness." (Psalm 37:7c)
This is not just a man who is a savvy businessman. He is a schemer. He is a man who "brings wicked devices to pass." His prosperity is not the result of honest labor and God's blessing; it is the fruit of cunning, deceit, and injustice. He is the corrupt politician, the crony capitalist, the cultural gatekeeper who promotes filth, the abortionist with a thriving business. He is a man who has built his house on a foundation of skulls.
And God tells us not to let this bother us. This is a hard word. Our sense of justice cries out. How can God command us to be still in the face of such successful evil? The answer is that our fretting does absolutely nothing to stop him, but it does everything to corrupt us. Our anger, when it is untethered from godly patience, "leads only to evil" (v. 8). It turns us into the very thing we despise. We become bitter, cynical, and consumed with the enemy.
The command to be still is not a command to be indifferent to injustice. The same David who wrote this psalm also fought God's battles with sword and sling. The Christian life is a life of engagement. We are to do good, to seek justice, and to push back the darkness. But we are to do it from a position of rest, not from a position of frantic, fretting agitation. We fight not for victory, but from the victory that Christ has already won. We know how the story ends. God laughs at the wicked, for He sees that their day is coming (Psalm 37:13). Their schemes are ultimately foolish because they are schemes against the Lord of heaven and earth. They are plotting to build a sandcastle in the path of a tsunami.
Conclusion: The Long Game
So what is the takeaway? It is to cultivate a long-term, eternal perspective. The Christian life is not a hundred-yard dash; it is a marathon. The wicked may seem to have a commanding lead in the first lap, but they are running on a different track, a track that ends abruptly at a cliff.
The three commands of this verse are a spiritual discipline. First, you must cultivate stillness. This means turning off the noise of the world and the noise in your own head and learning to rest in the finished work of Christ and the absolute sovereignty of God. Your circumstances are not in charge. God is.
Second, you must learn to wait with patience. This is the exercise of faith. It is trusting that God is working all things together for good, even when the process is slow and the evidence seems to be contradictory. God is a master storyteller, and He will not be rushed.
And third, you must mortify the sin of fretting. You must refuse to envy the wicked. When you see them prosper, you must train your heart to see it not as a blessing to be coveted, but as a judgment to be pitied. Their success is God fattening them for the day of slaughter. Your afflictions, on the other hand, are God's fatherly discipline, preparing you for an eternal weight of glory. So do not fret. Be still. Wait. The Lord is God, and in the end, the meek, not the schemers, will inherit the earth.