“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. …” ~ Psalm 23, NASB.

When life gets hard and my body wants to hide under a rock, denying all that is coming at me, The Lord comes to me as a Shepherd, reminding me of His sure presence and instructing my heart anew that I can follow Him, step by step and breath by breath, through each day. Jehovah-Raah, The Lord my Shepherd, calls me to follow Him so I do not fall away in the storm and lose my way in life, trying to do for myself what only He can do. The Amplified version of Psalm 23 further increases hope for the help of my God in difficult days.

“THE LORD is my Shepherd to feed, guide, and shield me, I shall not lack”

When the waters get rough, the first thing I too easily strive for is to try to fix things. I run around like the proverbial headless chicken, wearing myself to a frazzle, trying to do what is only God’s to handle. Too often I do this without first seeking Him and His ways.

The best thing for me to remember in any situation is my need to follow my Shepherd, trusting His provision for all the need I see before me. This trust calls me quickly to seek Him and His righteousness first before taking any action. Often He uses the Shepherd’s Crook of His Spirit, urging me forward or pulling back to right paths. Through His Word and the Spirit’s lead, He lets us know when there is something to do. Following God’s Spirit, I learn the benefit found as I walk where He walks, feast on His supply, and find my rest under His Fatherly wings. Doing so…

“He makes me lie down in fresh, tender, green pastures”

In “fix-it” mode, I too easily miss the good God has for me in life. “Fresh, tender, green pastures” speak two things to me:

†   This is a place where I can find food and God’s resource meant to nourish, grow, and change me to be all He intended when He planned me.

†   This is a place of opportunity where, with reliance upon God, He can use me in right ways that accomplish His purpose.

I don’t have to be the “fixer”. I can trust God to take care of all I entrust to Him.

God often takes us through seasons that are too hard for us to face without Him. He uses these things to make us “lie down”, a position of complete surrender to His will, trusting Him, placing all reliance upon Him. When we lie down in His pastures, we find ourselves in a place that requires our full trust in His protection, provision, and direction.

In the pastures of our Good Shepherd, Jehovah-Raah, we learn to know God. God is in the business of creating for Himself a people after His own heart, readied for His Kingdom. Life’s storms are part of that work of God, revealing areas of needed change, growing our faith, changing our hearts and our nature to the image of God. Here God, feeds, guides, and shields us so that we have no lack of any true need in life. He is our only true need, and He gives Himself to us as we walk in the pastures in which He places us, trusting Him to be the Good Shepherd over all we find there. The things He allows us to experience on the paths of His pastures causes us to lie down in surrendered trust of Him, believing with faith in His supply for our ability to discover and accomplish His purpose for life.