HE LEADS ME ALONG THE RIGHT PATHS

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 

He leads me along the right paths for His name's sake.

One of the most unexpected and widespread effects of the ongoing crisis has been the disruption of our daily routines. Seemingly overnight, all the rhythms of our lives were thrown out of the window, and many of us (myself included) have struggled to adjust.

It makes me think about something I read in Phillip Keller’s book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. According to Keller, who spent years working as a shepherd, “sheep are notorious creatures of habit. If left to themselves, they will follow the same trails until they become ruts; graze the same hills until they turn to desert wastes; pollute their own ground until it is corrupt with disease and parasites.” (p.83)

If this continues unchecked, the sheep will grow increasingly anxious and restless as they become malnourished and sickly. So a good shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves. Instead, he leads them along new paths into fresh fields and to clean watering holes so that the sheep can find true nourishment and rest. He doesn’t lead them aimlessly; he knows where He wants to take them.

Of course, the sheep aren’t always excited about leaving the comfort of their familiar foraging grounds. Sometimes the paths the shepherd leads them along are rocky and treacherous, but when the sheep trust their shepherd more than they fear the unknown, then they will discover that their shepherd knows what they need far better than they do.

I suspect a lot of us can identify with sheep. If left to our own inclinations, we will choose the comfort of familiarity to the discomfort of the unknown. Many of us have been doing the same routines, walking the same paths day after day, year after year. And then we wonder why we find ourselves walking in ruts, or why the same amount of effort produces less and less growth.

For anyone who’s ever tried to get in shape, it’s like doing the same exercise over and over. What starts out as challenging and strenuous can quickly become routine and boring. So, like a good personal trainer, God will change up the routine, challenging our spiritual muscles in different ways that will elicit greater growth. He will lead us to new, fresh pastures. He will allow us to go through experiences that remind us that He’s in control, we’re not. And He will ask us to trust His lead. Sound familiar? I suspect that your faith is getting a good work out right about now, huh?

We have the best of Shepherds, and He often leads us away from our familiar ruts, along new paths, to new grazing grounds. But He doesn’t just do it for our well-being. He also does it as a testimony of his competency.

“He leads me along the right paths for His name's sake.”

You see, a shepherd’s reputation is tied directly to the state of his flock. If the flock suffers, which happens when the sheep are left to fend for themselves, it reflects negatively upon the shepherd. And when the sheep flourish, when they grow strong and healthy, the shepherd’s reputation also flourishes. Our spiritual well-being is actually a testimony of God’s capability; it’s a sign both to us and to others, that our Shepherd knows what He’s doing with us.

I am well aware of how disruptive this season of self-isolation is for most of us. All of our rhythms have been thrown out the window and we may feel lost. But sometimes that’s exactly what we need in order to continue spiritually growing and thriving. Our shepherd knows this. So He invites us to follow Him out of the familiar, out of the places where we can rely on muscle memory and slip into autopilot for weeks on end.

What’s more, He knows where He’s leading us, even if we don’t. We may resist following, for fear that we’re going the wrong way, but what makes the paths we're walking "right" is that He is with us, leading the way. So long as we remain at our Shepherd’s side, it won’t matter whether our path runs through a green pasture or a dark valley, because He is with us, guiding and comforting us along the way.

So Jesus lead on. We will follow. We invite you to disrupt our rhythms, frustrate our independence, motivate us to move, and guide us where you want us to go. We are your flock, the people of your pasture, so take us where you want us to go. Amen. 

HE RESTORES MY SOUL

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul. 

Psalm 23 is a song of absolute trust written from the perspective of a sheep towards his shepherd. I suspect that the reason it resonates so deeply for us is because it’s so profoundly personal. David didn’t describe the Lord as “our shepherd,” but rather “MY shepherd.” He was writing as one who knew His shepherd intimately, and had seen countless examples of his shepherd’s capable care.

I suspect we have also seen countless examples of God’s capable care, of the ways He provides for us in times of scarcity and guides us through difficult seasons. And in a time like this, when we are experiencing levels of scarcity and trouble unlike any other time in our lives, it has never been more important for us to remember who our Shepherd is and how capable He is of caring for us.

Yesterday, we began to unpack the second verse of the Shepherd Psalm. After declaring his absolute trust in his Shepherd, David writes:

“He makes me lie down in green pastures, 
  He leads me beside still waters,
  He restores my soul.”  

We’ve already commented on the irony that our Shepherd has to make us lie down. Even after a shepherd has properly fed and watered his flock, sheep are prone to wander in search of one more tuft of grass to crop or another mud-choked puddle to drink from. So shepherds regularly need to make the sheep lie down and rest.

Similarly, even though we intellectually understand that our identity is found in our relationship with God, not in what we do, we are still prone to wander in search of things that can prop up our identity and affirm that we matter. And in a time like this, when we are forced to isolate in our homes, being still can feel like a punishment. But I would suggest it’s a time when our Shepherd is inviting us to lay down and rest in His presence, because He is enough.

But it’s that last line that I want to zero in on this morning: “He restores my soul.”

What does that mean? How does our Shepherd restore our soul?  To answer that, it helps to understand how a shepherd restores a sheep that has become cast down.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a sheep is it becomes “cast” – that means it’s fallen and isn’t able to regain its footing by its own strength. This could happen for any number of reasons: perhaps it’s grown too fat, or its fleece has grown too full or it has gotten clogged with mud and branches,  or it’s simply stumbled into a ditch and can’t get out. Initially, it’s simply uncomfortable for the sheep, but if it’s not restored back to its feet in a reasonable time, it can die.

Like sheep, we too can get cast down. It happens for lots of reasons: perhaps we stumble in sin, or we get too full of ourselves, or we get bogged down with fear and anxiety about the unknown. Or maybe we just get sideswiped by life. I think a lot of us find ourselves in that place right now. The coronavirus came out of left field and has swept the legs out from under many of us and we just don’t know how to get back to our feet. Thankfully, this is where the shepherd comes in.

A good shepherd is constantly looking for those sheep who have fallen, and when he finds one that is cast, he “restores it” to its feet with gentleness and grace. The same holds true for us.

When we find ourselves flat on our back and unsure whether we have the strength to get back up, we might think that God will be mad with us, that He will be disgusted and fed up. But that’s not the attitude of our Shepherd. A good shepherd cares for his flock, and we have the best of shepherds. He knows that we all get cast down from time to time, so rather than getting disgusted with us, He takes pains to restore us to health and wholeness.

If anyone knew this to be true it was King David, the guy wrote this psalm. David fell harder than any of us have. It started innocently enough. He saw a woman bathing and didn’t look away. His initial interest turned to infatuation, then to lust, and that’s when things really went sideways. The woman in the bath, who was aptly named Bathsheba, turned out to be the wife of one of his closest friends. David got her pregnant and then tried to cover it up by bringing her husband home from war so they could easily write the baby off as his. But when that didn’t work, David tried to clean up his mess by intentionally sending his friend to the front lines so that he would be killed.  In a matter of days, David not only became an adulterer, but a murderer (even if he didn’t wield the sword that killed his friend).

Now, God could have easily rejected David at this point; He could have taken the throne and even David’s life for his mistakes. But he didn’t. Nor did God simply ignore David’s misbehavior. He didn’t turn a blind eye to it, because left unchecked it would have caused even more destruction. Instead, God restored David gently, through the Prophet Nathan.

Nathan presented David with the truth of his sin, and David was humble enough to acknowledge the mess he had made. Now, you might say, “God was judging David by exposing his sin,” but I beg to differ. Exposing his sin was God’s grace. God’s judgement is when He gives us over to our destructive tendencies - when He leaves us cast down.

What I love about David, and one of the primary reasons why he continues to be called “a man after God’s heart,” is that once his sin is exposed, he doesn’t deny it, excuse it or try to run and hide from it. Instead, he owns it, confesses it openly, and runs to his Shepherd for consolation. 

In fact, we have a record of David’s response, penned by his own hand. It’s Psalm 51, and it is a beautiful cry for help from a cast sheep to his shepherd. Let’s listen in:

Create in me a clean heart, O God.
    Renew a loyal spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and make me willing to obey you.
                                  - Psalm 51:10-12


Father God, you are my Shepherd, and you are faithful. Even when I am not; even when I am drawn away by the things of this world, or my faith is eclipsed by my circumstances, still you are faithful and vigilant. I thank you for your patience with me, and thank you for your grace. I pray that you would restore me to my feet, and help me stand. Jesus, I pray in your name, Amen.

He Makes Me Lie Down

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads be beside quiet waters…

There was a time, about 6 years ago, when David’s declaration of trust from Psalm 23 was like a drink of water in the midst of a desert. At the time, I was a new father, an adjunct college professor, and an associate pastor at a growing church down the street. Life was exciting and I was running hard and fast. It felt like there were never enough hours in the day to do everything I needed to get done, and my relationships with my family and with God bore the brunt of my harried schedule.

Whenever my wife would ask me to choose her and our infant son over work, I would feel frustrated. Couldn’t she see that everything I was doing was for them?! Wasn’t it enough that I was providing for them and serving God?  Speaking of God, during this season I was acting a lot like Martha. I was far too busy working for God to actually spend any time with Him.  So I drove myself into exhaustion, never realizing that I was in danger of burning out. Looking back, I can clearly see the warning signs. I was red-lining and running on fumes, but the excitement of feeling needed kept me going. Little did I know that a break down was imminent.

 

It’s funny how people around us can see the warning signs better than we can. I was physically present, but emotionally distant. My marriage was suffering and my desire to minister to others was waning. It was even hard to scrape together the desire to worship at church. Something was amiss; I was in a funk and everyone around me could tell.

So one day, my director at church pulled me into his office and voiced his concern. “Eric, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but the joy-filled guy that I know is gone,” he told me. “I’m concerned about you and I want you to take the rest of the week off to spend some time with God and your wife and figure out what’s going on.” I know that he only wanted the best for me, but in the moment it felt like I’d been called into the principal’s office and suspended.

I went home and collapsed onto the couch with Cathy, feeling utterly defeated. Thankfully, it was my son Ethan’s nap time, so my wife and I spent the next hour praying together for God’s wisdom and direction.

During that time, He gave me a mental image of me lying in a bed, under a heavy blanket. But as the sheet was pulled away, I saw that my body was withered and emaciated. I knew in my heart that God was showing me the state of my soul, which had grown dry from constantly pouring out but never stopping to be refilled.

It feels ironic to admit that, as a pastor, I had grown spiritually dry, but it was true. In my drive to care for other’s needs, I’d neglected my own relationship with God, so I’d been pouring into other people out of the dregs, not the overflow of my heart. As a result, ministry had become an obligation, not a joy, and though I didn’t realize it in that moment, my Father in Heaven was putting me on the sideline for my own good and the good of those who depended upon me the most.

During a time of quiet reflection one morning during my forced sabbatical, He led me to Psalm 23 over and over again. David’s words felt as if they were written specifically for me:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.

As I sat in the stillness of my home, alone with God as everyone else in the house was still asleep, I felt as if my Shepherd was using David’s words to tell me that He needed to pull me out of ministry so that He could minister to me. My Shepherd was going to make me lie down in a green pasture to rest.

It’s seems odd that the shepherd has to make the sheep lie down, doesn't it?! But shepherds need to do it all the time, because sheep are prone to wander off in search of one more tuft of grass to crop or one more mud-choked puddle to drink from. And like sheep, we are prone wander in search of things to prop up our identity and prove our value to ourselves and others around us. But our identity and value has never been found in what we do for a job or how in-shape we are. They are found in our relationship to our Shepherd, and sometimes our Shepherd needs to make us be still so that we can remember that.

For many of us, this season of self-isolation feels like being forced to lie down in a green pasture. We can’t run to the things we normally run to for consolation and purpose, so we sit at home and wonder if anybody even misses us. But what if this is a time in your life when your Shepherd is inviting you to be still and know that you are enough, just as you are, because He is with you and He is watching over you.

I remember how painful it was during that forced-sabbatical to sit and be still. It felt punishment. Like I was in time-out. But David’s words from Psalm 23 were like a balm to my aching heart, because they assured me that my Shepherd’s intention was not punitive, but rather restorative.  

He was going to restore my soul.

We will explore what it means to have our souls restored, and how God does that tomorrow. 

For today, I would simply invite you to spend some time in silence, resting in these truths:

• You are not alone. Your Shepherd is right there with you.
• He loves you - not for anything you do, or anything you will do - but just for being you.
• You are enough, and so is He.