Living in the Twenty-Third PsalmCasual confidence is what we see in passages such as Psalm 23. We need to take passages like this and meditate on them as something for our real life. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Stop there for a moment and think: You are going to go through this whole day without wanting. Obviously today is going to be different, isn't it? But after all, that is what it says. And we have other passages from the New Testament: "My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19). Is that real, or shall we just make another song out of those pretty words? "My God will fully satisfy all my needs." So now you have that in your head, but what is in your heart and in your life? My aim in this chapter is to get you to concentrate on that question for yourselves as Christians. I want you to have confidence in the constant interaction that says, "Because of my experience, because it is reality, 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil.'" Today you are not going to fear any evil. This is going to be another new day. "I fear no evil, for you are with me." Don't you suppose that that is something we would know, something we would know because of the presence of God actually making a difference in our lives as we trust him? "Your rod and your staff—they comfort me." Rods and staffs, that sounds like experience doesn't it? "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." Psalm 23 was not written so that we could recite it at funerals. One of our problems as a church is that so many of the wonderful statements in the scriptures that are meant to reflect the honest experiences of those who have learned to live in interaction with God are in fact ritualistically and magically quoted by people who don't believe a bit of it, because they are scared to death! Nothing has ever happened to them that they are certain is the personal hand of God in their lives. And it drains the life out of those verses. Take Psalm 23 into the day with you tomorrow. It is the presence of the Lord with us. From The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus. Copyright © 2015 by Dallas Willard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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