What A Shepherd!

The Lord is My Shepherd. He takes care of me. I do not lack or want for anything; I have everything I need. That is God’s job: He provides for all my needs. If I need healing, He is Jehovah Rapha. If I need peace, He is Jehovah Shalom. God is my provider. You and I must see that inside us. We must be so certain that He is with us and for us all the time. God will take care of us, regardless of what we need. We must learn to lean on Him and trust Him for our provision. You know what is very interesting: A sheep never worries about what it is going to eat or where it is going to get water to drink. It doesn’t have a care or concern.

As our Shepherd, the Lord leads us to a life of rest; that rest is the rest of faith. Faith is trusting God to take care of us. That may sound over simplified, but that is how simple faith is. Trust! That’s it! Trust!

God leads us into peace. We have studied peace before. It is shalom. The word means wholeness, soundness, with nothing missing and nothing broken in our lives. The statement “all is well” describes the peace of God. The peace of God does not depend on how things look. God’s peace is not moved by how things look on this earth. God’s peace is the same always. In His peace is stability at all times. It is not earmarked by fretting, worrying or anxiety. These negative emotions are not a part of God’s peace. His peace has been given to us. Jesus gave it to us. He told us that He was giving us His peace, which the world could not give. When He told us that He was giving us peace, He said: “Let not your hearts be troubled. You may be in the world, but you are not of the world. The world can’t hurt you because I am with you.”

Our Shepherd renews our strength daily. We are strong in the Lord. It is His strength which we draw upon. The young ones may faint and grow weary but we who wait upon (worship) the Lord shall renew our strength as eagle’s. We shall not grow weary or faint. We exchange our weakness for His strength.

Our Lord guides us; He protects us; and comforts us. He is always there for us. He will lead us in the right pathway that He has chosen for us. He will protect us from deviation off that pathway. He comforts us as we travel on that pathway.

Our God prepares a table laden with good things He gives us while we are here on this earth, with our enemies around us. They can’t touch us when we are with our God. He is there all the time, anointing us with His Presence and with His overflowing Blessing,

God’s goodness and mercy is in hot pursuit of us all the days of our lives. We live with Him forever.

Aren’t you blessed to have God as your Shepherd? You and I can rest in His care for us forever. We need to learn and to lean. We lean on Him and He is strong enough to hold us upright and carry us forward into all of His goodness. Let’s go forward together into the lush meadows of Blessing that He has for us to graze upon and drink of the refreshing waters of His Presence.