by Susan Sampson

My feelings are so often my shepherd and I wonder why I’m in want.

On page 6 of our homework this past week Laurie wrote, “If I was to renounce everything I would have to even renounce the false impressions of my feelings.  Feelings lie, whereas the Bible tells the truth.  I needed to put my feelings aside and by God’s grace choose to put my faith in God and His Word alone.”

It all seems so real when we feel things.  As I type this I can sit here and know intellectually that my feelings change moment by moment and are not to be trusted, but in that moment when my flesh is set off — wow, it feels so real.

The love of God to me so often doesn’t feel real.  Again with my feelings.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”  What truth is packed into this simple verse from a children’s song!  The Bible says so.  God loves me.  This is the truth.  Jesus died for me.  This is the truth.  I am a sinner.  This is the truth.  I deserve death.  This is the truth.  Jesus took the punishment I deserve on the cross.  Truth.  He is risen from the dead and rules over all.  More truth.  Will we believe and follow the Living Word?

“I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).  Truth.  Will we believe?  Will we believe the very words of God Himself, the One who hung on a tree, crushed for our iniquities?  “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). 

Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.  So many times I have savored my sin.  The apple that is so pleasing to the eye.  Please enable us by your grace to see and savor Christ and the cross!  There is no greater symbol of love.  Enable us to meditate on what Christ did at the cross — the enormous cost of our salvation.

You are real.  Your love is real.  The cross is proof.  The resurrection is proof.  God’s Word is truth.

Thank you, Jesus, for leaving your throne to become fully human and suffering the rejection, hatred, and brutality of man.  Exposing yourself to the judgment of God. Bearing the wrath of Almighty God that we deserve! Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Is. 53:6-7). 

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want…You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows” (Ps. 23:1,5).

“Death and the curse were in our cup; O Christ, ’twas full for Thee; But Thou hast drained the last dark drop, ‘Tis empty now for me.  That bitter cup, love drank it up; Now blessing’s draught for me” (Hymn by Mrs. A.R. Cousins).

Father, the cup of wrath we deserved your beautiful Son drained it down to the last dark drop.  But it didn’t remain empty.  You have filled it to overflowing with mercy and grace.  The great exchange.  Truly our cup overflows.  May you direct our hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ (2 Thes. 3:5).  Enable us by your grace to hear our good Shepherd calling us by name to come and follow Him even in those moments when we question His very existence.  Enable us by your lovingkindness to renounce everything and turn from following the shepherd of our feelings to follow the One who gave His life for us.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

by Dottie Ryan

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. (Psalm 40:1-2)

As I sit out on the deck this somewhat warm, humid, overcast morning, I am reminded of the stark contrast between last week’s crisp, sunshiny day . . . and I can’t help but be thankful that every day is not the same – that each day – each moment – has its own flavor.   Yet I also see my propensity to want things to look different – to want them to look the way I think would serve me best; sunshine would do me nicely about right now.  And even as I write these words to you, they sting, because they show me too much of the me in me. It can be so difficult for this sheep to realize that my way died when the old me died (cf. Galatians 2:20).  So I must remind myself at every turn that: The LORD is my Shepherd . . . I live for Him. As is typical of sheep, left to my own devices I would wander off and not even have a clue I had done so . . .

W. Phillip Keller, in his little book A Shepherd looks at Psalm 23, says, “It is no accident that God has chosen to call us sheep.  The behavior of sheep and human being is similar in many ways . . . Our mass mind (or mob instincts), our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallels of profound importance.”  But he also goes on to encourage us: “Yet despite these adverse characteristics Christ chooses us, buys us, calls us by name, makes us His own, and delights in caring for us.”

As I sit here, secretly wishing for my life to look different this morning, I realize that I need to turn my gaze to the One who purchased me – and listen for the voice of my Great Shepherd – and trust His Sovereign lead. “This is the day that the Lord [not Dottie] has made…” (Psalm 118:24a).  Can I trust Him and rejoice and be glad in it? Am I willing to do that?

Keller further suggests, “It is a tragic truth that many people who really have never come under His direction or management claim that ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ They seem to hope that by merely admitting that He is their Shepherd somehow they will enjoy the benefits of His care and management without paying the price of forfeiting their own fickle and foolish way of life.  One cannot have it both ways.  Either we belong or we don’t.”

Lord let this not be me! Help me!  I need you!

In a sermon by Charles Spurgeon, he gives a sobering reminder of the price that was paid by our Shepherd to purchase us. He says:

“If I had the power to do it, how would I seek to refresh in your souls a sense of this fact that you are ‘bought with a price.’ There in the midnight hour, amidst the olives of Gethsemane, kneels Immanuel the Son of God; he groans, he pleads in prayer, he wrestles; see the beady drops stand on his brow, drops of sweat, but not of such sweat as pours from men when they earn the bread of life, but the sweat of him who is procuring life itself for us. It is blood, it is crimson blood; great gouts of it are falling to the ground. O soul, thy Savior speaks to thee from out Gethsemane at this hour, and he says: ‘Here and thus I bought thee with a price.’ Come, stand and view him in the agony of the olive garden, and understand at what a cost he procured thy deliverance. Track him in all his path of shame and sorrow till you see him on the Pavement; mark how they bind his hands and fasten him to the whipping-post; see, they bring the scourges and the cruel Roman whips; they tear his flesh; the ploughers make deep furrows on his blessed body, and the blood gushes forth in streams, while rivulets from his temples, where the crown of thorns has pierced them, join to swell the purple stream. From beneath the scourges he speaks to you with accents soft and low, and he says, ‘My child, it is here and thus I bought thee with a price.’ But see him on the cross itself when the consummation of all has come; his hands and feet are fountains of blood, his soul is full of anguish even to heartbreak; and there, ere the soldier pierces with a spear his side, bowing down he whispers to thee and to me, ‘It was here and thus, I bought thee with a price.’ O by Gethsemane, by Gabbatha, by Golgotha, by every sacred name collected with the passion of our Lord, by sponge and vinegar, and nail and spear, and everything that helped the pang and increased the anguish of his death, I conjure you, my beloved brethren, to remember that ye were ‘bought with a price,’ and ‘are not your own.’ I push you to this; you either were or were not so bought; if you were, it is the grand fact of your life; if you were, it is the greatest fact that ever will occur to you: let it operate upon you, let it dominate your entire nature, let it govern your body, your soul, your spirit, and from this day let it be said of you not only that you are a man, a man of good morals and respectable conduct, but this, above all things, that you are a man filled with love to him who bought you, a man who lives for Christ, and knows no other passion.”

In Laurie’s lecture, she reminded us that, until we get this part settled in our own minds and hearts, we will stumble through the rest of the study.  She asked us, “Do we trust Him? Do we see? Do we understand? Do we believe?”  So I urge you to prayerfully lose some sleep if necessary to seek the Lord in all honesty, to cry out for Him to show us where our hearts and minds are concerning Him – Christ – Our Shepherd, and what we are willing (or not willing) to give up to be totally His.

Yes, each day – each moment – has its own flavor. In looking for what we think this moment should look like, may we not miss the “grazing” – the tender leading – as He guides us through the pasture along the journey of life this day.

 

by Scott Kaczorowski

It might sound spiritually cliche, but Psalm 37:3-4 has been a passage that the Lord has brought up in my life over and over again: Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

As a young man pining for a wife, the Lord would say to me, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  Wait on me, Scott.

When I was teaching English in Korea and a situation arose where it looked like I would want to return home, the Lord said to me, Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.”  Stay put, Scott.

(As an aside, if I had disobeyed Psalm 37:3 at that time and left Korea prematurely, then the Lord would not have fulfilled for the me the promise of Psalm 37:4–at least not in the way that He did.  Because eventually I married a Korean girl.  Another interesting aside.  I don’t know if I have ever noticed this connection until right now.  After I had determined in my heart to stay, the Lord in His graciousness worked the particular situation out in my favor anyway.  I did not have to suffer loss to stay.)

When my wife and I were contemplating moving back to Ohio after I finished seminary, I woke up one morning and felt like the Lord spoke to my heart, “dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness…” (see NASB translation).

So as you can imagine, it was significant for me that this passage played such a prominent role at the beginning of The Falling in Love Again with Your Lord for Men study.  God has been bringing up Psalm 37:4 for me quite a bit these days and in various ways.  I have found in my life over and over again that when the Lord reiterates Himself, that means He is going to do something.

Now if you have ever heard this verse preached on, the train of thought might run something like this: Yes, there is a promise here.  But this verse also intimates that God wants something.  He wants us to be delighted in Him. With promises like this, we are tempted to put the accent on “and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  But from God’s perspective, the accent really belongs on delight.  And it’s only then that our hearts are renovated in such a way as to desire what is good and pure.

This can be a helpful reminder so that we don’t get too self-focused or mistake the twisted desires of a sinful heart as something that the Lord desires to give us.

But I want to break down the perceived dichotomy between Psalm 37:4a and Psalm 37:4b for a minute.  I want to argue that eagerly trusting God for what He is going to do for us is a way of delighting in Him!  Do you feel like this is “selfish”?  Consider the “selfishness” of the following verses:

“He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life…” (Romans 2:6-7).

…set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 1:13).

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Of course all these promises are about what God will do when Christ returns.  But our salvation is not entirely future.  There is present grace as well as future grace!* God gives a small foretaste now** of what will be the case when He ultimately and definitively moves His hand for His people in the return of Christ and the restoration of all things.

So I want to encourage you today to a godly “selfishness.”**  What do you want the Lord to do in your life?  What would you desire from Him?  How would you want Him to transform you?  How would you want Him to move His hand in your life so that when you see the power and the might of His grace working on your behalf your heart literally bursts forth in exultant praise: “My God is glorious!”  We now can see why this is a godly “selfishness.”  Because He satisfies us.  And that glorifies Him.  “…call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).

So seek Him for it.  Trust Him when there’s not an answer right away.  (God usually makes us wait for His best gifts.)**  It might not happen in just the way or at just the time that you think it should.  After all, there is still a lot of renovation that our hearts need before we perfectly and purely desire even the good things that God has for us.  And, yes, God is sovereign in His good plan and perfect timing.

But let me point out one last observation (lest the proceeding caveats end up being an occasion for lack of faith).  At the end of the day, Psalm 37:4 is a promise. Yes, there is a context in which this happens: “Delight yourself in the Lord…” But remember, God has also promised that He will move in the hearts of believers so that they do delight in Him (see Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 36:25-28).  God does this fundamentally at salvation.** If you are following Jesus, you do delight in God (it can be no other way).***  And He will continue to work in your heart so that you delight in Him more and more.  What that means is that every true believer in Jesus Christ fulfills and will fulfill the condition of Psalm 37:4a: “Delight yourself in the Lord…”  Because God will see to it.  But this also means that every true believer in Jesus Christ will (ultimately and in God’s way) reap the promise of Psalm 37:4b:…and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

So seek after God to move powerfully in your life.  And like Jacob, who had spent the whole night wrestling with the angel of the Lord and said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26), don’t let go until you have a satisfaction that glorifies Him.

 

Footnotes:
*Readers familiar with John Piper’s book Future Grace (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 1995) will catch the reference, as well as the influence of Pipe’s thinking throughout this post.
**I may owe this language to another writer/speaker.
***cf. the comment of Tom Schreiner: “Genuine love for God involves a willingness to follow Jesus” (in The Law and Its Fulfillment [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1993], 233, cf. 232).