All the Days of My Life | Apr. 14, 2024

This morning, Pastor Dale continued our new series in Psalm 23.
The Psalm begins with the declaration, "The Lord is my Shepherd."
We looked at two questions related to this declaration: 
Why would I want the Lord to be my shepherd?Am I willing to
accept that I am a sheep?

We know our life experience is one of growth and change; that the
nature of the human soul is dynamic and not static. As these
changes occur, we are being formed. The question is, "Who or
what are we being formed into?"


As John Mark Comer writes in his book, Practicing the Way: 


"We are being either transformed into the love and beauty of
Jesus or malformed by the entropy of sin and death. “We become
either agents of God’s healing and liberating grace, or carriers
of the sickness of the world.” To believe otherwise is an
illusion, and to give no thought to this is to come dangerously
close to wasting your life."


Being formed into the image of Jesus isn’t something we do as
much as something that is done to us by God himself, but we are
not off the hook. Godly transformation isn't something our Father
will force on us. We have a responsibility, an action item. We
are to cooperate with God’s transforming grace. 


To cooperate with God's transforming grace, we can begin with an
honest assessment of where we are today. What word would you
place in this blank?


____________ is my shepherd


As we learned through our study through the gospel of Mark, we
get to know what God the Father is really like through Jesus;
what he said and what he did. As we look at Jesus' life we see
Jesus is a shepherd who wants the role of Shepherd in our lives
as he sees peace even in the midst of chaos. He is a shepherd who
provides that peace, gives the peace, sends people out in peace.
He is a shepherd like Psalm 23 who will be there “All the days of
your life.”


He not only is the Shepherd, Jesus also knows what it’s like to
be a sheep. He was the most vulnerable of all the sheep, the lamb
for sacrifice. He experienced being led by a shepherd and took on
the role of the lamb, fully living Psalm 23:1, “The Lord is my
shepherd, I lack nothing."


The second question we asked ourselves, are we willing to accept
that we are His sheep? Are there areas of our lives where we are
trying to lead instead of being led by our Shepherd? Are we
looking to our Shepherd to see where He is leading, trusting in
His provision, aware of His presence? 


We invite you to sit with the Father and as you read and meditate
on Psalm 23 and seek His input on these questions and what steps
He's inviting you to take to be formed by Him this week.