He makes me lie down in fresh, tender green pastures; He leads me beside the still & restful waters.
Psalm 23:2
Man I needed this scripture today!
“He MAKES” not He invites, not He asks, He MAKES!!! One of the definitions of ‘make’ is to alter something so that it forms or constitutes something else. I don’t know about you, but I need Him to alter my Daunters into fresh, tender green pastures. As for laying down, well I’m a mama so any opportunity to lay down is luxury (can I get an amen from all the toddler mamas out there!)
Last year we bought some land and are slowly turning it into a small farm. It’s been a process, one that God is speaking to me daily about. I often wonder what it must have been like for Adam in the Garden before the fall when he walked with God every day.
We had lots of pine trees on the land and we needed to remove them to make way for pasture and gardens. It was a messy process and left a large section of exposed dirt. As Spring approached we planted grass and clover seeds. The wonderful Spring rain has caused the seeds to produce this pretty fresh green. What is interesting is the marked difference in color between the establish grass and the new grass. The new grassland is a vibrant green. It is the same in our lives the new things God plants in our hearts provide a vibrancy that wasn’t there before.
“He leads me beside still and restful waters”. Do you ever get tired of the noise from the Daunters? I know sometimes my head is so full of noise that I’m like the meme says, a browser with a million tabs open and I can’t figure out where the music is coming from! Daunters create noise where there was peace.
For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful matters against those who are quiet in the land.
Psalm 35:20
Some of you may know what I’m talking about here. You are serving God in the place He has put you, you stay out of the drama and the nonsense, head to the plow. Then BAM, in comes the parade of Daunters with their accusations, lies, noise and ‘deceitful matters’. These are the one that in the NKJV in Matthew 5:44 are described as ‘those who spitefully use you and persecute you’. We all have consumers in our lives. We can all be consumers in other peoples lives too.
It is so hard to not let human emotion get involved. It’s so hard to stay laying down by still, restful waters when you feel spitefully used. When you see a Facebook post of an event you were excluded from, a person taking credit for your hard work, gossip about you gets back to you, the list is endless.
I wish I had an answer to how to not let it get to you. In Psalm 35 David is pleading with God to remove these people from his life. We have all been there. I don’t think God gets mad at us, I do think He wants us to be careful that our response to someone else’s sin doesn’t cause us to get in the flesh and end up in sin ourselves. Paul had a thorn in his side to stop him from getting caught in pride. Maybe sometimes we need a good old thorn to keep us close to the Shepherd.
So I guess the question today is will we let Jesus, our Shepherd, make us lay down by restful waters or will we get caught up in the craziness of the circus the Daunters have devised? He can change the form of that circus into fresh peaceful pastures of rest if we let Him!
Lord God, today I ask that You make us lay down in the fresh, tender green meadows You have before us. Help us to let go of the Daunter circus that has been deceitfully devised against us. Help us to take hold of Your hand so You can lead us by the still and restful waters, where we can be quiet and hear Your voice. In Jesus’ name! Amen!
