He Restores My Soul

One of my friends struggles with fatigue and other health issues. This past week she said it felt like her energy was in the negative numbers. Another friend has been trying just to keep up with the basic needs of her family including surgeries and there have been extended family needs. Some of my family members are experiencing declining health. One other friend and her husband have undergone life-altering trials for the past year. There is a common feeling of weariness. Personally, with my chronic fatigue and pain, and cancer, there have been many days I felt weary. I wasn’t sure how to keep moving forward, and I was discouraged by feeling useless.

As I prayed for these various people and situations this week, the passage that kept coming to my mind was from Psalm 23. It’s a psalm most are familiar with, and I have already written on it twice because it is so rich. I know it was good for me to return to it this week from the perspective of weariness. I pray Psalm 23 will encourage you today too.

The Lord Is My Shepherd

23 A Psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

3 He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness

for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.[1]

I included the entire psalm although verses 1-3 will be our main focus. First, it is easy to read over David calling God my shepherd. Don’t miss this precious truth. God is personal. As David writes a few verses down, “for You are with me” (vs 4). Wherever you are at today, whatever you are going through, God is with you. He knows every hair on your head. He perfectly knows your thoughts, heart, and circumstances. He is sovereign over every detail of your life. He loves you, and nothing can ever separate you from His love. If you have come to saving faith, God is your God.

Second, the central idea in verses 1b-2 is God’s sustaining care. We can feel like we aren’t able to keep going, to do what we need to do, and we can’t in our own strength. It is God who sustains us. “I shall not want” means that all our needs are met. Stop. No complaining. No telling me what God has left out. He meets all our needs.

David goes on to give us a glimpse of what that means. God makes us lies down in green pastures. The word makes always causes me to smile. We don’t always know what we need, or we choose not to do what we know we need. So, sometimes God makes us lie down to get the rest we need.

“Philip Keller (in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23) writes that sheep do not lie down easily and will not unless four conditions are met. Because they are timid, they will not lie down if they are afraid. Because they are social animals, they will not lie down if there is friction among the sheep. If flies or parasites trouble them, they will not lie down. Finally, if sheep are anxious about food or hungry, they will not lie down. Rest comes because the shepherd has dealt with fear, friction, flies, and famine.”[2]

I don’t know how God has done this in your life. I know in my life God has sometimes removed something. One instance is my husband’s and my move to Dubai. Previous to the move, we had been going at a crazy pace with work and ministry. My husband often traveled internationally for several weeks at a time for his job. The time in Dubai was for me a time of refreshing and rest. My husband was still working, but he didn’t have so much international travel. We were still involved in discipleship, but we weren’t carrying the same ministry load. I had time to be at home, sew for nieces and nephews, and study God’s Word more. We also got in the habit of having a more relaxing Saturday morning.

But there are other times when God literally made me lie down because physically my body failed. I often want to keep pushing. I have things I want to do, or I think I have to do. I don’t listen to and depend on God. What I am continuing to learn, is that in these times of weariness, when I feel at my end, what God wants from me is to rest in Him, depend on Him, trust Him. My situation may not change, but I can still find rest in God knowing He is caring for me.

David continues that God makes him to lie down in green pastures and leads him beside still waters. God is providing His best. It may not feel like it when we are in the midst of weariness, but God is providing His comfort, care, and rest for us. My favorite verse in Psalm 23 is verse 6: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…” God’s goodness and mercy are chasing after us every day of our lives. Even when we don’t feel it or see what God is doing in the moment, we can trust this truth. We can be purposeful to look for the ways God is sustaining us. It might be through someone at church bringing us a meal or taking the kids for an afternoon. It might be in the verse a friend shares with us or the prayer they lift to God on our behalf. It might come by way of a reminder as a you watch a pair of robins carefully build a nest, sit on the eggs, and then bring back food to feed the chicks (we’ve been watching a robin family in our deck eaves). It might be in the ten minutes that just opened up that you could pray or read Scripture. God’s goodness and mercy are all around us. Pray for eyes to see them.

Third, David says God restores his soul (vs 3a).” As I think back to the day my fatigue was so severe that I barely had the strength to walk from our bedroom to the kitchen, these words are a comfort and a hope. Restores can be a picture of a sheep that has gone astray and then rescued. In Hebrew, “restores my soul” can refer to repentance. Both of these are the loving care of our Shepherd, but we also don’t want to dismiss that this statement immediately follows God providing all we need, making us rest, and leading us beside still waters. Sometimes we are weary from life in general or a specific circumstance. God restores our souls with His presence and His care for us.

We are also revived by God’s Word: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalm 19:7a). The soul is our inner being. God restores and revives us where we most need it. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Don’t discount what God is doing in your soul.

We will still experience hard days, days we feel so weary and burdened that we aren’t sure how to face the day, but we can rest in our Shepherd who sustains us providing everything we need for our faith to grow, and God to be glorified.

I want to end with a quote that helped me get through the worst days of my pain and fatigue:

“The Holy Spirit also began to show me many ways in which migraines were actually good for my soul. Migraines humbled me and reminded me that I am just flesh and blood. They showed me time and time again that God did not need my help to run the universe. He could do it quite well with me flat on my back in bed. On any given day, I would think that what I had to get done mattered most, yet God showed me otherwise. I thought to myself that God wants me to do this and this and this today – all good things, like serving my kids and working in ministry. Then I would discover that what God had actually decided was best for that day was for me to have a migraine.”[3] (Emphasis added.)

God’s best doesn’t always look the way we would think, but His best is exactly what God is providing.

Reflection

1. When you are at your end, where do you turn? What thoughts run through your mind? Are you tempted to hopelessness or discouragement?

2. In those times, what are you thinking about God? Are you living in light of God being personal, being with you, providing for all your needs, and chasing after you with His goodness and mercy every day?

3. What in Psalm 23 encouraged you?

4. List ways you can see God’s care for you in your trial.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:title–6. [2] David Guzik, Psalms, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ps 23:2. [3] Duguid, Barbara R., Extravagant Grace – God’s Glory Displayed in Our Weakness (Phillipsburg, NJ, P&R Publishing, 2013). Pgs 117-118.