Rest for Your Soul
Favorite Psalms  Part 25
Psalm 23:1-2a        7-13-2014
Summary: If you have God as your shepherd you lack nothing you need to please Him/do His will/glorify Him. The first need He promises to fulfill is the need for rest (fulfilling that especially honors Him because we contribute nothing). He gives rest in our ministry if we make our work a coming to Jesus (remember for whom you are working), and in our anxieties, by focusing on His nature (all things come from His hand, He only does good things, and His good greatly outweighs the evil), and on His promises. The way to become a sheep is by listening to Him and trusting Him enough to follow Him.
Introduction
My Shepherd
Personal – MY Shepherd
Everything You Need
The Definition of “Need”
Rest
Rest in Work
Come to Him
How to Come to Jesus
Rest from Anxiety
Past, Present, and Future Anxieties
Good Anxiety or Bad?
It Came from God’s Hand
God Only Does Good
God’s Good Trumps Man’s Evil
Present and Future
Access to Joy
Focus Attention on His Character and Promises
How to Become a Sheep
How to Have God as Your Shepherd
Application Questions (James 1:25)

A psalm of David. 
1The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides 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 love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Introduction
About 3000 years ago a man is in his daily routine of praying, and he decided to do what he often did – write out some of his prayer. He didn’t write much – just six verses. Fifty-seven Hebrew words. Then he gets up and goes about his day – never dreaming that those 57 words would become some of the most beloved and memorized and most often recited words ever penned. We call it the 23rd Psalm. The message is very simple - nothing complex or especially ground-breaking. And yet how many millions of people have been carried through times of crushing sorrow by this little prayer? On that day God looked forward into the future and saw the army of shattered, broken people whose hearts would be warmed and soothed by these 57 words, millions of people still in shock by becoming widowed, orphaned, injured, whose souls very often nothing could comfort but the words of this prayer. God knew it would become His people’s favorite psalm. You know how you feel when you get someone a really, really nice gift that you know they will just absolutely love, and they are just about to unwrap it? What joy must have coursed through God’s great heart as His Spirit set David’s pen in motion that blessed day, knowing how much comfort and peace and joy He would pour out on His people through those 57 words! Even the world has latched on to these words, reading them at funerals, imagining in their fantasies that God is their Shepherd too. He is not.
My Shepherd
David begins with these words:
1 The LORD is my shepherd
Not everyone can say that. God is everyone’s Creator, and He is everyone’s Judge; but He is not everyone’s Shepherd. This psalm promises some wonderful things:
•	rest and nourishment (v.2)
•	restoration and guidance (v.3)
•	protection and comfort (v.4)
•	vindication and joy (v.5)
•	goodness, love, and eternal life (v.6)
God provides those things, but not for everyone. He only provides them for His sheep.
John 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish  
In recent weeks we have talked about how much following Jesus Christ will cost you. Following Him means giving up your way. And sometimes you don’t realize how attached your heart is to certain things about your way until you try to give them up. Sometimes following Christ will cost you your friends. It might cost you your family. It might cost you a lot of money, or your job. Bottom line – following Jesus’ way costs you the whole world, because following Him means preferring Him above every other treasure in this world – including your own life. That is the cost. What kind of reward would make it worth that much cost? If the cost is that you have to give up the whole world – what is the benefit that you get in return? What is it like to have a shepherd/sheep type of relationship with God? That is what this psalm is about, so it is a great psalm for us to study – whether you are a believer or unbeliever. If you are not really following Christ in your life right now, this will help persuade your soul that it is worth whatever it costs you to follow Him. And if you are following Him, it will help move your soul to follow Him all the more. Because let’s face it – all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Even the true sheep who listen to His voice and have it as their greatest ambition in life to follow Him – even they are prone to stray and wander. All of us are, so we need to be reminded about what a wonderful thing His shepherding really is.
Personal – MY Shepherd
1 The LORD is my shepherd
Literally: Yahweh is my shepherd. Notice how personal this psalm is. There are no “we’s” or “us’s.” It is not “The LORD is our shepherd.” David says, “He is my Shepherd!” When you read this psalm, for a moment all the other sheep disappear from view and it is just me and my Shepherd. Shepherds are really nothing special – unless you are a sheep. As far as the sheep were concerned, there is only person in the whole world who matters – your shepherd. What an amazing thing to realize that if you are one of the sheep, right now the great Shepherd is tending to your soul. He is examining it and strengthening it, and is working to remove the diseased portions. He will still be doing that an hour from now when you are not even paying attention to Him.
Everything You Need
The first line of this psalm summarizes the whole psalm.
1 Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
If you look up that word translated “not in want” you will see that it refers to having everything you need. If you have a shepherd/sheep kind of relationship with God, then you have absolutely everything you need.
The Definition of “Need”
That might be more encouraging or less encouraging to you depending on your definition of the word “need.” What qualifies as a need? Just that which is required to stay alive? You might be able to stay alive living in a cardboard box with only a piece of bread to eat every day. Is that all that God promises us? What about family – is that something you need? How about a job? Or money? Or an education? Are those needs?  Or just wants?
Very often people are confused about what constitutes a need, and here’s why: The word “need,” by itself, has no meaning. It has to be qualified. Whether or not something is a need depends on the task at hand. If I say, “What do you need in order to get to work each day?” you might say, “A car.” But if I say, “What do you need in order to eat a bowl of cereal?” you might say “A spoon.” So when you are defining the word “need,” you have to ask, “Need in order to do what?” You don’t need a car to eat cereal and you don’t need a spoon to get to work. You don’t need a golf club to go bowling, but you do need one to go golfing. The definition of a need changes depending on the task.
So in your life, what counts as a need? When David says, “With Yahweh as your shepherd, you have absolutely everything you need,” what all does that include? Well, what is your task in life? Why are you here? What do you exist to accomplish? Colossians 1:10 is as good a summary as I know of.
Colossians 1:10 we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work 
That is our task – to please the Lord by doing His will.
Matthew 7:21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Our task is to please God by doing His will – all for the purpose of bringing Him glory and honor.
1 Corinthians 10:31 whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
That is the task at hand. So what counts as a need? Anything that is necessary for pleasing God – that is a need. Anything that is not necessary for pleasing God – that’s not a need. To drive to work you need a car, to eat cereal you need a spoon, and to please God you need…(and whatever comes after that – everything that comes after that,  is guaranteed – if God is your shepherd). Does that mean you will always have money? No – not unless you need it in order to do God’s will. Will God supply you with a Rolls Royce?  Is that a need? Absolutely – if it is necessary for doing His will in some situation. Otherwise, no. What about a place to live or a spouse or children or a job? Any time any of those are needed to fulfill God’s desire for your life, then it is absolutely guaranteed. God will provide it, if He is your shepherd. So once you understand what your task is so you know what your needs are, the key to always having everything you need is very simple: have a shepherd/sheep kind of relationship with God. If you are one of the sheep, God will supply you with absolutely everything you need. Not everything you need to be comfortable, not everything you need to satisfy all your desires – not even everything you need to stay alive. But He will supply everything you need to do His will.
And that explains how you can reconcile verse 2 with verse 4. In verse 2, I am promised green pastures and waters of a resting place. In verse 4, I am in this scary, dangerous, dark valley. If I am sometimes in the pasture and sometimes in the valley, how can David say that I always have everything I need? Answer: because I don’t always need to be in a restful, comfortable place in order to please God and do His will and bring Him glory. God will many times put you through the dark valley, but when you are there, you will have everything you need to please Him. Is it possible for a Christian to starve to death? Yes. But if you starve to death as a Christian, God will see to it that you have everything you need while you are starving to death. Not everything you need to stay alive, obviously. But everything you need to please God. Everything you need to die the right way – trusting Him and honoring Him, and finding joy and gladness in Him.
The rest of the psalm describes all the various things God provides for us to meet all our needs. But before looking at them one at a time, it is important for us to know up front that all our needs are met. We lack nothing that we need – nothing. That is huge, because I don’t know if an hour goes by in a day without me being tempted to think I am lacking something I need. I think I need to have relief from this pain or that pain, or from some distress or difficulty. I think I need proof of God’s provision regarding some future threat. I think I need resolution to some past problem. I imagine that I need more time in the day – or more money or more …whatever. 
Do I lack anything? Yes, I do lack some things. I lack all the things I shouldn’t have – all the things God has not been pleased to give me. But everything that I need I either already possess or have free access to. 
So there is no reason for me to be in a mad scramble trying to get my hands on more and more stuff. No reason to shade the truth a little bit in a business deal to make more money. No reason to be greedy or stingy with people. There is no reason for me to steal anything. There is no point in doing anything that would dishonor God just so I can get more resources when God has already promised me all the resources I need to honor Him. If you have a shepherd/sheep relationship with Him, He will supply everything you need. And the very first thing that you need, if you really want to please God and bring Him glory, is rest.
Rest
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters
Literally, he leads me beside waters of a resting place. The very first need that we have that our shepherd supplies is rest. Why start there? Why do I need rest in order to fulfill my purpose in life of pleasing God and bringing Him glory? Clearly it is important to God that we rest. He built in a day of rest right into the creation week, He commanded it, and made the observance of that day of rest one of the most important markers of whether Israel was being faithful to Him in Old Testament times. He designed us to need sleep – so we are flat on our backs unconscious one-third of our lives. Heaven is described as rest; salvation is described as entering His rest. Why is it so important to God that we rest? Why do we need rest in order to glorify God?
One reason is this – some of the other ways of bringing glory to God can be a little misleading. When we glorify Him by serving Him, it is easy to get confused and imagine that we are somehow helping God out. And nothing dishonors God more than people who portray Him as being needy of our help. What honors Him the most is when He is shown to be the giver and supplier who needs nothing. And one of the best ways to do that is for us to rest in Him. One of the most powerful ways you can glorify God is by going to sleep – especially if you have a lot of trouble in your life. Every time you go to sleep at night, you are leaving the whole universe in His hands to take care of without your help for the next eight hours. And during that time you are totally dependent upon Him for everything. When you are asleep, you can do nothing for yourself, you cannot protect yourself, you cannot accomplish anything, you cannot think anything through – it is only by God’s grace that you can avoid drooling all over yourself. Obviously it does not glorify God if you go to sleep because you are trusting in something else to do all that. But if you are able to rest because of trust in God, that honors Him and shows Him to be trustworthy, and puts Him on display as the only source of real rest.
Psalm 62:1 My soul finds rest in God alone
When you can say that – that glorifies Him!
Did you know that sheep are such incredibly helpless, needy animals that they cannot even rest without the help of the shepherd? I read about one shepherd who talked about how difficult it is to get sheep to lie down. They are very skittish critters, and so if there is anything nearby that scares them even a little bit, they won’t lie down. If there are flies or pests bothering them, they won’t lie down. If they are hungry they won’t lie down. And even if they aren’t hungry - if they can’t see any food that they will be able to eat next time they are hungry they won’t lie down. They need the shepherd to take care of all that for them before they are able to lie down and rest.
There is a reason why the Bible so often compares us to sheep. This is one of the points of resemblance. We have a hard time resting – which is amazing to think about. You would think the easiest conceivable thing to do would be to rest. And yet, without God’s enablement, so often we can’t do it. We are dead tired, but we can’t sleep. Or we tense up and can’t relax our muscles. We get all worked up, and we can’t calm ourselves down. We get fatigued and we can’t get rejuvenated.
The language here is interesting. It is a causative form, which means the shepherd is the one who causes the rest to happen. When it says, “He makes me lie down,” that is exactly what it means. He makes it happen. Every time you manage to rest – that is God’s doing. We are not capable of finding rest on our own. We can lie down on a bed, but we cannot actually rest without His enablement.
Psalm 127:2 [the Lord] grants sleep to those he loves.
If the Lord does not grant us rest, we won’t be able to rest. I experienced this last week even while I was studying this very verse. I am studying about how God makes me lie down in green pastures, and then I get to thinking about the ordeal that was going on with the staff member we had to let go. And my stomach would get tight, and my thoughts would start racing, and I would find myself staring at the same paragraph in the commentary I was reading for a half hour and still have no idea what it was saying. So I get calmed down and focused again, and a minute later another thought pops into my head, and bam! – right back into inner turmoil and agitation. I would try to calm my soul, and I couldn’t do it.
How helpless does a creature have to be to need help to rest? And not just a little bit of help. My inability to rest on my own is so extreme that nothing short of an act of God can solve the problem!
But I have a shepherd who can make me lie down in green pastures. What an image that is! Paradise rest. Green pastures are what sheep eat. So the picture here is you are lying down in a bed of your food. Does that sound like paradise or what? God makes a bed for me out of the very things that will nourish my soul and satisfy my cravings so that my very lying down is nourishing to my soul. That is the word picture – but how does that picture translate to reality? Obviously I am not literally stretching out on a queen-sized rib eye with a garlic potato pillow. So when we interpret the metaphor, how does that shake out in real life?
Rest in Work
There are two areas where we need rest. One is in our work. If you are a Christian, you have a calling. God has called you to some ministry in the church that you are responsible to carry out. He called you to it, and He commanded that you work hard at it. And the thing about hard work – it is tiring. So when your ministry gets hard, how do you find rest? How can we be like the people in Ephesus who received these words of praise from Jesus:
Revelation 2:2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. …3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
How can we find enough rest so that even as we work really hard, we don’t grow weary?
Come to Him
Jesus gave us a really complicated answer to that question. Are you ready for this:
Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 
How is that for clear? How do you find rest in Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep? Come to Him. And if you come to Him, you will find rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So let me ask you this: Would it be possible for you to come to Jesus in the way He describes here and not find rest for your soul? Is that possible? Only if it is possible for God to lie. Jesus said, “Come to me, take my yoke upon you … and you will find rest for your soul.” So how do we explain people who are experiencing burnout in ministry? This past week I felt as spiritually fatigued as I remember ever feeling since we started this church. How do you explain that? There is only one possible explanation. If Jesus said, “Come to me and you will find rest,” and I am not finding rest, the only possible explanation is I am not coming to Him. There are two ways to do ministry – you can do it in a way that is a coming to Jesus, or you can do it in a way that is not a coming to Jesus. If you do it the first way, you will find rest. If you are not finding rest, then you know you are doing it the second way. Either the yoke that is on you is not even His yoke (you are doing something He hasn’t even called you to do), or He has called you to do it but you are doing it in a way that is not a drawing near to Jesus. The solution to burnout is not to take a break from your calling. The solution to burnout is not to take a vacation or sabbatical. The solution to burnout is to find a way to make your work a drawing near to Jesus, so that you are continually being strengthened and refreshed as you do your work. If you are worn out, the solution is not to set aside the yoke for a couple weeks and then put it on again, but rather to shed the burdensome yoke forever and seek the yoke that brings ongoing rest to the soul. 
Ceasing activity has its place for sure. We do that every night - and one day a week. But there is more to finding rest than that. Ceasing activity will help a tired mind and body, but it will not rejuvenate a burned-out soul, because a crucial component of rest comes from doing ministry in a way that produces rest and renewal. If your nightly sleep and weekly rest do not result in a rejuvenated, energized soul that is eager to plunge back into the fray of serving God in your calling, there is very likely something wrong with the way you are going about your work, because if your work is what it should be (a coming to Him), it will produce rest in your soul.
How to Come to Jesus
And I’ll tell you – for me, the biggest key to doing this is very simple – I remind myself of whom I am serving. Last week when I was feeling so worn out and tired and started falling into self-pity, I asked myself, “Why are you not finding the rest that Jesus promised?” And the answer was simple – I had lost sight of why I was doing the work. When you get burned out, or you are upset because no one is appreciating your work, or you are starting to resent your ministry; very often it is because you have forgotten why you are doing the work in the first place, and whom it is you are serving. The King called me to do this. I am doing it to serve Him. Serving Him is a grand privilege, no matter what the work is or how hard it is. If I want a trouble-free existence I will get that soon enough in heaven, but for now this is what my Lord has for me, and it is a wonderful, undeserved privilege. And if I stop grumbling and saying, “what a burden,” and I turn my attention to Him and depend on His Spirit to strengthen me, then I can make this work an act of fellowship with Jesus Christ, and that will give rest to my weary soul. Every time I thought about that last week, a great sense of peace and renewed strength came over me, and I was able to press on. When I saw my ministry as a means to drawing near to Jesus, that made me motivated to keep going.
Rest from Anxiety
So that is how you find rest in your work – make sure your work is a drawing near to the Lord. But I said a minute ago that there are two areas where we need rest. One is in our work, another is rest from anxiety. Sheep cannot lie down when they have anxiety. And anxiety comes at us from three directions – past, present, and future.
Past, Present, and Future Anxieties
Sometimes we get worked up about the past. Something really painful happened to you, you were treated unjustly, you suffered some major loss, went through a big trauma. Something happened that, whenever you think about it, you get agitated and your thoughts just kind of run out of control. 
Other times it is the present. Something is going on in your life right now that is dominating your thoughts, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t set it aside. You tell yourself, “Ok, I’ve thought enough about that, now I need to focus on something else” but you can’t seem to do it. You can’t sleep, you can’t relax – there is no rest.
And then there are future threats to our rest. You anticipate something coming up that is going to be difficult, and worry makes rest impossible. You are so sure that pain is on its way that you can’t relax.
Good Anxiety or Bad?
What do green pastures and quiet waters look like in those times? And how does the sheep/shepherd relationship help me find those green pastures and quiet waters?
The first step is to ask yourself, “Is this the good kind of anxiety or the bad kind?” The good kind of anxiety is tension that gets you moving to take care of something that is your responsibility. If I see my two-2-year old playing in traffic, that is not the time for me to seek inner peace and calm. Seeing my child in danger should cause enough anxiety in me to get me running to help. Paul talked about the daily pressure of his concern for all the churches (2 Cor.11:28). That was a good anxiety because it was Paul’s job to protect those churches and deal with the problems in those churches. If it is your area of responsibility, and it is something that is within your power to do, then the solution to anxiety is to get up and take care of your responsibility.
But what if it is outside the realm of your responsibility? Or it is not something you have any control over? Then what? How do you find rest from anxieties about your past? How did Joseph do it? He had a pretty traumatic past. Anybody here who was sold into slavery by your family as a teenager? Or thrown in a pit and left for dead? Or sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit? It all happened to Joseph, but we never see him worked up or anxious or flustered or taking anxiety medication or anything like that. He was not even angry with his brothers. How did he maintain spiritual rest and calm with all that in his past? Why wasn’t he plagued with questions like, “How could a loving God let such horrible things happen to me?”?
The answer is in the last chapter of Genesis. When he meets up with his brothers, who inflicted all these horrible things on him, here’s what he said:
Genesis 50:20 You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good 
That statement tells us three things: 
1)	God intended it.
It Came from God’s Hand
Sometimes people try to find rest from painful things by saying, “God didn’t intend this. He had nothing to do with it. It’s just a product of evil people, not God.” But Joseph didn’t think that way. He knew that God intended all of it to happen. He understood Lamentations 3:38.
Lamentations 3:38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Joseph understood that all the hard things that happened to him – big and little – all came from the hand of God.
God Only Does Good
But he also understood something else. He understood that God intended it, but he also understood that God intended it for good.
Genesis 50:20 … God intended it for good 
There was evil involved, but the evil part of it does not come from God. Evil people were doing bad things while God was doing something good. Imagine an evil doctor who wants to kill you, so he is going to inject poison into you. And another good doctor who knows you have a rare disease that will be cured by a certain medicine, so he puts that medicine in the syringe. That medicine would normally kill you, but since you have this disease, it will actually cure you. So the evil doctor injects you with it, wanting to harm you, but the overall outcome is it ends up being for your good. Both doctors did the exact same thing, but one goes to jail and the other gets a medal. Why? Because one meant it for evil and the other meant it for good – the exact same action. The key to having a restful attitude about the past is in understanding that God is always that good doctor. Yes, trouble does come from God, but He is always doing good things for you in that trouble – whether you can see what those good things are or not.
God’s Good Trumps Man’s Evil
So Joseph was able to maintain his calm and not get worked up over the horrible things that were done to him in the past, because he understood that those things happened to him came from the hand of God, and God only does good things. And then he understood a third principle. Namely, the good that God does totally eclipses the evil that people do. If the evil that his brothers did was huge, and the good thing God was doing was tiny, how would that have kept Joseph from anger? The verse only makes sense as an explanation for why Joseph was not mad if the good that God does trumps the evil that the brothers did. Go back to the illustration of the two doctors. If the evil doctor manages to get poison in you so that you die, and the only good the other doctor can manage is he draws some kind of life lesson from what happened – that is not very comforting. For the illustration to be accurate, the good doctor’s good has to dwarf the bad doctor’s evil, so that when you look at the whole picture, overall, it is great news. You usually can’t see that overall picture, but God promises that the good He is doing is always way, way bigger than the evil that is being done. 
This is how you rest when anxiety about your past tries to rise up in your heart. You believe that God was doing something exceedingly good in that suffering– so good that it is more than worth it. Focus your attention not on the evil that man was doing, but on the goodness of the God whose good will eclipse that evil. That is the solution to post traumatic stress. 
Present and Future
And the same principles will help you with present anxieties. Whatever is going on right now in your life that is so hard and so distracting – it is from the hand of God, God is doing something good, and the good thing He is doing far outweighs the evil that others are doing.
Same goes for the future. That thing you are so worried about or afraid of – whatever happens, it is going to be from the hand of God, God will be doing something good, and the good thing He does will be far greater than any evil that takes place.
Access to Joy
And when it comes to the present and future, there is one more principle to keep in mind. This good that God is doing might be painful, but you don’t have to be afraid of that because God will supply you with everything you need for joy even during the suffering. We always have access to as much joy as we need through fellowship with God. We studied that in detail in the Loving God series, so I won’t get into it now. The point now is just to remember – you don’t have to fear present or future suffering, because no suffering can cut you off from access to fellowship with God. And fellowship with God can supply you with all the joy you need.
Focus Attention on His Character and Promises
So when it comes to seeking rest in God, here is the bottom line: fix your attention on God’s character, and on His promises. Remind yourself what He is like (sovereign, in control of all things, only doing good things, putting you through suffering but not willingly from His heart, etc.) And remind yourself what He has promised. 
He will only do you good, never harm (Jer.29:11, Ro.8:28)
He will never leave you or forsake you (Josh.1:5).
If you seek His kingdom and righteousness all the earthly things you need will be provided for you (Mt.6:33).
He will always guide you (Isa.30:21).
He will never let you be tested beyond your ability (1 Cor.10:13).
Every time those anxious thoughts try to crash their way into your heart, replace them with thoughts about what God is like, and thoughts about what God has promised.
And usually this requires some kind of system. If you just try to tell yourself some simple little statement, like “God is good,” that only takes about one second to say, and then your mind is right back to rehearsing all the various angles of your problem. Find a way to think about God’s character and promises that takes up all your attention for a while. Like – name two attributes of God for each letter in the alphabet. Or memorize that Promises bookmark so you know one promise for each letter of the alphabet. Or recite some other memorized Scripture - something that takes enough brain power so you cannot do that and fret about the problem at the same time.
How to Become a Sheep
If you do those things, you will find rest for your soul … if you are a sheep. If you don’t have a shepherd/sheep kind of relationship with God, it won’t work.
John 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish  
How to Have God as Your Shepherd
“How do I know if I have that kind of relationship with Him?”
Jesus answered that question in the passage I just read.
John 10:27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 
Jesus speaks to us in His Word, and you can tell if you are one of the sheep by how you respond when He speaks. The goats – the people who aren’t His sheep – they hear His words and it’s just boring to them. They are not really all that interested in His words – certainly not interested enough to follow Him. They might tell themselves “I’m following Jesus,” but in reality, they “follow” Him only in times when it is the way they felt like going anyway. If someone is coming up the hallway toward the foyer, and I am walking behind him, it looks like I’m following him. But you can’t tell for sure if I’m following Him until he gets to the foyer and has to turn either right or left. If he turns right and I turn left, then you can see I wasn’t really following him – we just happened to be going the same direction for as long as it suited my purposes. A lot of people are like that with Jesus. When He says certain things they agree with, they are happy to “follow” along. But when it comes to things they don’t really agree with or care for – things that seem like they don’t lead to happiness - that is when Jesus turns right and they turn left. Those are the times when you really find out whether you are listening to His voice and following Him. That is how you can tell if you are one of His sheep, looking to Him as your Shepherd. You are a sheep if you listen to His Word and trust Him enough to follow Him even when His way does not seem as good to you as some other way. Do that, and all of Psalm 23 will be yours.

Benediction: Hebrews 4:7, 11 So "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." …Let us make every effort to enter God’s rest
Application Questions (James 1:25)
1)	Which kind of rest do you need most – rest in your work (so it is not burdensome) or rest from anxiety? Past, present, or future anxiety?
2)	Of the three lessons from Genesis 50:20 (the trouble is from God, He is doing only good, and His good far outweighs man’s evil), which is hardest for your soul to really believe?
3)	What is one thing you love the most about being shepherded by God?