Life Without Lack Continued

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God in Himself:  The Glorious, Self-Sustaining, Eternal Being of the Shepherd

The experience of a life without lack depends first and foremost on the presence of God in our lives, because the source of this life is God Himself. Belief will come as you experience the truth about God.

The only definition of eternal life found in Scripture is John 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

When we fill our minds with the gospel, it must be in its fullness as Jesus presented and embodies it.  As Dallas stated in his book The Divine Conspiracy, at least four gospels are commonly preached:

1. The gospel of sin management where you say the words and go to heaven when you die.
2. The social justice gospel that directs you to fill in the gaps that Jesus left behind.
3. The gospel of “take care of your church and it will take care of you.”
4. The availability of the kingdom of the heavens through trust in Jesus Christ.

The kingdom of God—and God’s immediate availability—his “with-us-ness” makes a life without lack possible. We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with Him through our minds.  This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

Faith that interacts with God draws directly from God and the power that is in the word of God.

What’s in a Name?

God’s power and personality are perceived in both nature and history.  In addition, his character is revealed in His names.

• Elohim reveals God’s great creative and governing power (as in Genesis 1).
• Yahweh (also translated Jehovah) has the primary sense of self-subsistent eternal being—one who does not depend on anyone else for his existence, but has “life in Himself” (John 5:26).
• Adonai (Abram’s name for God in Genesis 15:2) has a personal, possessive sense of “my Lord” and is often used in conjunction with Yahweh.  Yahweh Adonai describes a personal, convenant-making God who holds people as His friends.
• El Shaddai (God’s name for Himself to Abram in Genesis 17:1-2) means the almighty God, all-abundant to His people.
• I Am (God’s name for Himself to Moses in Exodus 3) is a statement of the nature of God as being—self-sustaining, self-sufficing, all-powerful, all-determined being.  “I am that I am” means, “My being sustains my being.”  It is something that only God can say.

Recall the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9).  Next comes the first request: “Hallowed be thy name.”  Through this prayer, you’re praying that God would be known for who He is.  That His name would be cherished and loved.  Why?  Because once you begin to have an impression of who God truly is, everything else fades into insignificance.

God in Himself: Living in the Mindfulness of Our Magnificent God

Your primary contact with God is through your mind, and what you do with your mind is the most important choice you have to make.  Wherever your mind goes, the rest of your life goes with it.

By making you in His image, God has given you, in your will, the power of originative action, the power to create and to bring things into existence.

To take the name of God in vain is simply to speak or think or imagine God as being less than He actually is.  And like Israel, we require a long, steady education in this direction.  Those who take time to increasingly come to know and trust God as He truly is, are laying the sure foundation of a life without lack.

Because God is with you, you can live without fear.  This is precisely what the Shepherd Psalm is talking about.

There is a life in which there is no lack.  Jesus is the example that proves this claim to be true. If, by faith, you can declare, “I have no lack,” you will increasingly experience the Shepherd’s sufficiency in your life.

Why There Are People on Earth

The Shepherd’s Psalm is a reminder of God’s care, protection, and provision for his children; the preciousness of his creatures.

God designed work as a fundamental structure of love in the kingdom of God—something that is meant to bring people together in loving community for mutual benefit and support. Simply put, work is the expending of energy to produce good in various forms and ways. 

God did not originally intend our work to be difficult—for us to sweat, to grind ourselves back into dust. The sweating came because, in disobedience, we broke ourselves off from God and each other and from the energy that would accomplish the good we intend.

Your work is the total amount of lasting good that you will accomplish in your lifetime.  That might include your job, but for many of us, our families will be the largest part of the lasting good we produce.

Regardless of our specific work, the real challenge to every person’s faith is that we do everything to the glory of God, even in the smallest action of our days.

Here is a truth you must never forget: God is more interested in the person you are becoming that in your work, or your ministry, or your job.

There is nothing that makes God happier than human beings, redeemed by the grace of God, devoting their lives—the moments and hours of their days—to the good of others and of creation to the glory of God.  That is our privilege, and the reason we are here.

Why Such Lack and Evil?

We live in a world under the care of a wholly good God with unlimited power, who lacks nothing and intends only good for His creation.  Why, then, is there so much lack and evil?

We must acknowledge the activity of Satan here.  His presence in the world accounts for the seemingly unlimited extent of human wrongdoing that goes far beyond what humanity (made in the image of God) would generate on his own.

The secret to life without lack is faith in God and in God’s full capacity and willingness to meet all our needs—and more.

If we look at Satan’s work from beginning to end in the Bible, we see a clear pattern: Satan’s constant deception of human beings. Satan is God’s primary target, for he is the one who bears the primary responsibility for all that is wrong with the world.

Satan is immediately present in this world as its “prince” and chief influencer.

Prior to placing their faith in Christ and being given new life in Him, people are “dead in trespasses and sins” and are, whether they know it or not, under the influence of Satan. This is what the phrase “sons of disobedience,” means; like father, like son (or daughter).

Satan uses three primary weapons to oppose God and derail our experience of God’s sufficiency, all of which are forms of temptation:

Jesus’ Temptation (Matt. 4)	Eve’s Temptation (Genesis 3)	The World (1 John 2)
Turning stones into bread	Good for food	Desire of the flesh
Jumping off the temple	Pleasant to the eyes	Desire of the eyes
Political power & glory	Desirable to make one wise	The pride of life

Notice how Jesus’ temptations align with both those of Eve in the garden and John’s threefold description of “the world” (the Satanic system of life).

Of First Concern

When the prophet Samuel was a young boy, Eli the priest gave him unerring advice on listening for the voice of God.  It is a simple but profound prayer: “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:9). When we get up out of bed in the morning, among our first thoughts should be this: Lord, speak to me.  I’m listening.  I want to hear your voice.

If you are not entertaining God’s truth, you will be entertaining Satan’s lies.  This is what happened to each one living in the days of Noah when “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).  Now contrast that with Jesus.

The primary means Satan uses to keep the evil pot boiling are the ideas that govern society’s individuals.  Of central importance are the ideas about what is good and what is right, and how things should be done.

The pursuit of happiness, and the security of life and liberty, as the Founding Fathers understood it, are very good things and very much a reflection of the ideals that express the kingdom of God. 

Only the gospel of Christ can take back what Satan controls and can reclaim the mind and heart of every human being held captive by his deceit.  It is, indeed, a battle of the hearts and minds, and you cannot overcome the citadel of false beliefs and images and feelings—the very things that rob us of knowing the life without lack—except by the power of God.

In Paul’s words, “Bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Trust in God: The Key to Life

Three things must be working within us before we can truly experience the sufficiency of God: faith, death to self, and agape love.  These three combine to create a triangle of sufficiency in our lives.  When faith, death to self, and love are alive in you, you will find that hope and joy pervade your entire life as a natural result.

Faith—trust—is the key that unlocks our readiness to receive God’s sufficiency in our lives.

“For by grace you have been saved through trust” (Ephesians 2:8).  To have faith in God is simply to trust God, to rely upon him in the face of all fears.

Many people misunderstand faith; it often falls into the category of mystery or superstition. In its most basic aspect, faith is simply reliance upon something in both attitude and action.

You cannot escape faith.  There’s no way to get through life without it, because you have a future.  You make plans for your future, and making plans involves confidence—faith—that things will be a certain way and what you desire will come to be.

Faith has two main parts: one is vision and one is desire, or will.  Vision is seeing reality to be as it is, or as we hope it could be.

In the Old Testament, Job’s journey of faith moved from ritual to relationship.  He began with what we may call the faith of propriety, moved through the faith of desperation, and finally arrived at the faith of sufficiency—the faith that says, regardless of what happens, “It doesn’t matter.  I have God, and that is all I need.”  We can learn much from Job’s journey.

In the New Testament, Pharisees tried to live good, moral lives, and make sure others do the same.  Pharisees have the faith of propriety, believing that if you get it just right, all will go well.

There are problems with propriety, not only because we tend to make bad choices and bring difficulties upon ourselves, but because things can go badly even when we do everything right.  Sometimes God even allows those bad things to happen because he has something better for us, just like he had something better for Job.

The faith of desperation—trusting faith—digs in, holds on, and clings tight, and says, “I don’t care what’s going to happen, I am holding on to God!” 

As the psalmist went on to say, “Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea” (Psalm 46:2).

Desperate faith is all about trusting God when the shaking begins and everything crumbles around you. Often God allows us to reach the point of desperation so we can learn how to trust.  It is a hard lesson but an essential one.  In the moment of need, you know the reality of God.

Job hung in there and his faith of desperation carried him to the point where God showed up and Job could say, “I’ve heard about you, but now I’ve seen you.”  It was an undeniable experience of God, and it changed his life.  His vision of God was now so great that he realized what had happened to him didn’t matter.  That is the deep faith of sufficiency. 

In this new place of faith in God, Job said, “I repent.”  Having seen God, he let go of desperation.  He saw that whatever needed to be taken care of would be taken care of.  Job saw the greatness of God, and in that vision he was able to rest in the all-sufficiency of Yahweh.

This is why we need to live in clear view of the cross.  When we look at what Christ did for us on the cross and keep that at the center of our vision, there are not many things that will bother us, or even matter at all.

One of the fundamental changes that takes place as we move from the faith of desperation to the faith of sufficiency is that we take our minds off ourselves and place them on God.

Esau tried to refuse the generous gifts of servants and livestock that Jacob brought him.  Jacob’s response tells us much about his increased faith (Genesis 33:10-11).  Behold the heart’s confession of the faith of sufficiency: “God has dealt graciously with me, and I have enough.”  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Faith based on what we hear or read is central and necessary; the beginning of faith does come by hearing.  But God wants to lead you on to the point where you can say, “Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes and it’s all clear.”

If you want faith, ask God for it.  And when you ask God, be willing to let him take you through what is necessary to prepare you for it.

Trust Completed in Death to Self

Self-denial means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself.  It means no longer seeing oneself, only him who is going ahead, no longer seeing the way which is too difficult for us.  Self-denial says only: he is going ahead; hold fast to him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In a day and age when we hear far too much about self-fulfillment and self-promotion, it is essential to recognize we are dealing with “death to self” not “death of self.”

Death to self is not ultimately a negation, but a rising up into the very life of God (2 Peter 1:4).  Thus our lives are saved by his life (Romans 5:10).  This is essential.

The gospel is presented today with very little connection to the complete surrender of our lives to God. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”  This is the essence of death-to-self life: that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and rose again.

To live in the flesh, to live with uncrucified affections and desires, is simply a matter of putting them in the ultimate position in our lives.  Whatever we want becomes the most important thing.  This is what happens when we are living apart from God.

As long as our desires are paramount in our lives, we cannot have faith in God.  God does not give us significantly more faith until we have come to terms with death to self.

Human desire is infinite by its nature; it cannot be satisfied.  Matthew 16:24 says, “Unless you lose your life for my sake, you cannot follow me.  Unless you take up the cross, you cannot follow me.” We must put all our desires on the cross.  Deny yourself and follow Christ, or deny Christ and follow your self.  Those are the options.  The results?  Saving your life or losing it. 

To respond to life’s difficulties and disappointments and the suffering that can—and most likely will—come to us, we must get ourselves out of the way, and focus our attention upon the God of our sufficiency.  With full-throated confidence, we can should out with Paul, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

Humility is the beautiful condition of people who have learned to surrender their desires, their glory, and their power.  Such people are in the process of becoming who they were meant to be in God’s kingdom by giving up the life of the self.  It is an essential quality for anyone who desires to live a life without lack as Jesus Himself did.

Jesus concluded His teaching of how to pray with a statement of surrender to God: “Yours is the kingdom.  Yours is the power.  Yours is the glory” (Matthew 6:13).  When we pray this, we are saying, “Lord, I give it up.  It’s all yours.”  We are then able to walk in humility as Jesus Himself walked.

There must be a time when, in our own words and in our own way, we say to God, “Do with me what you will.”  Until we experience an abandonment of this kind, faith simply cannot be given to us safely.

Sufficiency Completed in Love

Faith (trust), death to self, and agape love support our Psalm 23 life as a triangle of sufficiency.

The call to us is not to do as much as it is to receive.  We love Him because He first loved us. Love is not just about the things we do.  Love is an attitude of the heart. Service to others is one of the easiest ways to begin loving someone.

It’s hard to delight in those who have just cursed us or who have hurt us.  We should not try to love that person; we should train to become the kind of person who would love them.  Only then can the ideal of love pass into a real possibility and practice.

The primary word for love in the New Testament is agape.  One of the better efforts at describing agape love is that of Thomas Oord in his book, The Science of Love.  Oord precisely defines love as “acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God) to promote overall well-being.”

Desire and feelings are more matters of impulse than of considering and choosing the best alternative.  They are concerned with their own satisfaction, not with what is better and possibly best. Love is not action; it is a source of action. 

One of the hallmarks of those who live a life without lack is the freedom to serve others.  From Jesus’ perspective, there is no greater calling than to be a servant.

Jesus was essentially saying, “Listen, you have heard about love ever since Moses told you to love your neighbor as yourself.  I am showing you what that really means.  You are to love one another with the same concern which I have loved you.  Do that and it will be obvious that you are my disciples.”

We are called to love our neighbor—those who are “neigh thee”—your family, your friends, your coworkers, the folks in your neighborhood, and yes, even the “enemies” in your life, the ones who irritate, demean, frustrate, and mistreat you.

There is power in the great prayer called “The Sower” or “The Peace Prayer” that is often attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi:

1. Forgiveness does not require reconciliation with your enemy.
2. Forgiveness does not require you to forget what happened.  You may never forget what a person did, and you may find that you treat them differently because you have learned something about their character that you didn’t know before, but you can choose to love them for who you now know them to be and support their efforts to grow.
3. Forgiveness does not mean you stop hurting.  Forgiveness is the choice not to punish or seek revenge.  It is not—it cannot be—the choice to stop hurting.  Forgiveness can come long before the healing is complete.

All the Days of My Life

The closing verse of Psalm 23 says:

As President John Adams famously put it, facts are stubborn. 

Fact #1: It is okay to be who you are wherever you are.  We must begin with the fact that God accepts us as we are wherever we are, so that we can then accept ourselves.  We don’t have to try to be someone we are not.

Fact #2: What is true about you as a person is also true about your work.  God put us here to work, and all the fundamental occupations of humanity are good.  If you drive a truck, or deliver the mail, or teach, or sell insurance, or manage investments, or mend broken homes—whatever you do, it is good in God’s kingdom.

Loving Thy Neighbor

To be with Jesus is also to be with others—being fully present to them, caring for them, using what God has given us to help them.  If you go through a day with Jesus, you will discover a fresh awareness of those around you.

Above all, you must arrange to rest.  Rest is an act of faith, especially today.  Few people get the rest God intends for their well-being.  Remember that the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, an entire day to be set aside for rest.

Spiritual practices such as Sabbath, rest, solitude, and silence are essentially “casting all your care upon Him” (1 Peter 5:7).  This is fundamental to our lives, yet because of the way this world is set up, one of our primary temptations is to not get enough rest. You are not meant to live in a constant state of fatigue.  Tiredness is a spiritual problem.

Our confidence in God can lead us to “lie down in green pastures” and rest in God, putting our minds at ease because our hearts are at peace. Carry Christ through the day, so if you have specific concerns, call them out, lay them before the Lord, and submit them to His care. Follow the advice of Peter:

In Psalm 119:164, we find a hint of how the psalmist spent his day: “Seven times a day I praise You, because of Your righteous judgments.”  Seven is often used to indicate completeness or fulness, as in “I praise you all the time” or the apostle Paul’s admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  It certainly points to a life in which constant communion with God was a regular part of every day.

In the monastic period of Christianity, monks divided the day according to seven appointed hours.  The seven basic hours of prayer were as follows:

1. Lauds: Dawn (6:00 a.m.)
2. Terce: Third Hour (9:00 a.m.)
3. Sext: Sixth Hour (Noon)
4. None: Ninth Hour (3:00 p.m.)
5. Vespers or Evensong (6:00 p.m.)
6. Compline (9:00 p.m.)
7. Vigils: At various hours during the middle of the night

These folks were serious about meeting with Jesus, and the purposeful arrangement of their days reflected that commitment.  Your day will need to be purposefully arranged as well. You must plan those times to turn your mind to God.

The most important thing about you is your mind, and the most important thing about your mind is what it is fixed upon. Plan to take ten minutes every two to three hours during the day to lift your heart and mind to God in praise, thanksgiving, and sharing the concerns on your heart.  Do this alone if possible.

Frank Laubach did this by bringing to mind the Lord’s Prayer, an image of the cross, or simply a thought of the Father who is over all.  Laubach said, “God, I want to give You every minute of this year.  I shall try to keep You in mind every moment of my waking hours…  I shall try to let You be the speaker and direct every word.  I shall try to let You direct my acts.  I shall try to learn Your language.”

In all of this—the praise, the petitions, and the planning—you are expressing your dependence upon God, but you may want to make this explicit, telling him out loud or silently that you are going to rely upon him to realize his presence with you as the day proceeds.  Thank him in advance for what will come.

At some point in the late afternoon, preferably before dinner, while you are still experiencing the strength and rest of God, take fifteen minutes in quiet solitude to review and examine the day.  Be with Jesus, so the two of you can look back over your day to see what happened, to give thanks for the successes, and to try to understand any failures that may have occurred.

May you know increasingly, by joyful experience, a life abundant in rest, provision, and blessing—a life without lack.

Closing Prayer

And now, with the truth of who you are deeply engraved in our hearts, give us the confidence and power to love all who are in our lives just as we are being loved by you—freely, fully, joyfully.  Let your Spirit move in our minds and hearts so we believe ever more fully that because you are our all-sufficient Shepherd, we shall never want.