Psalm 23:3 “he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Everyone in this world has a soul but not everyone has the Holy Spirit of God living inside of them.
Restore - to bring back to a state of health, soundness, or vigor. Dictionary.com
This is our fourth lesson on Psalm 23 and I have found so much truth that in this one Psalm. I remember the time that we were going to restore our bathroom. It had some ugly wallpaper and I was going to make it “My Job” to fix it. Those of you new to the daily devotional should know that I am related to Murphy as in Murphy’s law. If it can happen it will happen. I once put in a new fan and the directions said to turn off the electricity first. I did; I turned off the lights. After picking myself off the floor and then reading the directions further I found out I needed to turn the circuit breaker off first. Yes I am dangerous.
So on to the bathroom I go. I don’t know much about taking down wallpaper and then painting but “Hey that is what the internet is for”! I go in the bathroom and went at that wallpaper like a wild man. What started out as a friendly game of stripping paper became an obsession. As a matter of fact it was coming off so quickly I was thinking of how smart I was going to portray myself to my wife Julie. It only took me 25 minutes to get the wallpaper off. Pretty proud of myself I called Julie to come on in and check it out. Well when Julie started to check she found that I had only gotten off the first layer. There were others layers underneath, MANY layers underneath. Well these layers were stuck. This restoring thing was going to take a little longer than I had originally planned. Instead of a few hours it turned into four days of work.
In the above verse when God “restores our soul we can take that a number of ways. If you are not a believer in Jesus God can give you His Spirit to Endwell inside of you forever but you have to ask.
Romans 10:13 “for, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
But I believe that this verse has more to do with our current lives than our eternal life. Now don’t get me wrong our eternal life is more important than anything temporary. If you are not sure if you are saved please read the link at http://www.theultimatedecision.com/howtogettoheaven.html But for the above passage God is speaking to those who are plain worn out. Many of your prayer requests, phone calls and e mails have shown me your pain and worry. We all desire rest for our souls but we always try to find that rest in the wrong place. We may work countless hors to finally get a vacation. Then we go on vacation and come back more tired than if we had stayed at home. We may get more money in the bank but then we worry if that money will evaporate. We worry about everything under the sun because we want everything under the sun to please us. Our life is one step after another to find security.
But the closer you get to God the more you realize that He and He alone is not only our only true security but He is the only One who can give us rest for our weary souls. When I watched my dad die when I was 13 I left God for over 25 years but fortunately He never left that little boy. On November 29, 1992 I called upon the name of the Lord and was saved. We all have a story of God's redemption that are saved. It is a mighty story of our rescue. But that rescue is just the first part of this life. How many times do we have an awesome experience with the Lord only to slide back into despair? Probably far too many.
The second part of this verse says that “He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake”. We are never stagnant in our walk with Jesus. We are either getting closer to Him or running farther away. If you truly seek God He will guide you on the right path. He will keep your feet upon firm footing. But if we doubt, worry and put our hope in things instead of our creator then the devil has a foothold and that is all the he needs. We start to go after an illusion instead of the truth. The more we fight for security the more elusive our goals are. Then we wake up one day only to find that we have spent our whole life not doing anything for the Lord's Kingdom. Satan has kept us busy building our paltry little kingdom for ourselves. What a waste of a life that is. The good news is it is never too late to start working for God. Not as a preacher even though you could be but what if everything you did you did unto the Lord? What if you did the best job you could at your work as if you were working for the Lord? What if you strived to be the best parent as if you were doing it for Jesus? Our whole focus on life would switch from “Me” centered to Christ centered. That is what it means when “he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Today you may be down to your last nickel or your last ounce of energy. That is OK because God doesn’t need much to create a miracle in you. David Ring the evangelist said that “God does not need our ability he desires our availability.” Today you have a choice who you will serve. If you are out to serve the world you will end up growing old and weary. If you have finally realized that everything is in the Lord's hands then you have a great starting point. Start today by trying to do everything as unto the Lord. Do it out of thankfulness for what God has done for you, not for any favor. Then and only then will you not grow weary but your soul will also be refreshed.
Don’t let anyone or anything steal your peace. Jesus paid too high a price to set you free.
Brad
