Why we need a God who is always trustworthy (Psalm 23, Part 1)

By Dean Collins

This is the first of five devotions based on Psalm 23 that will appear here on Saturdays, starting today.
Some readers will remember these posts first appeared in March of 2021.

I don’t know if I can do it but I’m going to try. If you’ve ever felt that way or feel that way today, then Psalm 23 is worth not only reading but possibly chewing on for a few days. It is what Old Testament scholars call a Psalm of trust. Several psalms along with other passages of Scripture speak to the importance of trusting God.

Two reasons

The first reason we trust God is because he is trustworthy. He always keeps his promises. Your friend is capable of forgetting. And no matter how much love your family has for you, they may sometimes miss the signal of your need, but God is reliable and trustworthy time after time.

The second reason we need a trust psalm like the 23rd is because we often find ourselves with or in a challenging situation. In a way, there’s a difference between being in a situation versus being with a situation. Both require help. Both will send you back to an anchor and a need for a trustworthy God.

Your situations send you back to your need for a trustworthy God.

If you’re a leader your situation is both. Life happens to us leaders just as it does to those we lead. We get sick. We have relationships that become strained or broken. We run out of ideas or money. Someone lets us down. We sin. Any or all of these put us in a situation where we must turn to our God and his Word to hold us through the storms.

But as leaders, we often also find ourselves with a situation. We didn’t create it. We didn’t make the blunder. We were focused on our mission and working our plan when suddenly someone we lead is in a mess, made a mistake, experienced a loss of a loved one, failed to live up to the standard, or tripped and broke something, and their situation becomes our situation. Situations aren’t always bad, but they should always cause us to slow down and adjust. Otherwise, the things that must go on can’t go on.

These adjustments may come from compassion and love for our people who have a situation. And the adjustment may lead to a temporary and sometimes permanent change we must make because of the situation. Regardless of whether you’re in one or have one, when a situation arises, we must remember to stop and turn to our anchor. Without an unshakable source of help, we may make things worse instead of better.

Two realizations

Psalm 23 opens with an important reminder: The God of all creation is and will forever be our shepherd. He can’t and won’t stop himself from his role in being there for us and meeting every need. It’s in his nature and it is his promise.

David came to two realizations and fortunately wrote them down for us in the first two verses of this psalm. 1) We have what we need. 2) Even in our situation God provides a place to rest and will quench our thirst. We probably will protest that reality. We may believe what we need has been taken from us. The little we have left we are sure won’t get us to next week or possibly even tomorrow. But if we trust and if we wait and if we lie down in the grass and drink the water, we will one day see God was in fact trustworthy and true to his promises.

As we slow down and walk through this psalm together, I will be including both the ESV translation along with the translation of Old Testament scholar and Fuller Seminary professor John Goldingay called The First Testament. I think his fresh rendering will help us see some new or different things in Psalm 23 that our familiarity may have allowed us to miss.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t know if I can, but I will try. That sentence defines so much of my life. I suspect it does yours as well. So this month I’m going to try to slow down and spend five days in this short and familiar psalm. Maybe praying and pondering a phrase or two at a time will allow us to find new confidence in the God who is, who has always been, and will forever be, our shepherd.

Your time with God’s Word
Psalm 23: 1, 2 (ESV): “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.”
“My shepherd being Yahweh, I don’t lack; he enables me to lie down in grassy pastures. He leads me to settled water.”

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Photos by Karl Magnuson and Johnny McClung on Unsplash