The Lord desires us to live for His glory, and this is good news for us because we find our ultimate joy in doing so. Your best response to your Shepherd is satisfaction in His provision, gratitude for His restoration, and trust as you walk carefully and diligently in His steps no matter the path He chooses for you. Our response is to bring Him glory, whether wealthy or poor, well-known or obscure. He has promised to provide all that we need. 

He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Psalm 23:3

As a new school year is upon us, I am reminded of a strange experience I had a few times when I was young. You no doubt experienced it as a child as well. That moment when you walked into the grocery store and saw your teacher pushing a cart full of food. Or perhaps you visited a restaurant and saw your principal with a spouse. Seeing school personnel entirely out of context is stunning for a child! The young mind tries to grasp that teachers and principals have a life outside the school building. As a child, it is quite mind-blowing.

For many of us in church leadership, we can contextualize ourselves in the same way. We are the leaders. We are the ones offering encouragement, rest, and loving guidance. It can be a hard mental shift to take ourselves out of the role of giver and put ourselves into the role of receiver. But my friends, we need the same things we so often offer others. Our Heavenly Father abundantly provides everything we need for life and ministry but with a singular purpose in mind.

The third verse of Psalm 23 tells us that every care we have falls under the provision of the Lord so that He might glorify Himself in our lives. Did you get that? True, we do kingdom work here on Earth, yet sometimes it can become unclear whose kingdom we are actually building. But Scripture is clear that each act of lovingkindness granted on our behalf is accomplished for the glory of our Leader and for His name’s sake. We belong to His flock, and He is our Shepherd even as we shepherd others. Our priority must never be to love our church body for our own sake but to bring glory to His Name. Let’s reintroduce the words of this very familiar verse with these thoughts in mind.

He restores my soul.

Our Lord, the Shepherd, restores us. The word restore can have a dual meaning, referring to the return of one who has strayed in sin and also the reality of renewal and sustenance. When those in our congregation stray, we follow the example of our faithful Shepherd who sought after us and rescued us just as the shepherd in the parable of the lost sheep left the ninety-nine to search for the one (Matthew 18:12). The Lord seeks His people for His glory, each one precious in His sight. As church leaders and brothers and sisters in Christ, we should pursue and bring back others into the safety of the fold. Galatians 6:1 admonishes us, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”

However, it is not always an issue of one who has strayed, but perhaps of a life that is strained. Ministry can be stressful, and in those seasons, we need renewal. Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” The Lord speaks to us and restores us by the work of His Word. What good is a green pasture of provision when our anxious minds have blinded us to it? We must continually keep our eyes alert to the corrective balm of Scripture as it drives us to personal repentance, removing the calluses of this world. This produces soft hearts, sensitive to the leadership of the Lord, so that we can in turn, be effective leaders for others. He offers the restoration we need to persevere in our spiritual journey.

The truth is that sometimes, even as spiritual leaders of whatever flocks the Lord has given us, we lose our footing and may become discouraged. The temptation to focus on the strains of ministry gets the best of us. The cruelty of this world crushes us. At times, we simply feel knocked over by the storms in the valley. We need to be restored by our Shepherd.

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