Psalm 23:1-3 | The Shepherd

Guest preacher, Jesse Cheney, begins a new series on Psalm 23. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Y'all, Zach makes me seem way more important than I am actually am. And so Zach said, man, thank you for having me here. It is truly a gift to get to be here. Um, as Zach said, I'm from this area. So I actually grew up in a little town called Corinth Lake Dallas, just south of here. But this was, you know, I'm gonna date myself here 20 plus years ago. And so the only place to go was Denton. So I was a little Denton square rat. Uh I was the kid that hung out on the square in high school before the square was cool. This was before all the cool businesses came in, and this was back when Andy's Bar was still Andy's Bar, and you had to like show proof of tetanus shot to go in there. Um, this was back when Crooked Crust existed and Fry Street was cool, rest in peace to Crooked Crust. Um and so this was my home. And for a long time, I did not grow up in a Christian home in any way, shape, or form. Uh and I became a Christian when I was 17, almost 18 years old, right before going to college. And then all of my friends who were Christians came up here to UNT, 9'4 throats, you know, Go Eagles, you know? And for some reason, even though I probably could have gone to UNT mostly for free, uh, I was just like, no, I need to go to a Christian school and get a liberal arts education and get a humanities degree. And so I went to school in Fort Worth, but I lived here in Denton while going to school in Fort Worth. And so I spent my college years up here on the weekends pursuing Jesus with my close friends and uh went to the village Denton, which is a church I still love with all of my heart. Way back when it was still a campus of the village in Flower Mound, was a member there when they voted to become an autonomous church, and then the year they became autonomous, I interned at the Village Flower Mound. So I didn't get to see really the fruits of that vote. It was kind of a wild, uh, wild, wild time there. And so this place has my heart, and I cannot begin to describe to you how excited I am to stand here on a stage and to look out at a full room of people in a church, another church in my hometown, what I call my hometown, that genuinely loves Jesus and is all about the gospel. And you may not realize this because maybe this Sunday morning is like normal for you because you've been attending since it launched, or maybe you're new. This is not normal. Like this many young people and the embarrassment of riches that exists on the staff here at King's Church is just not normal. And so I pray, genuinely pray, that you come into Sunday mornings expectant for the Lord to move because this isn't normal. And I hope that this church doubles and triples and sends out many, many churches. And Zach in his kindness has invited us to come here because, as he mentioned, we're all part of the SALT network, which has a heart, to see churches planted in collegiate settings on campuses that are just underreached. How many of you are college students, real quick, or just graduated? Raise your hand for me really fast. Okay. Like raise it high. I want to see, I want to see. Even if you're old, it's fine. Okay, that's great. So this is important. College campuses are just forgotten most of the time, right? College kids don't pay the bills, is the narrative. And so churches just don't put time, money, energy, or effort toward college students, and they're happy to just let on-campus ministries, which we love, do the majority of the gospel work in collegiate settings. In Salt Network aims to change that. And so I do want to introduce really quick this is my family. Uh if we can get up there, I don't know if we can. They're the really cute little blonde babies that are in the picture. There they are. So the one up front is my son Callahan, they're all very close in age. Uh, the one in my arms is Merritt, and then the one in my wife's arms is Perry, and then that's my wife, Kelly. And so they're very close in age. Uh, our oldest is five and a half, our youngest is two and a half, and there's one in the middle there, so we're tired. So pray for us. And we decided life wasn't crazy enough. Let's plant a church. And so we will be heading up to Norman uh probably this spring, and we will officially launch in the fall of 27, and I will make no bones about it. We need your help, okay? We need your prayer. We believe firmly that God answers prayers. We need your gifts, we need support. I have to raise the entirety of my salary, and I'm scared because I got little babies to feed. And then on top of that, I'm selfishly asking that some of you might come to Norman. When you graduate college, when you're looking for your first big boy, big girl job. Maybe some of you are tired of the DFW and want some cheap land. Please come up to Norman. We would love to have you. I am so serious. Please come talk to me after this. Okay, that's enough intro. I want to get into Psalm 23. So hopefully, you've been able to open up to Psalm 23 this morning. Zach wasn't sure about my teaching abilities or my ability to command a stage, and so he gave me a softball, and for that I am grateful. Psalm 23, verses 1 through 3, I get the joy of kicking off, arguably, the most famous poem of all time. And that's not an exaggeration. Uh, Psalm 23 is the psalm that has brought the deepest consolation to the people of God literally for thousands of years. Psalm 23 is actually one of the most quoted verses and scriptures in all of like media in the modern world, right? You watch Grey's Anatomy, you watch any show about the ER, you watch any show where somebody sadly has passed away, fictionally, thankfully. Psalm 23 gets quoted at the graveside. Psalm 23 gets quoted at the bedside. Psalm 23 is what's quoted in the hardest parts of life. And I think that there's good reason for that. So before we get into it, one thing I love about the Psalms is as you go through the book of Psalms, one thing that you'll see repeated, especially in the Psalms of Lament, you have these Psalms that start off and it just sounds like complaint. Right? It sounds like the psalmist is actually just throwing up grievances to God, like, where are you? Where have you been? Why would you let me suffer like this? And yet those psalms often will end with something to a like of, yet I will praise you. And yet, you are God on high. Like, I think the great examples of these are Psalm 13. It opens up with, How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? Do you know you're allowed to talk to God like that? Some of you might be afraid to talk to God like that. I was always afraid to talk to God like that. I was like, the shoe's gonna drop if I, you know, are any accusatory. And yet that psalm ends with, I've trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. Then you have Psalm 22. It's actually the Psalm that Jesus quotes when he's on the cross. And the psalm opens up, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then it ends in declarations of praise about who God is. There's this pattern of complaint and then trust, anguish and then adoration. And we see this over and over. And so I don't want to focus on that, but I want to focus on like how can we actually do this? How can the psalmist, how can David specifically feel free to express his anguish, express the difficulty of life that he's going through, even sound somewhat accusatory toward God, but always fall back onto trust. How does he do that? I think that the opening lines of Psalm 23, verses 1 through 3 are what give us that answer. And I want to give that to you up front so you can hold on to it all the way through. I think if we're honest, most of us are pretty anxious and restless people a lot of the time. Right? And we're functioning, whether we would say it out loud or not, like we are the ones who are solely responsible for the outcome of our life. That's how we operate, isn't it? And David's answer to that isn't time management. It isn't better protocols. Okay, sorry if you're a Huberman fan, I love Huberman, a lot of helpful things, but it isn't better protocols. Better protocols are not going to completely do away with the anxiety and the stress that you feel when life is difficult. There's got to be more than that, and I think David hints at that. See, David's answer in Psalm 23 for the anxiety of life and the circumstances that we all find ourselves in at one point or another in this broken, broken world that's not a mystery to any of us, is God's character. I want you to listen to Psalm 23, verse 1 through 3, specifically. David says, The Lord is my shepherd. I have what I need. He lets me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he renews my life. He leads me along the right paths for his name's sake. I love that David calls God a shepherd here. I love it. Now, if you've been in church for any amount of time, like if you've grown up in church, or maybe you're just, you know, longtime listener, first-time visitor, uh, you have probably heard a sermon where a guy who's never been a shepherd nor owned sheep and never been a sheep comes up and spits a bunch of sheep facts and shepherd facts at you, okay? And don't worry, rest assured, I will do that in a minute, but I'm gonna appeal to an outside source. But that is just not what David is doing here when he calls God his shepherd.

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SPEAKER_00 8:46

Like David is not romanticizing some metaphor. David didn't hop on Claude or ChatGPT and be like, give me a comforting poem from the perspective of a shepherd. It's not what David's doing here. David is drawing on real life experience. What I love about David calling God a shepherd is that David actually lived this life. If you go back and you look at the history of David and how David became the king, what we actually see is when Samuel goes to David's house to anoint him as the new king, that his father didn't even bring him to be considered for the new king. He left him in the fields with the sheep. That's what David was actually doing when they came to anoint him as the new king of Israel. And then when he gets anointed as a new king and he starts hanging out with Saul, who is the current king, and then Goliath comes talking a bunch of smack to the Israelites, and David's like, why isn't anybody answering this fool? And he says, I'll do it. And Saul's like, you're just a little boy. And David goes, What does David refer to? He says, I used to keep sheep for my dad. What a little, like what a teenager response. Dude, you can't go against Goliath, you're not even a man yet. He's like, I used to keep sheep for my dad. Saul's like, I'm missing the connection here. But then David goes on to explain the connection. He says, I used to keep sheep for my dad, and when a lion or a bear would come and snatch away one from the flock, I would pursue it, and I would kill it with my own hands, and I would return the sheep to the flock. When David calls God a shepherd, he knows exactly what's involved in shepherding. You've got to think about what David was doing. David was son number eight. And this time there was zero inheritance coming to David, okay? It was the first son who got the lying share, and then it trickled down from there if you were lucky. David wasn't getting anything. So you gotta think, as David is protecting these sheep, he's protecting sheep that aren't even his own, that will not benefit him in the future at the cost of life and limb, potentially. And that is the comparison that God that David is making about God as our shepherd. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing that David's doing here. You see, David risked everything for animals that could never thank him, never repay him, and never fully understand what he had done. So when David says the Lord is my shepherd, that's what's underneath it. I have someone who knows me, who provides for me, who protects me, who guides me, who lays down his life for me even when I don't understand it. That's what David is calling God right there. Okay, so as promised, here come the sheep facts. Okay? There's a guy named Philip Keller, not my favorite Keller, but another Keller, a guy named Philip Keller, and he actually was a sheep farmer, and he wrote a book at one point called A Shepherd's Take on Psalm 23. And in that book, he actually writes that sheep are notoriously anxious animals. Right? And this makes sense. They are prey animals through and through. They do not have a predator bone in their body. Okay? And so these animals are just prey through and through. They know it, they're anxious. They literally will not lie down if they are afraid or if they're being harassed by pests. I found this one really funny. Uh, if there's tension in the flock, I'm like, do sheep have beef with each other? That's crazy. What tension is happening in the flock? What's going on? Or if they're hungry. According to Keller, a sheep left by itself will actually wear itself out pacing and grazing and never actually rest. Sheep don't really find green pastures and still waters on their own. They actually have to be led there. And so, because of that, Keller points that out, and all I think that does is strengthen the language that David uses at the beginning of Psalm 23, because the language that he uses is all about God doing the work of getting us to the green pastures and still waters. He says, God lets me lie down, God leads me, God renews my life. You see, David isn't describing something that he accomplished for himself, he's describing something done to him and for him by a shepherd who goes before him and finds the green pastures and the still waters. For me, as I'm going through this, I was just super convicted. As we're we're going to plant a church, as you can imagine, the to-do list every single week is a mile long. And then on top of that, I still have a full-time job and three tiny beautiful children who demand a lot of me. The to-do lists never end. All right? It's between calling pastors and literally wiping butts. And I think to myself, I fall into the trap of believing that if I can just climb the mountain that is my to-do list, then I can rest. Then I can actually get it done. But I actually mistake my to-do list and think of it as a mountain to be climbed and not as the treadmill that it is, right? If you have young kids at all, uh you know the feeling of finally getting your kids to bed at night, and you're like, oh yes, thank you, Jesus. And one hour later, you're looking at pictures of them on your phone and you're excited to do it again tomorrow. The two to-do list just resets. And I fall into this trap of thinking when I was a student, it was let me get through finals. And then in the summer, I was just stressed about internships and having to go home and navigate familial relationships and dynamics. It's like that's why some of you are still here this summer. You're like, this is better than going home. You know, when I was a young parent, it was just like, let me let my kids sleep through the night. And then the kids asking the question why one million times came next. And now it's little league. And the goalposts just move. Maybe you're past the Ks, maybe you're empty nesters, and you just think once we get the house paid off, once the cars are fully paid off, right? The goalposts just move. Your idea of rest, of green pastures, of still waters is always some future endeavor that's at the end of a to-do list or at the end of some form of accomplishment. And David is sort of speaking against that and saying that isn't what it is. We actually see later in Psalm 23 where he talks about being in the valley of the shadow of death. It isn't that these difficult things are gone or have disappeared, it's that God gives rest in the midst of them. We like to treat rest like a reward. I know that some of you are like, hey, okay, I hear you. The car still needs to get paid off, and it still would be really cool if the kid slept through the night. But we can only rest in the middle of everything that's going on if we have a quiet, sort of rooted belief that God is who he says he is, that he's in control, that he's our good shepherd who will lead and guide us. And if we don't believe that, rooted under that disbelief in who God is, is a false belief that we are somehow solely responsible for the future. That it all depends on us. There's actually an assumption that either we would do a better job than God leading and guiding our life, or an assumption that God actually isn't fully in control. So if we want real rest or even the ability to rest, we actually have to uproot that assumption in our heart and in our mind and do away with it and come back to this high view of God and who he is and trust him as a good shepherd. Some of you have been Christians a long time. Right? Some of you are like, I was born a Christian. It's not how that works, but you just have never known a day where you didn't love Jesus. And that is one of the most beautiful testimonies in the world. It's the testimony I'm praying for my children. And maybe for you, as you hear this, you think theologically, you're like, Yeah, of course, God is my shepherd. That makes sense. He provides rest, he takes care of us. And maybe you buy that in like a vague theological or ideological sense, but in the back of your mind and in your heart, you still spend the majority of your days anxious about your future, anxious about God's provision, anxious about the way that God will take care of you. We've forgotten God's character in the midst of it, haven't we? We've forgotten that he is who he says he is. You know, if I were to sit down with you, maybe I could listen to your life and I could go, hold, hold on there. Do you see God's faithfulness in that moment? Do you see God's faithfulness there? Do you see the way he pulled you out of that? Don't gloss past that. We could do that in a one-on-one conversation. I can't do that from here. I don't know most of you, right? But I can show you how God's character not only influences how he treats you in your life as your good shepherd, but even the way that God's character has informed his design of the world. Right? God didn't give us rest as like a vague suggestion. You actually see that he built it into creation itself. We see in the creation narrative in Genesis 1, literally the first chapter, folks, it says that God rested from his work. God himself rested. We see that Sabbath was a gift to creation before a single day of work on the human being side ever happened. I think God has even put rest into the rhythms of our bodies. Right? We have to sleep, don't we? Now, if I'm honest, there have been many times in my life where I wished I did not have to sleep. Right? There have been moments where, like, man, if I could just stay up through the night, I could really nail this project. If I could stay up through the night with no problem, it wouldn't bother me that this baby's not sleeping. Right? If I could just stay up through the night, I could have two jobs and all my money problems would go away. But in that desire to get away from rest, there's this quiet, subtle rebellion against the way that God has designed the world to be. And in that rebellion against the design of God's world, we are in fact rebelling against his character. We're saying that the things that you have done and implemented are not good, they're not helpful, I could think of a better way. And we may not say that, like we would never let those words leave our mouths because we're like, I don't want to get smoked, you know what I mean? I don't want to get smoked by an 18-wheeler on the way home or something crazy. Like, we don't want to say that, but that really is the attitude of our heart. We think to ourselves that we might know better. But God in his goodness, because of his character, because of who he is, has led out in his character into the design of the world and has given us rest, the ability to slow down and actually rest. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to add your to your to-do list here, okay? So I'm not saying, hey, everybody needs to leave here and go take a nap. Now, some of you may need to take a nap. Some of you didn't sleep last night, some of you were grumpy on the way here. I always like to look and see who's looking at the other, you know, spouse or partner or whatever. Some of you do need a nap, but I'm not like telling you that's not, I'm not, don't go home and take a nap and call it discipleship, okay? That's not what I'm saying here. What I'm trying to get underneath is that our inability to cast our anxieties upon the Lord is really revealing about who we believe God actually is. I think we actually see Jesus kind of rebuke his disciples a little bit here for their disbelief in who he was. In Mark chapter 4, you get the famous story of Jesus calming the storm. And what happens? Jesus and the disciples are in a boat, Jesus is snoozing on a cushion. I love that Mark includes that. He's like, he got comfy on the boat. He's snoozing on a cushion at the front of the boat, a storm hit. The Bible says that water is spilling into the boat. Like this is a serious storm, and the disciples are freaking out. And finally they come up to Jesus and they wake him up and they say, Wake up, the boat is sinking. Don't you care about us? They let the circumstances of their situation influence how much they thought Jesus cared about them. Sound familiar at all? I've been there. Sounds like the Psalms, right? Why have you forsaken me? How long will you forget me? You know, there's been me, like when my children would not sleep at night, and this is literally why I started going to therapy because I was mad at a six-month-old and I was like, I need help. There were so many times I'm throwing the psalms back at God at 3 a.m., going, your psalms say you give sleep to those you love. Don't you love me? It felt like the waters of my life were spilling in on the boat, and I was fighting for my life, and in the middle of the night, I'm going, Don't you love me? And the disciples wake Jesus up and he gets up and it says that he rebukes the wind and the waves. I love the idea of like this is super embellishing here, okay. I'm reading into it, but I love the idea of him still being a little groggy and this being really easy for him. He's like, Stop, stop, chill. And then he turns to the disciples, he's probably grumpy because they interrupted his nap. And he says, Do you not have any faith? It reads to me like he's saying, Do you not actually understand who I am yet? Do you believe that I would let the boat that I am on with the people that I love sink and capsize? He rebukes them because they did not believe in his character or his ability to. To keep them safe. Jesus trusted the one who guided his life enough to sleep in the midst of the storm. And he actually rebukes his disciples for not being able to do the same. And I actually think that Jesus falling asleep in the boat is a little bit of a preview for us. I think he's showing us in his body what it looks like to trust the Father completely. We actually have other psalms where David says, I lay down in the midst of my enemies. He's saying, I trust you to keep me alive. When people want my life, I will sleep like a baby because you are my God. I think some of us believe the idea when I talk about rest, and this was me for a long time, so I'm speaking from the heart here. We talk about rest. The idea of rest and slowing down is actually really stressful. It's actually anxiety-inducing, not anxiety, you know, helping. What's the word I'm looking for there? It doesn't help our anxiety to think about slowing down and resting. And why is that? Because we believe the lie that if I stop what I'm doing, everything falls apart. This group project won't get done. You know, the bills won't get paid. These babies won't be loved. That if I stop what I'm doing, everything falls apart. It doesn't feel restful. It actually feels like you're letting go of the steering wheel on the highway. Right? I'm speaking from experience. But it's until we step back and consciously practice letting go.

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I'm not talking about Jesus take the wheel here. I'm talking about letting go and trusting that the Lord knows all that you're in and going through and trusting Him to care about it and take care of it. Some of us believe the lie that we have to earn our green pastures and still waters. You literally will not sit down until your list is empty. Except the list is never empty, is it? Again, it's not a mountain, it's a treadmill. But I remind you that Sabbath and rest was built into the creative order before a day of work was ever assigned. And what I love about this psalm is I think it hinges on verse 3. I think it's the most important verse. David tells us in the very next line, he leads me along the right paths for his name's sake. Not for David's sake, not for your sake, not because David had earned it or gotten his life together. That's not when God starts leading him towards the right paths. God does it. God cares for his people, for his own reputation, for his own name's sake. Because of who he is. That's beautiful news, isn't it? Can we just take a deep, big collective sigh of breath? It's not dependent on you. God's love for you, God's provision for you, God's care for you is not dependent on the work that you do. Do you believe that? It's like easy, again, to theologically or ideologically affirm that, but do you live as if that's true? You know, when God revealed his glory to Moses on Mount Sinai, Moses says this the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That is not God's mood on a good day. This is literally the revealing of the name of God. That is core to his character. Slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Do you believe that that is the bedrock of who God is? Is that your conception of God? Or is your conception of God, the angry dad, the taskmaster? We have to ask these questions. I'm gonna give you a couple verses and then I'll close out here, and the band will come up in just a second, but I want to give you a few verses that talk about God's character. And if you're a note taker, you can write these down. If you're not, I can give them to you afterward. But when I'm telling you to rely on God's character, what do we say, Zach, when the train goes by? Is it say what? Church on the move. I love it. All right. We'll wait for you, train. We'll wait for it, at least for the horn. Give you a couple verses, because right now what I'm talking about is finding our rest, finding the green pastures, being led to still waters by trusting in the character of God. But so many of us don't actually know the character of God. And so I could seriously sit up here for 20 minutes listing verses that go through the character of God. I will not do that. I know everybody's eager to get to chilies or wherever you're trying to get. You know, triple dipper for life, skillet queso for life. But this is what, this is just one verse about what the Bible says about God's sovereignty. Psalm 46, verse 10 says, Be still and know that I am God. Stillness before God is not being naive. It flows from recognizing who's actually running the show. Our ability to be still and watch God work. Then we have verses about God's faithfulness. We have Lamentations chapter 3, verses 20 through 22 through 23. So some of my favorite verses. When I am struggling with sin, when I am in the depths of my soul, this is a verse I repeat to myself all the time. It says, His mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. God is close. His mercies are new every morning. He is faithful to love you and be true to his promises. We have verses about God's closeness. We have Isaiah 41, 10. It says, Fear not, for I am with you. I will strengthen you and I will help you. God is never far off. And then we have God's care for you. Two of my absolute favorite verses that I quote to myself, I preach to myself all the time, is 1 Peter 5, verse 7. Cast all your anxieties upon the Lord because he cares for you. There's an invitation to let go of your anxieties, and that invitation assumes that God's actually paying attention. And then you've got some of the most famous verses in the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, verses 26 through 34, where Jesus points to birds and flowers as evidence of God's attentive provision. He says, Anxiety does not add a single hour to your life. And then we have Jesus inviting people into rest. In Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30, he says, Come to me all who labor and are heavy burdened, I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. I love this verse because what it shows is that rest, green pastures, still waters, is relational. It isn't transactional. He says, Come to me, all who are heavy laden and have burdens. If you are heavy laden, you have burdens. The call is the same to you this morning. If you do not know what to do with your burdens, if you have walked around for an extended period of time feeling heavy laden, Jesus beckons you, come to me. Come to me. All these characteristics that we read about in God have been made physical in the person of Jesus. We see Jesus spending all of his time in the gospels with people whose lives were absolutely falling apart. And I love that we know this because we have the evidence of Scripture, but then we also have the evidence of Jesus' haters in Scripture who were saying all he does is hang out with drunkards and women of the night. Jesus spent all of his days with people whose lives were falling apart, who knew that they were desperate for a shepherd that could lead them to still waters in green pastures. Why do we think that we're any different? The call for you this morning is the same. When Jesus said, Come and I'll give you rest, it wasn't just a nice thing to say. Jesus purchased your rest for you. You realize that. Psalm 23 is David saying, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he's talking about the valley and the shadow of death. Jesus actually walked through death for you, on your behalf, that he might purchase eternal green pastures and eternal still waters for you. And the same Spirit of God that rose Jesus from the dead is the helper that's promised to us when we believe. That same power of resurrection that doesn't just lead you through the valley of the shadow of death, but leads you through death that you might have eternal peace is available to you today if you will heed Jesus' words when he says, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, all who have burdens. And before service we were praying, as any good church should do. And I just felt called to pray for a spirit of expectation for this morning. It's summertime. It's easy to ride off church. It's easy to think, oh yeah, we're finally back in town. Let's get there. But did we come in this morning expecting that God would do something in our lives? Like, did you expect that for yourself? Did you expect that for the person to the left or right? Did that inform the way you spent your time and the prayers you prayed before getting here? If you prayed. I bring that up to say it is not too late to round out this service in a spirit of expectation. Jesus' call in Matthew to come to me, the invitation that we have in Psalm 23 to rely on God's character for green pastures and still waters is still present this morning. Please don't leave here with low expectations. So as the band comes up, I'm gonna pray for us. I'm gonna pray that Psalm 23 would not just be a nice little poem that we recite when things are hard, but that Psalm 23 would actually inform who we think God is, and that our belief in God's character would change the way that we walk through life. That we would finally believe that still waters and green pastures are not at the end of the to-do list, that they are not around the corner, that the peace and comfort that God offers is available to us today through the Spirit of God, through giving our life to Christ and trusting in his character to save us and inform all of our days. Lord, we love you. Thank you for this time. God, I pray and I ask that in your kindness you would meet with us, whether it's in a time of prayer, it's in a time of worship, it's in a moment of communion. Whatever you see fit, God, we just want to make ourselves available to you. We want to get on our knees, God. We want to sing loudly. We want to pursue righteousness. Some of us need to cast our anxieties upon you for the very first time this morning. I don't know why people distrust you, God, but there are probably people in here this morning that still distrust you if they're honest. Through the word of a friend, through your word, through the Bible, through a song, whatever it takes, Father, would you reveal your character to them? Would you show that you are trustworthy? That you are a good shepherd who protects, who provides, who leads, who guides? Whatever distrust still remains in our hearts, would you weed it out? Would our trust in you and your character not be based on our circumstances changing? But our trust in you would be based on your promises and your character to make all wrongs right. You have promised us eternal peace, green pastures, and still waters. Lord, we love you. We pray all these things to you.