Catching My Breath
Part 3… Psalms 23:3, “He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. The Message translation reads like this, “True to Your word, You let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. We talked last week about why God leads us to rest. This next verse continues to tell us the “why”.
Life has a funny, or not so funny, way of getting our attention. We seem to go at the speed of light UNTIL something breaks down, usually it’s us. I find it interesting that time is broken up into segments, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 4 weeks in a month and 365 days in a year. Why? Because we are living in a fragile dirt body in time, not in eternity, that requires segments of rest.
I mentioned rest is restorative. It is in so many ways physically, but it is also restorative spiritually. Our tank holds only so much and then it needs refilling, have you noticed that? We tend to leak.
Ephesians 5:18 says, “...be filled with the Spirit. ”Various Greek scholars and bible commentators point out that the Greek present imperative tense is used in this verse. It has the connotation of a continuous replenishment, an ongoing and repeated filling. It has been suggested by some that an awkward but accurate translation would be something like: “...go on being filled.”
Because our preverbal bucket has a hold in it, God tells us to keep being filled. Life can drain us, literally!! While we are sitting beside still waters He is refilling us, and restoring our souls. Our soul consists of our mind, will and emotions. Our Spirit man doesn’t need a refill, but our carnal soul demands it.
Our mind gets overloaded with thoughts presented by our enemy that we have to continually cast out. It can be exhausting! Our will can become weak by constant temptation and harassment by the same enemy, and our emotions, well, they be crazy!! When we don’t stop and let His spirit restore us, we are in trouble for sure!!
As we are sitting in that green pasture, beside still waters, not only is the Holy Spirit restoring our souls, but also we are being instructed on our next steps, what to do or where to go. We are getting the direction we need. Not stopping by that pasture is like turning off your GPS while you are traveling, baby you gonna get lost!!
I’ve been lost and it is no bueno!! We’ve lived in five different states and I’ve had to rely on that little GPS heavily! I literally don’t know where anything is until I get acquainted with my new surroundings.
I have to take the time to put in the address where I want to go and trust it will get me there. God needs us to stop, rest and let Him program our spirits with our new direction knowing He can get us there.
Why are we humans so stinkin stubborn? Dang. We have to complicate everything and have our noses in God’s way trying to help Him help us. That’s so crazy if you just think about it! God does not need me for anything, for the love. He’s God and knows me better than anyone. He knows the plans He has for me (Jeremiah 29:11) they are good plans with a good future attached.
Our job is to stop, rest, listen for directions and then go. It’s really pretty simple, lets agree to stop the madness of self-care and allow Him to be for us what He is, a Father who can take perfect care of us.