{"id":410,"date":"2015-02-23T16:13:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T16:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/?p=410"},"modified":"2015-03-03T18:40:42","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T18:40:42","slug":"the-lord-is-my-shepherd-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/the-lord-is-my-shepherd-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lord is my Shepherd (5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.<\/em>
\n He makes me lie down in green pastures”<\/em><\/p>\n

The Good Shepherd puts you in a really good place.\u00a0 He lays you down in green pastures.\u00a0 That is nice.\u00a0 The picture David paints for\u00a0us is one of comfort and rest.\u00a0 But, please notice that it\u00a0is not just about laying down.\u00a0 He lays us down in “green pastures”.<\/p>\n

Question.\u00a0 Have you ever laid down to rest but you couldn’t relax?\u00a0 You were tired but restless.\u00a0 There was so much on your mind that you could not settle down.\u00a0 Things you had to do.\u00a0 Worries about this or that.\u00a0 The Good Shepherd lays us down in “green pastures” where our needs can be met.\u00a0 David’s phrase is not about God providing us rest but,\u00a0about God providing our needs so that we can<\/strong> rest.\u00a0 Our Shepherd puts us in green pastures to rest.<\/p>\n

Jesus, the Good Shepherd was always doing the same with the sheep around Him.\u00a0 So, often the people around Jesus were stressed and worried about the things of this life and Jesus would lead them into a “green pasture” and invite them to rest.\u00a0 The words from our Sabbath devotion come to mind again.\u00a0 Jesus said, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”.\u00a0 When Jesus saw the crowds in Mark 6 He had compassion on them because they were like “sheep without a shepherd” (vs. 34).\u00a0 Then Jesus directed the crowd to “sit down in groups on the green grass” (vs. 39) and He proceeded to feed the crowd (provide their need).\u00a0 He is the Good Shepherd.<\/p>\n

The trust that we have in Him as the Good Shepherd allows us to be able to rest.\u00a0 So, what does this have to do with the cross?\u00a0 It is the cross that brings us into green pastures again.\u00a0 We were lost and wandering with no place to lie down.\u00a0 And, even when we did lay down we did not rest.\u00a0 Too many things to worry about.\u00a0 But through the work of the cross Jesus puts us back into “green pastures” and we can have peace.<\/p>\n

Today, thank the Lord for putting you into green pastures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures” The Good Shepherd puts you in a really good place.\u00a0 He lays you down in green pastures.\u00a0 That is nice.\u00a0 The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lenten_blog_2015","category-all_posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}