Psalm 23 - misunderstood but well-known (ii)
Lesson Two
He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul
We come to Jesus in whatever condition we are in. We might have lived an exemplary life or one full of suffering. We might feel we’ve been in control or out of control. But we somehow have realised we not only need but that God is offering us a heart transplant (see Lesson One).
And we find, maybe to our astonishment, that God is less interested in us living a religious life of prayer, bible meditation, and good works than we expected. Lesson One is to hear Him whisper to us ‘Lie Down’.
The purpose of lying down, apart from stopping any attempt to live the Christian life from our own resources, is to restore our souls. How wonderful. But what does it mean? What do we mean by ‘soul’? It seems a little nebulous. Something we think, or feel, we understand but not sure how.
In lesson one, we have seen that God has put a new heart in us. That means that He has given us a new spirit AND put His Holy Spirit in there as well. In New Testament terms we have become ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’ or ‘living stones’ or we are ‘hidden with Christ in God’ and so on. A summary statement that Paul often used is that we are now ‘in Christ’ and Christ is ‘in us’. Whichever picture we use we see our starting point in the Christian life is a Spirit/spirit operation, we have been brought into an intimate relationship with God in our hearts, it really is not about attempting to achieve some kind of religious holiness by observing some external regulations; it’s inside out.
God, then, via His Spirit touches our new spirit. Whatever is going on there then has to flow out through our souls and bodies to affect the wider world as well as ourselves en route.
Clearly, our souls are not our bodies, it is to do with the inner man. And our souls are differentiated in Scripture from our spirit. In Hebrews 4 we read that ‘the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division between soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart’
Our spirit is where, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit, we commune with God and, more importantly, He communes with us. This is so against the general way of thinking in the Western World which places so much emphasis on ‘reason’ that Lesson One is so hard for us to fully grasp.
Our souls are our unique personality that differentiates us from others. It is made up of our minds, our emotions, and our wills. These are very precious and sensitive parts of our being and, by the time we come to Christ (and thereafter) are under God’s care and love. There is a wonderful verse in Romans that states of the Holy Spirit, that He ‘sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts’. It is the impact of that love on our souls that brings about any restoration that is needed.
Is it a quick fix? The more we learn to stop, and listen to the voice of God, and the more we allow God’s love to penetrate our souls, maybe the faster restoration can be. I don’t know how it works. I don’t know the timetable God has or even if He is worried about our sense of progress, but I do contend that the restoration of our souls is of great and sweet concern to the Lord. It is really simple. He loves us.
The Bible is very clear that His mercies are new every morning.
Treating Ps 23 in an ‘eternal’ fashion perhaps we can see that this restoration process can now come to the fore whenever it is needed. It is not restricted to when we first put our trust in Christ who said, ‘I am the good shepherd’.
Peter had left everything to follow Christ and yet he denied Christ three times. When the resurrected Jesus appeared to Peter on the beach He asked Peter three times ‘Do you love Me?’ That conversation not only restored Peter but propelled Him into the future. That’s the effect of having our souls restored; we’re alive again and can live once more in the world.