Psalm 23: Want

This may be the most difficult psalm for me to write about simply because there is so much I’d like to say. The promise I most often speak to my heart and the hearts of others is that “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. Almost every prayer I pray includes the request that God lead me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. God’s presence in the valley of the shadow of death is truth I continually find comfort in and the fact that my head is anointed, and my cup will run over regularly remind me to take deep breaths and rest in Who I belong to even when I feel that I’m not where I want to be. But in all this truth, in all these promises, encouragements and reminders there is one declaration that challenges me the most, “I shall not want”.

David began the Psalm by saying, “The LORD is my Shepherd . . .” Who better to show the Shepherd heart of God than a shepherd himself? David speaks of God in a way that is intimate and personal. As David cared for his father’s sheep, God showed David how He was shepherding him, how He shepherded Israel, how He desires to shepherd us all. David’s first remark, His first description of the Shepherd God, the one that I believe all the others build from is the hardest of all to trust and believe, to believe in and live from, “I shall not want”.

The question is, what does it mean to want? The language here does not mean that I will have everything I desire, it means that I will be provided with everything I need. The Hebrew word David uses here has nothing to do with desire, it means “to lack, be without, decrease”. It’s the same word that Moses used in Deuteronomy 2:7 to describe God’s care for Israel during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. For 40 years Israel wandered because of disobedience, they didn’t trust God to fulfill His promise, to protect them from their enemies, to accomplish His will in their lives and so they decided to go back to Egypt. We sometimes look at Israel’s decision with judgment but all they honestly did was react to their fear and anxiety rather than trusting in God’s goodness. They heard reports of strong armies, fortified cities, even giants and they measured all those things against their own insecurity and rather than believing that God would not send them into lack, they decided to return to what they had grown comfortable with in the past. They reset their cycles.

How often do we do the same thing? How often do we start strong, get weary, get distracted or get lazy, start to wane and go right back to the thing we claimed we wanted to move away from? We have a terrible habit of wanting to be productive without having to be patient, of thinking we can be fruitful without having to be faithful. We want from God rather than trusting in God. What we can learn from Israel’s wandering is not only the high cost of disobedience, but the faithfulness of God’s care for His people. Israel wandered for 40 years because they didn’t trust God and yet, during those 40 years Moses said they always had food, they never ran out of clothes, and the sandals on their feet never wore out. The goodness of the Shepherd is that He never stops caring for His sheep, even when they stop trusting His care or following His lead.

This is all about trusting God’s heart, knowing God’s character and believing in God’s love. It’s not enough to trust that God will provide, we must learn to believe that God has provided. I often pray something I heard years ago, I regret that I don’t remember where I heard it or who said it, “Thank You Lord for providing for all of our needs, teach us to believe that whatever You have not provided, it is only because we have not needed it.” I believe that’s the heart of what David was writing, not just a promise of provision, but a declaration of trust. Israel’s disobedience was caused by unbelief, by a lack of trust, by an unwillingness to speak to their fear and lead their hearts. In fact, if we look closely at David’s words, he’s speaking more about himself than he was of God. “The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” What if David was saying, “Because the LORD is my Shepherd, I believe I will never lack, I choose to trust Him, to stay with Him, to put my hope in Him”? Trust is not how we get what we want, it’s what’s required to stay where we belong until it becomes what it’s been promised to be. God’s timing is always about our character and so the path He leads us in is not the shortest, the easiest or the safest, but it’s always the most productive. There is a difference between wanting and lacking, my prayer is that we will trust the Shepherd enough to stay with Him through the want until we discover that we’ve never lacked, to choose faithfulness until He leads us into fruitfulness, to never trade patience for what looks to us like productive. The cycle of want is broken by confidence that the Shepherd will never cause us to lack.