The Lord Is My Shepherd

I am not a Christian because I pursue God. I am a Christian because God pursued me.

I have tried to think of a clever way to tell this story, but there’s not one. It’s a simple story. I used to think it was my story, but I have since learned it is not. It is God’s story. 

It’s the story of how the Good Shepherd came and found me.

…

I thought I was looking for Jesus, but I wasn’t. 

Ever since I was a kid I always struggled with anxiety. As I grew older the struggle only got worse. On top of that, I was in an endless pursuit of something to make me happy. And it was just that: a pursuit. I was running, striving for something to fill me up. I felt constantly drained, constantly unfulfilled, and constantly let down. 

There was so much fear. Fear was the heaviest thing in my life. I feared being rejected. I feared being a failure. I feared being unloved. I lived in fear.

I had heard about Jesus Christ and I had heard of His love. But I didn’t know Him.

Not really.

At one point in my life my anxiety got unusually bad. My mom and dad, trying to be good parents, invited a pastor over to our house. He and I sat on our porch and he asked me about my life and what I believed and all the stuff you would expect a pastor to ask. He seemed like a nice guy and all, but nothing he said was really helping me. Then he asked me to read Psalm 23. So I did.

The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters…

I had heard this before. It didn’t feel like anything special. But the next verse caught my interest:

Even when I walk through 

the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me,

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

“Steven,” the man asked, “Do you know what a shepherd uses a rod for?”

“Nope,” I said, curious as to what he was going to say.

“A shepherd would use a rod to beat the crap out of anything that tried to hurt the sheep, whether a wolf, lion, or bear. That’s what God wants to do to your anxiety. He wants to protect and comfort you.”

What?

The thought that God actually wanted to protect me—to give me relief from the anxiety that was eating away at my life—came as a surprise to me. I had heard about how Jesus walked on water and healed blind men. I heard about the power of God and how he split the Red Sea to save the Israelites. But to think He could actually provide me peace? That He could actually deal with the fear in my life? That He could actually and practically help me? That is not how I thought about God. Not at all.

I had heard God loves me. We have all heard that.

But it wasn’t until that day that I actually started to believe He cared about me.

…

Pretty soon, my need for a shepherd became apparent. My anxiety was not getting any better, and my attempts to deal with it were only making it worse. I could feel the pressure in the front of my head every day. I was “harassed and helpless, like (a) sheep without a shepherd.”¹ But the Lord had compassion on me.

I remember breaking down on a dock one morning in Florida. It was a day I would later describe as the day I “came to the end of myself.”

I sat on that dock in tears. It was pitiful. Humiliating. But I was broken. 

I turned to Jesus on that dock because I had nowhere else to go. Not because I had some incredible faith or because I made some “big decision” to follow Jesus. I had legitimately come to the end of my rope. Jesus had found me in a state of complete nakedness; I could no longer hide. I could not hide from myself the reality that I was a sheep without a shepherd, and that all my attempts to find my way to green pastures and still waters were utter failures. The fruit of my life was a broken boy on a dock, crying like a baby. You can outrun many things, but not your own heart.

“If you, Lord, can use broken things, then use me. I am yours.” I prayed this prayer out of desperation, but thank God that He is not picky. He saw me there, and His face towards me was not one of anger, bitterness, or disappointment. His face towards me was compassion.

Things didn’t get better that day, at least not externally. But the Lord had heard my prayer, and He answered it. I came to know the Lord that summer and have been following Him ever since. As the Lord said to Moses concerning the Exodus, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people… I have heard them crying out… I am concerned about their suffering… I have come down to rescue them…”²

…

That was six years ago. Since then, I have learned with a deeper understanding that the shepherd in Psalm 23 is Jesus Christ. He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The God revealed in Jesus Christ is not a God who sits up in heaven waiting for the right opportunity to smite the sinners and the lost. He is not a God whose desire is to punish. 

The God revealed in Jesus Christ is the God who pursues us.

He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to find the one that wandered off. He is the compassionate father who runs breakneck toward his long-lost son reeking of a pig sty. He is the middle-eastern carpenter who chose to be killed on a cross for the very people that nailed Him to it. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is—as John puts it—love. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”³

This is who God is. He is the God who loves us. 

In his gospel account, John calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. John knew he was someone Jesus loved because He knew Jesus personally. He knew what it was like to be His sheep, to hear His voice, to be found by Him, and to follow Him. He knew his shepherd, and his shepherd knew him.

I, too, am someone Jesus loves. Not because I found Him, but because He found me. There are still many valleys of death to walk through, and they will be hard. Anxiety has not gone away completely. Some days are still very, very hard.

But the difference now is that He is with me. 

Green pastures and still waters are my future.

His rod and His staff, they comfort me.

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Ref.

¹ Matthew 9:36

² Exodus 3:7-8

³ 1 John 4:9