Key Verses: Psalm 23:1-2 

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.”

For the next several devotions we will be working our way through the 23rd Psalm. Psalm 23 is the most famous Psalm in all of the Bible. However like most famous Bible verses, we rarely take the time to actually work through the text and truly learn what it means. In the first verse we are reminded that God is our shepherd, and we are his sheep. The shepherd took care of the sheep in several different ways. It was his job to lead the sheep, provide for the sheep, protect the sheep, and rescue those who had lost their way. In Psalm 23 we learn how God does all of these things for the believer. 

Today we are going to see how God as our shepherd provides for us. In verse one David writes that because God is our shepherd we don't lack anything. We have all that we need. This does not mean that there will not be times when the bank account seems empty, or we wonder how we will be able to put our children through school. Jesus spoke about the same concept in His sermon on the mount. If we will seek God’s kingdom first our needs will be met. Our job is not to panic and worry when things seem stressful. Instead our job is to trust our shepherd. We are to trust that He will meet our needs. That is the first thing a shepherd does. He provides. In this psalm we see that he leads the sheep to sleep in luscious green pastures and beside clear streams of clean water. If we seek God and follow Him above all else, we can always be sure that He will meet our needs! He’s the good Shepherd!