Episode 1629: Journeying in Grace

===

Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,629 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

DeAnna Sanders: Hi, I'm Deanna Sanders and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to meet people where they are and give them hope is key.

And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer,

Scott Maderer: and your example will do enough without us actively hating and. Calling people out and acting out in anger, all of which truly are of darkness, [00:01:00] not light. We should love, not hate.

Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire

to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling.

In the inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Psalm 23 and Ephesians chapter five, verses eight through 14. I talk about how Psalm 23 is a great summary of all the Psalms, and I also talk about how Ephesians chapter five is a great mission statement, but only if you put it into action. [00:02:00] Psalm 23 says, the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right past for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest Valley, I fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of mine.

Enemies, you anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life Long. Ephesians chapter five, verses eight through 14 says, for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord, your light walk is children of light.

For the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. Rather expose them for it is [00:03:00] shameful even to mention what such people do secretly. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible.

For everything becomes visible is light. Therefore it says sleep or awake, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Psalm 23 is only a short six verses, and yet those six verses are probably ones familiar to you. You've probably heard them. In different settings at different times. In fact, I welcome you to comment or send me a a note if about when and where you've heard that psalm and what emotions and ideas bring.

It brings up for you. Carl Bar called the 23rd Psalm, the summation of the entire Salter. All of those psalms are encompassed in these short six verses. And that might be a bit of an [00:04:00] exaggeration since obviously there are lots of other emotions and ideas that are contained in the Psalms, but as context for living a life of faith, it's hard to do better than these six simple verses.

Again, I'm sure you've heard these words before and they conjure up certain memories and emotions, and I invite you to share those with me and with the community as well. But there's a couple of things that I find interesting as I look at it. The first three verses, or in third person, they're descriptive.

The Lord is he does this. Then in verse four, it's shifts to second person. You are with me, you prepare, you anoint it. It's as if the psalmist is set out to tell us about the Lord and all the things that having a relationship with the Lord affords him. But halfway through [00:05:00] it breaks into praise and song.

He gets caught up in the moment, and that's the relational dimension come to the forefront. He has to begin to converse directly with the one who is the source of this protection and substance. It's hard reflects the psalmist to talk about God without talking with God and to God. It's difficult to describe God without beginning to praise God, and Psalm 23 seems to be less about the benefit and more about the relationship.

Certainly there's a catalog of what this relationship brings, and that's not to be diminished, but it's also a call to engage, to connect with God, to see what God has in store for us. It's a very personal accounting. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes [00:06:00] me, he leads me. He restores me. But on the other hand, Psalms were often used and designed for corporate worship and maybe the I and the ME is the whole community of the body of Christ.

Maybe the, I isn't just one person, but the relationship and the community that shares in this blessing and belonging as well. The verbs in the first five voices are all present tense. The Lord is he makes me. He leads me. It's a present day connection, a sustaining relationship. In verse one, though, you might notice that there's a shall there, and the literal translation is the Lord shepherds me and does not bring me to lack.

But that's kind of hard to read in English, so they shift [00:07:00] it with the shall. Maybe we should say the Lord is my shepherd and I do not lack anything present tense. It really should be in the present tense. It's the last final verse that gets to future tense. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord and my whole life long.

That kind of brings us back to where we started the Hebrew for the final phrase of the Psalm reads the length of days. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for the length of days. And I don't know about you, but I have some days that seem to drag on forever and others seem to pass in an instance. And Psalm 23 is reminding us that no matter what the experience of daily living is, no matter if you're struggling or rejoicing, laboring, or relaxing, suffering, or growing, you are never alone.

God is with us. [00:08:00] And the reading pairs us with this very familiar Psalm, with a really obscure epistle passage from Ephesians. But if you look at it, Ephesians is also a call to live an awareness of God's presence. But Paul takes a different approach than was taken by David in the Salter. For Paul, it's about making choices in how we move forward.

Faith is about seeking the things that represent the God who is present and avoiding the things that deny that presence. And he uses the metaphor of dark and light. Paul loves those dualities, light, dark spirit, flesh, heaven, world. All of these things are li listed and explained in Paul's perspective, but they're metaphors.

Paul is not trying to say that there's nothing good in darkness and that there's nothing good in the flesh and that there's nothing [00:09:00] good in the world. In fact, I think taking it that literally would be something that Paul would be aghast at. But he does want us to know that there is good and not good all around us, and he wants us to make an active choice, to choose good, to choose God, to discern what is pleasing to God, and to determine what is of God in the world.

God created the world and called it good. However, not everything is good, so we have to choose. And the fruit of that choice. The fruit of that light is that never ending process of determining what is of God and what is not. What is pleasing to God and what is not. What will bring us peace and what will not, what will make us love as Jesus told us to love and what will not.

We are invited to harvest the fruit of the light [00:10:00] by living and choosing and being God pleasers every single day, every single second we are to choose one over the other, light over darkness. And then in voice 11 it kind of shifts a little bit. It the end, tried to find out what is pleasing to the Lord in verse 10.

Seems like the ending. But verse 11 says, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not enough. It's not enough to just figure it out. You then have to do it. You have to put it into action to follow and to begin to actively expose and move away. Not to point fingers, not to call people out, but rather to put into action choosing.

And bringing light. See, it's enough to bring light to chase away darkness. You don't have to beat the [00:11:00] darkness up. You don't have to call the darkness out. You just have to have a different approach. You just have to live in light and your example will do enough without us actively hating and calling people out and acting out in anger.

All of which truly are of darkness, not light. We should love, not hate. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to [00:12:00] facebook.com/inspired.

Stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures.

Develop your influence and impact the world.