To Bring Him Joy

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His names sake. Even though 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. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my 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 forever. Psalm 23  esv This may be the most well known Psalm of all time. I would think that most people have heard it at a funeral or in relation to someone facing the threat of death. It is understandable that Psalm 23 would be used in this way given the line mentioning “the shadow of death” but it is not what this song is all about. This is a bragging psalm! David is in essence saying, Hey e...

“ James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” James 1:1a HCSB I 've been reading the book of James in the Bible almost daily for several days now. It is so cool to take a book of the Bible and do this. It helps you to see so many things that you probably didn't notice before. I try to read the whole book at one sitting, after all, it was written like a letter. I know that we don't write or receive letters much any more, especially not long ones but I think if you were to receive one you would sit down and read the whole thing. I have done this with some other books of the Bible as our teaching pastor suggested it last year ; plus , some reading plans that I had seen also suggested it. Anyway, this year as those posts about reading the Bible through came up, I thought I needed to pick this up again and felt led to James. I was about to do this one day when God stopped me very short on this first half of the first verse. I was quite surprised beca...