He Lets Me Lie Down

Heather: Hi, I’m Heather from Missouri, and I’m a Revive Our Hearts Monthly Partner. One reason I support this ministry is because I know that the seed I’m planting is being used by the Lord in my life personally and to multiply His kingdom all around the world! Enjoy today’s episode of Revive Our Hearts, brought to you by the Monthly Partner Team.

Dannah Gresh: Hey, Justin, can you pull up some quiet, slow music? (easy jazz) Uh, no, that’s kind of cheesy. Do we have anything peaceful and calm? You’ll see why in a minute. (quiet gentle piano) Ah, nice! I think that will go well with this reminder from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Hurry is not conducive to godliness, to relationships, to a healthy marriage, to spiritual growth. Godliness and intimacy are not cultivated on the run. They require time, lingering, meditation, focused attention.

Dannah: This is the Revive Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for March 6, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

This month we’re focusing on the topic of living and dying. You know, the lifestyles we choose, the choices we make—either to clutter up our lives or make room for relationships—those decisions will either be life-taking, life-draining, or they’ll be life-giving and life-sustaining.

In this series, Nancy helps us adore our Good Shepherd, who renews and restores our life. Nancy gave this message to the Revive Our Hearts Ambassadors. They had gathered in a retreat setting for a time of training and spiritual refreshment.

Now, it was still during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I’m sure you can picture a room with chairs spaced out and people wearing masks. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Let me ask you to open your Bible, or scroll in your Bible, and if you have a CSB with you, you may want to follow along in that . . . but whatever translation. We’re going to look at a really familiar passage, and just a little part of that familiar passage.

Think about this past year or so—all the stress and strain and changes and restrictions. Somebody was telling me tonight that in Mexico City they have a traffic light system. If it’s red you can’t come out. They just moved it to yellow a couple of weeks ago.

You would think we’d all be just really refreshed from all this time at home, but people are tired! There’s been a weariness, not just a physical weariness. Robert and I loved the fact that we haven’t had to travel in the last year!

But there’s a weariness of soul, there’s a weariness of mind, there’s mental and emotional weariness that has come for many reasons. One reason is all the screaming and yelling in social media and people so polarized over so many topics. That’s exhausting.

But also, figuring out how to do ministry in new ways than what we’re accustomed to. That’s tiring. There may be things going on in your life—maybe cancer or a new child or a new grandchild or a new set of circumstances or new stress in your marriage, new stress in your church.

I read recently that fifty percent of pastors are seriously considering getting out of the ministry. Part of it is because they’re tired. They’re tired of people being mad at them; no matter what they say, they're going to take it from one side or the other.

We hear some of this at Revive Our Hearts. If we do address a subject, people are mad; if we don't address a subject, people are mad. It’s exhausting! It’s wearying. So, I want to speak to weary hearts tonight—yours and mine.

Now, you’ve been here, retreating here for the last few days, so you were probably really weary when you got here. But now your cup has been filled, you have had time to pray, relax. You’ve been in this beautiful setting. You’ve been kayaking across the lake . . . and you’re feeling pretty refreshed and replenished.

But tomorrow you go back home and things haven’t probably changed very much at home. When I say “home,” I don’t necessarily literally mean your home, it could be that. But it could be your home church or your community or your set of friends.

There may have been things going on while you’ve been here that you haven’t caught up on yet, and you’re about to find yourself in a whirlwind. So, if you don’t need this passage tonight, you will need it. 

You’re going to need it throughout your Christian life; I need it throughout my life. That’s perhaps why it’s one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture. It’s Psalm 23. We’re going to look just at a few phrases from this passage.

Again, I’m reading from the Christian Standard Bible. The language is a little different than what we memorized growing up, and I think that helps to make some of these lines fresh to us. So, here’s how it reads. (I’m going to read just the first two-and-a-half verses.)

Psalm 23:1, “The LORD is my shepherd; I have what I need.” Okay, let me just stop there: “I have what I need.” We’re used to, “I shall not want.” There’s nothing wrong with that translation, but this one says I have what I need.

That is, what I have is all that I need, and what I have is a Shepherd! So therefore, I will be content with what I have! “I have what I need.” Just say that phrase with me. Do you believe that?

Now, it’s easy to believe it on Day Three of a getaway retreat. “Oh, yes, I have what I need! We have people singing to us, people cooking meals for us, people cleaning up after us. They’re going to clean up the mess. I have what I need!” (laughter)

But you get home and you’re the cook and the maid and the whatever else! Can you say it then? “The Lord is my Shepherd; I have what I need. Therefore I will be content with what God has given me with what I have. I have what I need.” Well, that’s a precious verse; that’s not the one we’re going to focus on tonight.

Look at verse 2: “He . . .” “He” speaking of the Lord, my Shepherd. “He lets me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters.” And then, verse 3: “He renews my life. . .”

So here, the Shepherd takes His sheep—metaphorical for what our Shepherd does for us. He takes them to green pastures and still or quiet waters. Why? Because they need rest. They need refreshment. They need restoration. They need renewal. 

You see, before sheep can be productive—before they can provide wool and meat—they have to be healthy. They have to be mature. They have to be well-developed. But we tend to put productivity first.

A number of years ago, a medical doctor named Richard Swenson wrote a book called The Overload Syndrome. I was reviewing some of this last night and I thought, This book is even more timely today than it was when he wrote it six or seven years ago.

He uses phrases in that book like: “chronic activity overload. . .” Do you know what he’s talking about? Of course you do! “Unprecedented stress epidemic,” he called it. He said, “Most of America is in a hyper-stress environment.”

You think, that was true back in 2014?! That is so much more true today! The Overload Syndrome. So here’s how we kind of read that passage, or how we live that passage:

“The Lord is my Shepherd, He gives me lots of work to do! He gives me a family to care for. He gives me others’ needs to be met. He gives me a class to teach. He gives me work to do at my church or in the ministry. He uses me to win other people to Jesus. He makes me a good wife, a good mom, He helps me get my work done!”

Come up for breath! “The Lord is my Shepherd, I produce!” But this passage says, no, not first! First, “He lets me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet or still waters.”

Let me tell you, I put this passage into practice, literally, today. The CSB is the only translation I’ve seen that says, instead of, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures,” it says, “He lets me lie down in green pastures.” To lie down is just like to stretch out.

We had a recording session this morning. I was really tired this afternoon. (I’ve had a couple of really late nights.) I was thinking, The Lord lets me lie down. So, I took a nap . . . a long one, a good one. Thank you, Lord, for letting me lie down! Now, it can be a literal nap, but there are other green pastures the Lord leads us to.

Why does He let us lie down in green pastures? Why does He lead us beside quiet or still waters? To get food, to get drink, to get nourishment, to get refreshment, to get rest, and to get restoration! Many of you have had children; you may have nursed little ones. A nursing momma has to be well-nourished herself before she can impart nourishment to her baby.

Some of us are spiritually malnourished, or we go through seasons where we’re spiritually malnourished. And yet we’re trying to be productive, trying to meet everyone else’s needs, but because we’re not well-nourished ourselves, we end up burning out, falling apart.

I heard it on Grounded this past week from some of the women on that program. As they were talking about rest and sabbath, they were saying, “I’m going on four hours of sleep at night. I’m burnt out!” This is people who work with this ministry! And this is something we need to help each other recalibrate.

Ministry is work; it is hard work! There are times when you will be exhausted and depleted. The Lord Jesus knew what it was to be tired. But we need to make sure we’re getting back to places where we can get our souls nourished, replenished, and restored.

The problem is, people are impressed by busyness; they’re impressed by hurry. Sometimes we’re impressed by ourselves when we’re uber busy—how many activities we are involved in, how much we get done.

In fact, Swenson in his book The Overload Syndrome, has a chapter called “Hurry and Fatigue.” And here’s just a paragraph from that chapter. He says:

Even our sentences are peppered with words such as “time crunch,” “fast food,” “rush hour,” “frequent flyer,” “expressway,” “overnight delivery,” and “rapid transit.” [You get exhausted just listening to those things!]

The products and services we use further attest to our hurry. We send packages by Federal Express, use a long distance company called Sprint, manage our personal finances on Quicken, schedule our appointments on a Day Runner, diet with SlimFast, and swim in trunks made by Speedo! (laughter)

We are plagued by this hurry sickness. We live in a nanosecond culture, wheezing and worn out. Americans are, if anything, exhausted! We are a nation of the hard-wired and dog-tired!

Now, for some of us, it sounds maybe a little bit lazy or a little bit unproductive to talk about “lying down in green pastures, hanging out by still waters.” Like, there’s work to do, right? There are things to be done! But I want to remind us that hurry is the enemy of spiritual intimacy. As you read through the gospels, one of the things that impresses me about Jesus is that He never seemed to be in a hurry!

 

It’s not that He wasn’t doing a lot, but we never read about Him running! We do read about Him walking (Matt. 14:25; John 1:36), we read about Him sitting at the well to teach (John 4:6). We read about Him reclining at meals (as in Matt. 9:10), even sleeping in the boat (Luke 8:22–24) . . . but we don’t read about Him running.

He was purposeful. He was tired at times—that’s why He was asleep in the boat, that’s why He was sitting at the well at lunchtime—He was tired from the journey. There’s no sin in being tired, but we don’t see a hurried Jesus.

Hurry is not conducive to godliness, to relationships, to a healthy marriage, to spiritual growth. Godliness and intimacy are not cultivated on the run. They require time, lingering, meditation, focused attention.

Remember that old-time hymn (I was thinking about it as I was going through these notes last night)?

Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.

Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.

(“Take Time to Be Holy” by William Longstaff)

Now, sheep don’t know when they need to rest, and that’s why the Good Shepherd leads them to green pastures and to still waters, and—as some translations say—“makes them” to lie down. “It’s time to rest!” He shows them when they need to. 

Jesus’ disciples . . . Mark 3:14 tells us Jesus chose twelve first. Why? What were they supposed to do? He didn’t send them out first. Scripture says that they might, “be with him,” and then that He might “send them out” to minister to others.

That’s why I’m so glad, Angela and Monica, that you started this week with the time with Alice in prayer waiting on the Lord, seeking the Lord. Did you find it was just good to stop, be still? It can be hard when your pulse is just constantly racing!

Our phones have not helped this, because there is so much we do now on our phones, so . . .

[at this very moment Nancy’s phone signals an incoming call; women burst out laughing!] That wasn’t even in my notes!

You see, before we can be fruitful and pour into others’ lives, we have to feed on Christ and drink of Him! After we have poured into others’ lives we have to come back to Him to get replenished. And, again, we see this example in the gospels.

Mark chapter 6, verse 30:

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.

Jesus had sent them out on a missionary journey. They came back, and He didn’t give them the next assignment. He said to them:

“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while." [How long? Until Jesus tells you it’s time to go on. A while.] For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. (vv. 31–32)

There’s a pattern in that for us. 

Some of my greatest spiritual battles have come at what I call “the battle after the battle.” They come after times of being poured out in a recording session, or writing a book, or doing an event and public ministry. That’s why I need to come back and get replenished, get to green pastures, get to still waters.

That means saying “no” to some things some people don’t understand why you can’t do it. “Why can't you sign this book? Why can’t you endorse this? Why can’t you come and speak at that?” And you get these requests, because the more effective you are at ministry, the more God is using you in ministry, the more people want you to do stuff!

But what they don’t realize is that, if you don’t take time to get your soul replenished, you’re not going to be effective for anyone! It’s in these quiet times, these quiet places, that we get replenished to be able to go back out and face needy crowds.

Palestine, where Jesus walked and taught, is a barren desert land. It’s not easy to find green pastures and still waters, but good shepherds knew how to find those. They went scouting. They found the green pastures, they found the still waters and then led the sheep to those places.

You may have five kids, you may have little ones, you may have teenagers, you may have many different demands and responsibilities. It may be hard to find times of rest, still waters, waters of rest. Ask your Good Shepherd to lead you there. Ask Him to find those places for you, to show you how to find those places.

“He lets me lie down in green pastures.” That means, to lie down you have to be still. You have to stop moving! I live a pretty quiet and still life. Robert and I both work out of our home, and so I’m sitting at my laptop for many long hours every day.

You could say I’m being still; I’m being quiet. But I can have my mind racing a hundred miles a minute all day long, just from sitting at my laptop! If you were looking at me, you’d think, Well, she’s not racing!

But there are texts coming, there are emails coming, there are jobs coming, there are things to be edited, there are things to be decided, there are things to connect with people on. So you can be sitting still physically, but not have your mind and your heart be still.

We need to stop, be still, linger, wait in the presence of the Lord—not hurry. That’s one of the things I have loved about journaling through the Bible over the last few years. It’s been a way for me to linger in God’s Word.

I’m writing, kind of teasing out the meaning of every paragraph in some books. What is this saying? What does it mean? What is it saying to me, to us? I’m really lingering over it, and it has been so sweet, so filling! It’s been my green pasture and my still water!

Most of us today, the pace of just average people in our culture is that we’re always on the run. We’re eating on the run, we're eating on the fly, we’re grabbing a meal. We’re living our lives, so to speak, racing through fast food drive throughs. But again, that’s the enemy of spiritual intimacy.

Richard Swenson says in his book, “Even the best crew can’t fix a race car when it is going two-hundred miles per hour. Neither can our bodies perform needed repairs in the midst of a hyper-living lifestyle.”

Our spirits need this, our souls need this, our minds need this, our emotions need this, and our bodies need the change of pace! Now, for you the change of pace—or for me, the change of pace in terms of our bodies—may be that we need to get our bodies moving! That may be something that replenishes and renews.

But if you’re somebody who’s on the move all the time, it may be just staying home. And I think, actually, this pandemic for some of us has been in some ways a real gift because we didn’t have to race around, we didn’t have to run around.

Now I know, for some who ended up schooling their kids at home and in ways that weren’t planned, and living on Zoom meetings, it’s been a stressor. For us it was actually kind of a gift, because we didn’t have to be moving so fast and so hard. We could be getting replenished, but we could still be serving and blessing others.

In each season we need to figure out, how do we do that? What does that look like for us? You can’t get the needed rest and the refreshing on the run, in an occasional few minutes snatched here and there. Like: open my Bible, read a psalm for the day, read a Proverb of the day, and I’m dashing off.

We’ve all had seasons like that. I have. But you can’t sustain your walk with God, you can’t sustain fruitful ministry, you can’t sustain healthy relationships in your family or in your church or your workplace if you’re doing that kind of hurried relationship with God. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 64:10).

We need down time. Not just once, you know, “I get a sabbatical every fifteen years.” Or not occasionally or after you’ve cratered, but regularly, before you crater! We need these habits, these rhythms in our lives. So, don’t wait until you’re falling apart—body, soul, and spirit—to get to these green pastures and these still waters.

We need to be preventative in finding these green pastures. “He leads me. He makes me lie down.” This is not a one-time thing; this is a way of life. It doesn’t mean that’s all we do, but it means there’s a regular, recurring rhythm and pattern in our lives of getting replenished.

There are different ways to do that in different seasons. God gave His people in the Old Testament the gift of the Sabbath, one day a week. Six days work, one day don’t work. And God said, “I will provide enough for you in the six days that you won’t have to work on the seventh day.”

“But,” He said, “if you insist on working all those days, you’re going to find that you don't have enough.” God will make enough for us if we take those times. But those Old Testament believers . . . I think there’s still a New Testament principle here. The New Testament application is that Christ is our Sabbath rest.

So we don’t have to be Old Testament law about this, but there’s something very healthy and beautiful about that gift of the Sabbath that God gave. This is not something you have to do. this is something you get to do!

Dannah: Wow, isn’t that an encouraging perspective? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been helping us see that our Good Shepherd has our best interest in mind when He lets us lie down in green pastures, just like it says in Psalm 23. Nancy will conclude her message tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

You know, she just mentioned that Jesus is our ultimate Sabbath rest. Have you ever considered that Jesus, our Good Shepherd, is also “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)? 

If the Good Shepherd hadn’t become a sheep and sacrificed Himself to save us, we wouldn’t even be able to rightly call Him our Shepherd! That truth is at the heart of the gospel, and it’s one every believer has to come to grips with.

I want to let you know about a compelling book by Pastor Colin Smith. It’s written from the point of view of the thief on the cross. The title of the book is Heaven, How I Got Here. You probably know, when Jesus was crucified, His cross was between two thieves—thieves who were being executed for crimes they had committed.

Jesus told one of them, “Today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). So pastor and author Colin Smith used sanctified imagination to flesh out the details of that man’s life in his book Heaven, How I Got Here. The subtitle of the book is The Story of the Thief on the Cross. 

This week it’s our gift to you in appreciation for your donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. To give, just head over to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959, and ask about the book about the thief on the cross when you do.

Do you ever feel like you’re drooping? Maybe you need some reviving! Nancy will be back tomorrow to talk about how our Great Shepherd renews our lives. I think it will be a refreshing reminder! Join us right here tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to let the Good Shepherd lead you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Him.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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