The Lord is MY shepherd...

Another New Year's post. :)

The material for this blog comes from a service at Fellowship Bible Church on New Year's Day. You know how church is always good, but sometimes the message really strikes a chord with you? That's what happened today.

I know that there is a wonderful God and I know that through prayer and study I'm building a relationship with Him. There have most definitely been moments where God has clearly shown Himself to me and I've felt the connection. There have been countless times that He has proven to me His faithfulness. And, yet, I still had this idea that God was this huge God up in the sky that came to save the whole world. I think of the song from Sunday school, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world..."

He did come for the world, but He also came just for me. And He came just for you, too. As Sam talks about in this sermon, the first five words of Psalm 23 are powerful and insightful: "The Lord is my shepherd..."  These words seem so gentle and so welcoming to me. God is a wonderful shepherd calling in His little sheep that need guidance to survive. I really focused on the word "my."  I realized that God wants to have a very personal relationship with every one of His followers. Jeremiah 29:12 says, "Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." God's word is full of promises and He promises to listen to us. My heart matters to Him. And that blows my mind.

The end of that same children's song goes, "They are precious in His sight, oh Jesus loves the children of the world." We are precious in His sight. I am precious. You are precious. Your daughter is precious. Your next door neighbor is precious. Your co-worker is precious. You get the idea....

 I encourage you to go listen to the podcast of this sermon because it's just wonderful.
Link to Fellowship Sunday morning audio