Living with Confidence in God

I am working on an exposition of Psalm 23 for this coming Sunday. And it has been rough going, for several reasons.

First of all, I am in a citywide revival meeting this week in San Antonio. It's a five-day meeting. And there are day and evening services. And I have been preaching on a rotating system, morning and evening. I miss my family. I have been trying to keep up with MSMBC stuff. And I have been fighting off cold symptoms all week, as the weather here keeps changing. The bottom-line is that it has been a long week. Even though it has been a great week of worship and fellowship, I am exhausted. This, I'm sure, has had some impact on my preparation this week.

Likewise, I preached through Psalm 23 about nine or so years ago. It was a line-by-line series, containing sixteen messages. And, strange as it may sound, this has made it hard for me to prepare this single message on the entire psalm. I did a completely new study of the psalm, so it would be fresh in my heart and mind, and so that I would get a better feel for the psalm as a single unit of thought. But before I left Los Angeles, I packed about ten of the sermon manuscripts from the previous series to review. I am not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. We'll see.

Regardless, I am determined to press through in my preparations to be ready to preach Psalm 23 this coming Sunday. I really wanted to preach something this week to both challenge and comfort our congregation. And I was drawn to this passage in my devotional time. And I really think it is appropriate for where we are as a congregation. I trust it will be helpful to those in our congregation who are going through some difficulties right now. And, to be candid, I really think I need the message of this psalm - that you can live with confidence in the Lord's faithful oversight of your life. In fact, that's my working title for the message at this point; "Living with Confidence in God."

Pray for me.