Psalm 23

Last Sunday Mike Bickle gave a teaching on Psalm 23 which is the famous 'The Lord is my Shepherd' Psalm. It impacted me quite a bit and I decided to make Psalm 23 the Psalm of the week for the 'Nine to Noon' Initiative at the HoPE prayer room. I also wrote a post about it for the Prayer Journal blog.

During the past week of praying through the passage each day, I found the Lord showed me a number of significant things. Particularly in verse 5:

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Now I don't have any real 'enemies'. Certainly there are people that don't like me very much, but not anybody who wishes me harm. As I wrestled through what this verse meant in my own life I began to think about my focus in life. Very often I am more aware of the 'negative' things that are going on in life; again this isn't really an 'enemy', but sometimes it is activity related to the enemy of my soul, the devil and the kingdom of darkness. 

I realized that God is always setting a table of provision in front of me, in every circumstance and situation. Every day a new table is set before me by the Lord, but many times I am so focused or aware of the 'negative' challenges or 'enemies' that I fail to see what God has put before me. 

Another thing that God directed me towards was how the Lord desires and causes my 'cup to overflow'. I was immediately struck with the fact that many time I think more in terms of what is missing than about what is present. It's the phrase 'cup half full or half empty' concept. Often people have a natural disposition towards seeing life as either 'half full' (positive) or 'half empty' (negative). 

Mike's message focused on some other things and it's so good that I wanted to grab the video and include it here in the Fragrant Incense website. It's a full message, but if you're interested in watching it you can watch it here.

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