Acquiring Freedom From Anxiety: A Psalm 23 Devotional

By Travis Newbold

"And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?"

Luke 12:25 (ESV)

Anxiety is something we all deal with to some degree, so shouldn't we learn how to fight it? Here is some of what we will learn to better fight it:

• We already have all that we need.
• We need more rest than we realize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Dec 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685560034

Book preview

Day 1

The Lord Is My Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 23:1 (ESV)

Are you an anxious person? Even if you wouldn’t call yourself an anxious person, I am sure that you still deal with different things in your life that cause anxiety. Everyone has to deal with those things because life is full of them. Now the question is how do you handle those anxieties? For a long time, I would try to deal with them on my own and suppress the feeling. I would simply take matters into my own hands and try to do everything in my power to fix them. What if there was a better way? What if there was someone who can help you deal with them and always be there for you when you feel them?

If you have read the verse, I am sure you know where I am going with this. This is exactly why David calls the Lord his shepherd and this is why we can and should call Him our shepherd! However, have you ever stopped to ask yourself what it means when it says the Lord is my shepherd? I am sure you probably have some idea of what this means but have you really sat down and thought about it? The original Hebrew word for shepherd is rāʿâ, which means, to pasture and to tend to but it also implies this idea of guarding, caring and ruling.¹ So now what do you think about it?

I am sure that we are all comfortable with a literal shepherd ruling over his sheep. I mean he has to otherwise the sheep won’t be able to fend for themselves. If their shepherd is not there to guide them, they will not last for long. Most likely they would thirst or starve to death without having someone to guide them to their sustenance or get attacked and killed by predators. It makes complete sense for a shepherd to rule over His sheep. So why do we resist our Shepherd’s rule over us? Especially when there is the hope for someone to help us just deal with the problems and anxieties of life?

Whether we want to admit it or not, there are several things in our lives that rule over us. Some of the more common ones are things like money, fame, status, possessions, anxiety, etc. I am sure that you have seen someone else’s life being completely ruled by something or someone. So why is it so hard for us to realize that we too are being ruled by