Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

by Dallas Willard

We grow in our knowledge of God in the same way. We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

God put us here to make a difference. Jesus confirmed this with these words, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). That one verse encapsulates why there are people—to shine, doing good works and glorifying God—and it is an active process as we live out our lives in the world before God in such a way that people see the goodness of our lives and acknowledge God as the source of that goodness.

is to be religious where he is irreligious now; to let the spiritual force which is in him play upon new activities. How shall he open, for instance, his business life to this deep power? By casting out of his business all that is essentially wicked in it, by insisting to himself on its ideal, of charity or usefulness, on the loftiest conception of every relationship into which it brings him with his fellow man, and by making it not a matter of his own whim or choice, but a duty to be done faithfully because God has called him to it. . . . God chose for him his work, and meant for him to find his spiritual education there.2

Satan was fully aware that only Jesus could break his grip on the human world, devoted as it is to power and deceit, and only Jesus could deliver human beings from the mire of sin and evil in which they floundered. He knew Jesus to be the only truly radical person to enter human history, for he would refuse to use evil to defeat evil. He would set alight a new order that does not employ the devices evil persons use to try to secure themselves and get their way.

Jesus’ basic idea about this world—with all its evil, pushed to the limit in what he went through going toward and nailed upon the cross—is that this world is a perfectly good and safe place for anyone to be, no matter the circumstances, if they have placed their lives in the hands of Jesus and his Father. In such a world we never have to do what we know to be wrong, and we never need be afraid. Jesus practiced what he preached, even as he was tortured and killed. And multitudes of his followers have chosen to do the same.

For example, most Americans think that they ought to be able to do what they want to do whenever they want to do it. This understanding of freedom is often identified with the American way of life. That is as crude and straightforward a statement of Satan as you will ever find. If there is anything you ought not to do, it is to do what you want to do whenever you want to do it.

I have been around theological schools a great deal, and in my observation, the number one concern of all theological schools is looking good and being respectable. It is no less true of our secular institutions. The pursuit of knowledge in universities has now come to the place that if you talk seriously about truth and righteousness with faculty members of leading universities, you will be laughed at. If they do not laugh, they will smile condescendingly at your quaint moral naiveté.

I have known quite a number of pastors who believed that divorce was something you could never really get over. But then their children experienced it, and they were liberated from that belief. This is not hypocrisy. It is the transformation of their faith. They went through a painful process and came to understand how the blessing of God goes well beyond failure, disappointment, and tragedy.

There is a family of words in the New Testament that are variously translated as belief, faith, and hope, and what they all have in common is the notion of reliance, confidence, and trust. It is trust that puts you in contact with God so you can draw upon his unlimited and inexhaustible resources. Unfortunately, many folks have their faith lined up in such a way that they do not need to rely on God. They do not need to trust God. They have a proper faith in terms of what they need to believe to go to heaven when they die, but they hope that God is never going to put them in a position of needing to actually trust him before they go there.

Keep in mind that God did not say that Job was wrong in what he said, but that he did not understand what he was saying. We are often like this—correct in what we say, without understanding its meaning or significance.

The truth of God’s grace is that we never merit the good that is done to us. Grace is opposed to earning, but it is not opposed to effort, because effort is action and earning is attitude.

Real love is when a person is prepared to lay down their life for their friends” (John 15:12–13 PAR). That is the ultimate self-denial, to be sure. But those who walk in the kingdom of God, and know his sufficiency, are ready to give and forgive without limitation.

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. —THOMAS MERTON

Because, after all, God is love—and that is not an explanation of who God is; that’s an explanation of what love is. He wants to give himself to you so you can more joyfully and freely give yourself and his love to others.*

We can seek a gift and we can receive a gift, but we do not perform for a gift.

I do not come to my enemies and then try to love them; I come to them as a loving person. The good tree bearing good fruit.

The Science of Love. Oord precisely defines love as “acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being.”

These are essential characteristics of agape love as Paul and the New Testament present it. Notice here that love is not action; it is a source of action. Love is a condition out of which actions of a certain type emerge. It is a condition that explains how the three marks of love could be true and must be true.

Once again, the goal is not to be people who do loving things but to become the kind of people who naturally, joyfully, and easily love.

The law is not the source of righteousness, but it is always the way of the righteous. It guides people into actions that conform to what is good and right. Love seeks the same result but from the innermost place from which our actions come (John 7:38; Luke 6:45).

In the deepest sense, love is not something you choose to do; it is what you become—a loving person.

But if we do not choose to become as loving as Jesus, we will never know a life without lack. For such a life is realized through love filling our lives. Faith is only completed in love, because our faith is in a God of love—no other. The more this faith grows in us, the more we will experience the carefree joy of Christ’s love.

The person who has the most power over your life is the person you have not forgiven. That person holds a part of you in bondage. To forgive is to regain your self.

Many regard Jesus as necessary, but not desirable; necessary for salvation, but not desirable as a friend and teacher.

God already knows your answer, and the level of your desire for Jesus to be with you has no bearing on how much he loves you.

Fact 1: It is okay to be who you are wherever you are. We must begin with the fact that God accepts us as we are wherever we are, so that we can then accept ourselves. It is important for each of us to honestly be who we are, no matter what has happened to us, what we’ve done, or any of our other inner qualities. It’s okay to be who we are.

We can become someone we are not, but we must begin with who we are now.

Joy comes naturally when we are confident (con-fide, literally acting “with faith”) about who we are and what we are doing. To be with Jesus is to have both.

You are not meant to live in a constant state of fatigue. Tiredness is a spiritual problem, not because it is a sin, but because being tired creates difficulties for your spiritual life, robbing you of the energy needed to pursue God. You may not be getting enough restful and refreshing sleep.

God in love accepts us as we are, because he cannot accept us the way we aren’t.

Humility and death are in their very nature one: humility is the bud; in death the fruit is ripened to perfection.

Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you.

The death to self has no surer deathmark than a humility which makes itself of no reputation, which empties out itself, and takes the form of a servant.

The death of Jesus, once and forever, is our death to self. And the ascension of Jesus, His entering once and for ever into the Holiest, has given us the Holy Spirit to communicate to us in power, and make our very own, the power of the death-life.

The whole self-consciousness of the Christian is to be imbued and characterized by the spirit that animated the death of Christ.

Believer, claim in faith the death and the life of Jesus as yours. Enter in His grave into the rest from self and its work—the rest of God.