Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

by Dallas Willard

One of our greatest needs today is for people to really see and really believe the things they already profess to see and believe. Knowing about things—knowing what they are, being able to identify them and say them—does not mean we actually believe them. When we truly believe what we profess, we are set to act as if it were true. Acting as if things are true means, in turn, that we live as if they were so.

God is an immaterial, intelligent, and free personal being, of perfect goodness, wisdom and power, who made the universe and continues to sustain it, as well as to govern and direct it in his providence.

The eternal, independent, and self-existent Being: The Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence: He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely benevolent, beneficent, true and holy: The cause of all being, the upholder of all things; infinitely happy, because infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he has made; illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only by himself, because an infinite mind can only be comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived; and, from his infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, right, and kind.

once you begin to have an impression of who God truly is, everything else fades into insignificance. When the bountiful sufficiency of God in himself and the glorious realm of his kingdom are continually brought before the mind, it puts everything else in its proper place and opens us to a life in which we find God more than capable of supplying everything we need.

God’s glory is where his riches are found.

your primary contact with God is through your mind, and what you do with your mind is the most important choice you have to make.

Everything that exists outside of God exists because of God.

God is an ineffable reality so much greater than anything we ordinarily see around us or come to deal with in human life; he simply has no comparison. We are blessed to live in a world where there is a fully self-sufficient, generous God who wants to provide what is best for us and loves us more than we could ever imagine.

One of the hardest things for us to do—and this is true even for Christians—is to keep this preciousness and wonder in our minds as we approach every human being we deal with.

And the surest way to realize the full potential of your God-designed self is to live in eternity while you are in time, conscious of the loving gaze of your all-sufficient Shepherd, in whose care nothing of the good you do is lost. It is stored up in your own self and in the lives of others you have touched.

Having seen God, he let go of desperation.

When we look at what Christ did for us on the cross and keep that at the center of our vision, there are not many things that will bother us, or even matter at all. When we realize that Christ went willingly to the cross on our behalf, trusting in the greatness of his Father, it casts a transformative light on our own sufferings. That’s what Job saw. Job beheld the greatness of God.

Seek the Lord and wait for him to show up. Set time aside to devote yourself to prayer and other spiritual disciplines that will strengthen your faith and prepare you to receive from him. Listen for God when you pray. Watch for him and wait on him throughout the day. If the Lord does not show up when and how you think he should, you must not be upset with him or with yourself. Just keep seeking. When we begin to seek the Lord, some things must change—some outside of us and some inside of us—before we can bear the vision of God. These changes can take time, and God, in his mercy, gives them time.

We must take time with this in prayer and meditate on passages about God’s love for us. Set aside days to spend alone with God to seek his face and to imagine that face shining with joy as it looks at you. As the ancient Jewish benediction puts it: The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you [look right at you] And give you peace. (NUM. 6:24–26) It is the experience of having God look you right in the eye and saying, “I love you! I approve of you!” that is the unshakable ground of our self-worth. Our ultimate approval is from God, not from other human beings.

love is something that has three essential characteristics: 1. Love arises in people whose lives are already marked by certain qualities of the whole self, chief of which are faith in our all-sufficient God and joyful embracing of death to self. 2. Love involves an orientation of the whole self toward what is good and right. 3. Love has amazing, supernatural power for good as it indwells the individual.

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

Love, then, is a condition of the will, embodied in the fundamental dimensions of the human personality, guiding them for the purpose of serving the good. In the deepest sense, love is not something you choose to do; it is what you become—a loving person.

When love pervades your will, all these other dimensions—your mind (with its thoughts, images and feelings, desires and emotions), your body, your social relationships, indeed your whole soul**—work in harmony with and in service to the kingdom of God, and your life becomes a testimony to the God who meets your every need.6

Only Jesus enables his followers to live a life of selfless, joyful, anxiety-free, loving service on behalf of others. Having said that, the sad truth is that our churches today do not preach this as the message of the gospel. They have not offered this matchless life to people. They have not asked, “Would you actually like to live like this? Would you like to be possessed by this kind of love?” You can be. God will give it to you, and when he does, these things that Jesus and Paul say about love will be realized in your life, not because you did it, but because you welcomed love in and let it take possession of you.

Loving them means caring for them, and it starts with your decision to love them. You will not drift into love; you must decide to love. And then ask God to help you, because you will only be able to love as God assists you in the realities of that concrete relationship. Ask God to show you something in this person that is good and for which you can be thankful. Let the Lord show you a good thing about them, and then love them by being thankful for them.

We are not serving people to prove something about ourselves. If you find yourself in that position, just lay it down before God.*

One of the greatest things in the world is to love people. It is so much better than hatred or indifference. We were created for love. This is the source of the attractive power of the great prayer called “The Sower” or “The Peace Prayer,” often attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi.* Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Oh, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console. To be understood as to understand. To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

If there is any hope for people, it is that they can be redeemed through love.

It also helps to remember this: to forgive is to love is to be set free . . . and to know deep joy.

Faith. Death to self. Agape love. I have described these as the three points of the triangle of sufficiency at the heart of the life without lack. They are not in a static, but a dynamic relationship to each other. There is a divine synergism between them, as each one nourishes the other. Faith feeds death to self, death to self feeds love, love feeds faith, and on it gloriously goes.

The life without lack flows out of our relationship with him. Our challenge is to stay with him in the increasing belief that God truly desires to be with us. God wants to be with me. He wants to be with you.

Joy brings with it confidence. It is, in fact, mainly a matter of confidence. It is not some kind of superecstatic state. Joy is a pervasive sense of well-being that claims your entire body and soul, both the physical and the nonphysical side of the human self. 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.

Yoked to Jesus, allow him to carry most of the load as you go about your day in his uplifting presence. This is a great relief. As you work better and accomplish good things, your mind will be clearer; you will be working with strength and peace in your heart.

A day shared with Jesus is a day of continuous conversation.

Make rest a priority in your life and in the lives of those you love. Plan for it! 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 should schedule your day in keeping with your occupation and your family responsibilities. What is important is to understand that you must plan those times to turn your mind to God.

the most important thing about you is your mind, and the most important thing about your mind is what it is fixed upon. So the object is to have your mind always fixed on the Lord.

Honing Holy Habits In these brief intervals of praise and prayer and in the longer planned sessions, you will be establishing habits of turning your mind to God. This is the practice that establishes the habits. Thus, when you plan them, you must do them by the clock. Do not wait until you feel especially spiritual. Set specific times during the day, and then keep to your schedule. You can trust God to take care of them if you do them by the clock. Trust him to help you deal with the little voice that whispers, “No, you don’t want to do this now” or “You don’t really have time for this.”

As you practice living your days in the sufficiency of the Good Shepherd, you will make tremendous progress in experiencing the Psalm 23 life that Christ came to provide. You will see remarkable growth, and all the good things Jesus desires to give us—a rich life of joy and power, abundant in supernatural results, with a constant, clear vision of your never-ending life in God’s world and an abiding sense of your work day by day—will become the common, yet extraordinary, realities in your life.

may you know increasingly, by joyful experience, a life abundant in rest, provision, and blessing—a life without lack.