Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

by Dallas Willard

People will labor day and night to have their bodily parts modified, twisted and turned in the right directions—all to try to look good. It’s fine to look fine. The questions are: Why do we want to look good? What is our motivation? And what are we willing to do to accomplish it?

Likewise, there is nothing wrong with eating, but if you are living to eat, then your god is your belly.

That’s all right if it isn’t our egos trying to manipulate them for our own purposes. The whole strategy and system of Satan is at work to get us to do just that, which is why there is so much lying, deceit, manipulation, and domination in our world. And so much fear.

Satan uses not only our desires to deceive us but also our fears.

When you compare the three main sources of temptation—desires of the flesh, desires of our eyes, and the pride of life—with the things we fear, you will find that nearly all our fears are grounded in our desires.

Depending upon our circumstances, we are frightened that our needs for physical things will not be met. But truth be told, most of us would rather die of starvation than look bad.

if we are to experience a life without lack as we go out into the world every day, we must, by the grace of God, deal with these fears—or we will be in bondage to Satan.

We will be bound both in terms of fear and the temptation to meet our needs in a way that is not right before God, which reveals our lack of faith in him and lack of trust in his all-sufficient care and strength.

What a tragic commentary! How did things get so bad with what God once declared to be so “very good”? The short answer, which should no longer be surprising, is Satan.

When God looks at human wickedness, he is not looking exclusively at our actions, but at our minds and hearts, our thoughts and intentions.

God looks on the heart for two reasons: (1) our heart is the source of our actions and life,** but more important here, (2) our thoughts are where Satan plies his trade.

He governs through images, through ideas, through feelings and fears. From this complex arena of our minds and hearts come most of our actions, so this ...

Again I remind you, human beings cannot be forced to do evil. They cannot be forced to do good either. They ...

As Solomon warns us to “keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23), our first concern must be for our hearts. The heart is our point of contact with God’s unlimited capacity to protect and provide, which flows to those who choose to keep their minds fixed on him.

Deciding to fill our minds with God is how we keep our hearts.

To listen to his Word and nourish our whole beings with it is not a nice thing we might do occasionally. Our very lives depend upon it.

God speaks life-giving truth to us in his Word, which is living and active and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12). We need to cultivate a readiness to listen.

When the prophet Samuel was a young boy, Eli the priest gave him unerring advice on listening for the voice of God. It is a simple but profound prayer: “Speak, LORD, for Your servant hears” (1 Sam. 3:9).

When we get up out of bed in the morning, among our first thoughts should be this: Lord, speak to me. I’m liste...

This is not because it’s a nice way to start the day, but because the only thing that can keep us straight is being full of God and full of his Word. If you don’t do something like this, y...

Your thoughts cannot be empty. As the old saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. If you are not entertaining God’s truth, you...

There is no indication anywhere in the Scriptures that Jesus was afraid to suffer and die. He was not trying to avoid the cross. He was overcoming Satan.

While we should be aware of this constant interaction of spiritual forces, we must remember that the primary means Satan uses to keep the evil pot boiling are the ideas that govern society’s individuals.

Of central importance are the ideas about what is good and what is right, and how things should be done. Ideas are subtle things. As with the motion of the earth, which occurs without our noticing it, we are normally unaware of the ideas moving us.

The ideas that govern our lifestyles are even more disconcerting, for they cause people to behave in ways that undermine their own well-being.

In the words of Paul, without knowing it, people are “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting” (Eph. 4:14). And behind all that trickery and craftiness is the great trickster, the devil.

Satan governs nations by the way people unders...

A society can lose the truth it once possessed simply by no longer desiring truth above reputation, pleasure, and power.

When looking good takes precedence over knowing the good, Satan wins the battle, if not the war.

To know the enemy and his strategy is half the battle. Satan is our chief enemy, and his primary target is our knowledge of and trust in God.

Satan’s constant assault is aimed at our belief in God’s goodness and power, that God will supply all our needs, and that we can trust God to be sufficient in all ways.

When our minds are on God, and our thoughts are formed by our knowledge of God, such sufficiency will flow to us. Thus Satan’s main task is to keep ...

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. (2 Cor. 10:4–5)

Strongholds. Arguments. High things exalting themselves against the knowledge of God. This is the citadel of Satan. We are to bring the clear and full teaching of the gospel against this demonic stronghold,

It is the world of ideas, images, feelings, and beliefs that allow people to be manipulated through their desires, through their feelings about what is wise and what looks good.

Only the gospel of Christ can take back what Satan controls and can reclaim the mind and heart of every human being held captive by his deceit. It is, indeed, a battle of hearts and minds, and you cannot overcome the citadel of false beliefs and images and feelings—the very things that rob us of knowing the life without lack—except by the power of God.

This power comes to those who have been trained to keep their minds on God—in Paul’s words, “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”

This involves coming to think about God as Jesus thought about him, and to trust God as Jesus trusted him—moving from having faith i...

Lord, minister to me by your Spirit. Come into my heart and mind, and release me from all inward tension and anxiety. Hold before my mind the truth that I have nothing to fear from Satan for you have defeated him; all I must do is fill my life and my mind with you. Remind me often, especially in the midst of difficulty, that you, who are in me, are greater than he who is in the world. Help me to carry this truth with me as I contemplate the awesome reality of the spiritual battle taking place, a battle that, perhaps in our time, is moving perceptively closer to its climax. Give me the vision of you who are: our Father who art in heaven, the Shepherd in whose presence there is no lack, so I may have the confidence and power to love and to live as Jesus lived. In his name, amen.

Faith don’t come in a bushel basket, Missy. It come one step at a time. Decide to trust Him for one little thing today, and before you know it, you find out He’s so trustworthy you be putting your whole life in His hands. —LYNN AUSTIN

three things that must be working within us before we can truly experience the sufficiency of God: faith, death to self, and agape love.

To have faith in God is simply to trust God, to rely upon him in the face of all fears.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for in this way: when we have faith, we act in relationship with God to bring what we hope for into reality.

Faith is a gift; God creates it in our hearts.

All things are possible to him who believes.

If you have enough faith to speak it, then you may have enough faith to do it.

You are primarily a mind with a will in a body, and that will is the center of your being.

In its most basic aspect, faith is simply reliance upon something in both attitude and action.

faith is reliance (trust/confidence) revealed in attitude and action.

In summary, you cannot live without faith. Faith is tied to the future. Faith has the elements of desire and vision. The element of vision comes from our contact with reality or words about reality, which in turn brings about a certain attitude and action.