Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

by Dallas Willard

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.

we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

This is the essence of the death-to-self life: that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and rose again.

The first thing to be said is that “the flesh” is not bad in itself. Simply stated, the flesh is merely the natural powers of the human being, based in the human body—our capabilities, wants, and desires as they are in themselves, unaided by divine assistance or guidance.

Human beings have natural abilities, and those abilities are good when they are used in accordance with God’s designs and desires.

Desire is essentially the impulse to possess or experience something. It cares for nothing else other than its object.

Desire is a fine thing, and it is one of the things that keeps us alive, but desires are terrible masters.

Our spirit is different from unrestrained flesh with its singular focus on satisfying desire. The spirit is able to consider alternatives, and God prompts us to have an interest in what is better and best. It is our God-given ability that gives us an interest in what is better and best.

Choice involves deliberation between alternatives, with a view to what is best. The conflict between the flesh and the human spirit is the conflict between desire—what I want—and the will for what is best.

It is, in fact, the conflict between desire and love, for love is always directed toward what is good, and not at simply having my desires satisfied. Love is the will-to-good of its object.

When our abilities are the only things we know to trust, and when we are living with them as ultimates, we are living “in the flesh.”

That is why God does not give us significantly more faith until we have come to terms with death to self.

An individual can have only a very small amount of faith until he has come to a very clear resolution of the place of his desires, his glory, or his power to dominate.

As long as people are hung up on honor from other people—reputation, appearing well—they cannot truly believe and trust God.

The connection between faith and death to self—or conversely, the failure to have both faith and death to self—is one we must come to terms with or we simply cannot enter into a life without lack.

Human desire is infinite by its nature; it cannot be satisfied. You must take your stand against it because you cannot satisfy it. You can never get enough money, if you want money. You can never get enough power, if you want power. You can never get enough love, you can never get enough glory. It is impossible. So fundamental is this truth that every person who wishes to follow Christ must understand it.

The cross means the acceptance of limitation on desire.

No matter what you do, there will always be a cry for more.

If we are going to live a life of abundant sufficiency, we must be focused and intentional in standing against these dreadful roots of the self-life.

Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God.

Besides being pure, heavenly wisdom is also “peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

Such people no longer promote themselves; they no longer exalt their wants and their way as the condition of getting along with them. They are not trying to dominate others. They are ready to simply stand for the truth, to speak what they see to be right in a peaceable, pure, gentle way, and to let it rest with that. As a result of that, God gives them a life of beauty and power that is obvious to others. I assure you, he does.

Someone is an idolater not because he carves little idols and bows down to them, but because he wants things to such a degree that he is dominated by those wants.

He wants things that others have, resents them for having those things, and desires to take them. Simply desiring to have a house is not covetous—it’s desiring to have someone else’s house. The covetous idolater is prepared to see other people suffer in order to have his own way.

A covetous person is an idolater precisely because he has put his desires, rather than God, in th...

Right or wrong, there is no limit to what he will do to get what he wants. When living at this level of the self-life, he is prepared to do what is wrong to gain what he desires. That is always the mark of the pe...

Our desires are the roots of the self-life in all of us. And until we, in conjunction with the grace of God, have made an intentional decision not to allow our desires to be the center of our lives, we can never have the kind of faith that will lead us to the life of abundant sufficiency in God.

It is not uncommon for people to hear this message and think, The Christian life is going to be a long, dry haul. So much for a life without lack! Not at all. The reality is that the long, dry haul is when you are trying to manage your life by always getting what you want. This is what Jesus was teaching when he said, “If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it” (Luke 17:33 PAR). Why will you lose it? Because you will miss out on the provision of God. Choose death to self, however, and you will have it.

Think again of Job. Did he miss out on God’s provision? He certainly went through a hard time, but he came out far ahead of where he had been. In the end Job tas...

Notice that Jesus includes persecutions at the end of that list. This is simply part of the deal. But when you release all your concerns and desires, and God becomes your ultimate concern, the persecutions will not matter that much.

When the self has been put to death—that is, when our wants have been placed in their proper relationship to God—it is not a matter of a mere “grin and bear it” existence. That is not what the Shepherd Psalm tells us. It speaks not of lack, but of abundance, of a cup overflowing with sufficiency for those who are willing to let loose of all the lies about what we need and what we can achieve on our own.

Only when we are prepared to let go of the things that tempt us to keep life under our own control are we prepared to give up our lives—even to the point of death.

One of the greatest temptations that we have at this level of the self-life is trying to keep our loved ones under control.

Deny your self and follow Christ, or deny Christ and follow your self. Those are the options. The results? Saving your life or losing it.

If we are going to follow Christ and gain our real life, we must take up our own cross. That is, we must experience our own crucifixion.

Crucifixion is an interesting thing. It is hard to do by yourself. In fact, it is impossible. You might be able to nail one hand to the cross, but what are you going to do when you get to the next hand? The crucifixion of the self is a cooperative affair between us and the Lord. We cannot die to self without the help of God’s grace, for only God can satisfy our ultimate desire, and only God can convince our hearts that, when we die to self, he will raise us up.

Death to self means releasing all our desires, our reputation, our glory, and having our way with other people. Everything. A dead person does not contin...

Our task is to understand what death to self is and to understand that we cannot live in the Shepherd Psalm—a life without lack in the kingdom of God—until we have accepted it, recognized it, and said, “Lord, give this gift to me.”

Christ was not crucified so that we wouldn’t have to be. He was crucified so we could be crucified with him. He did not die so that we wouldn’t have to die; he died so we could die with him.

In death to self you are crucified with Chri...

Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength. We need to be watching for this. One good way to check our motives when doing something for the Lord is to see how sweet and patient we can remain when it does not go the way we want it to.

This “dying” will mean different things to different people. Some are troubled by what others say about them. Some are troubled by fears of lack.

They must have peace, purity, patience, and the other fruit produced by following Jesus. They must have a willingness to see others praised, while they are overlooked. They must die to the idea that what they want has any importance at all.

If death to self should bring us eye-to-eye with physical death, what do we say at that point? We say the same thing we would say about giving up an ice cream cone, or a job, or anything else. When we give up the smaller, everyday things we are training for times when greater sacrifice is required.

That is, shall we receive the things we want and not the things we don’t want?

We can receive the things we do not want—or give up the things we do want—if we have decided, by the grace of God, that we can trust God to take care of us.

The self remains alive and on the throne of our lives as long as we take what happens to us as the ultimate point of reference.

Instead, we need to engage in honest and thoughtful prayer, letting God know what we are going through, listening for his calming assurance that all will be well, then acting in trust against the lack or threat while praising God as we move forward with our lives.

Notice Jehoshaphat’s response. First, he was honest about his fear. Next, he “set himself to seek the Lord”; that is, he purposed in his heart to seek God’s help. Then he acted, proclaiming a national fast, enlisting the help of others, and directing them to seek the Lord as well.

If we get ourselves out of the way, and focus our attention upon the God of our sufficiency, then we, too, can be singing songs of victory.