Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

by Dallas Willard

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

we must not confuse death to self with the psychological dynamics of self-hatred that may lead a person to take his own life.

When you become a Psalm 23 person, people will notice. Imagine the unimaginable: a person who works for a large corporation, but who is not trying to advance himself.

Death to self may appear to others as if we hate ourselves, but a great part of our growth includes disengaging from the expectations of others.

As we do, it will not be long before people begin to identify us as joyful, peaceful, composed people, free from anxiety and animosity and in the grip of a deep happiness that comes to the person who has been liberated from the domination of desire. What may appear to others to be self-hatred is, in fact, the only way to become our true selves.

When we see people dominated by their lust for glory or insisting that their will be done, we will be in a position where we can be very firm in not cooperating with them, even if they’re our loved ones.

When we live in the Shepherd’s sufficiency and die to our selves, we become the most firmly established people in this world.

Jesus was no doormat; he was simply dead to self, and fully alive to God.

Dignity—real dignity—comes to the person who, by the grace of God, has embraced death to self.

Death to self gives us the place to stand in real dignity, in the yoke of Jesus, and not cooperate with the efforts of other people to live out their fleshly fantasies, whatever they may be.

Dying to self does not exclude having a proper sense of self-worth, including the need to feel recognized and valued. Recognition from others is a good and proper thing. But it must not be what controls our lives. It must not become the goal of our existence.

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.

To keep a right heart we must remember that the face of God shining upon us in gracious approval is the basis of our value.

The child who lives under the shining face of a mother and father has no problem of self-worth. But when the faces of the parents turn away and withdraw, they become troubled.

Humility is the beautiful condition of people who have learned to surrender their desires, their glory, and their power.

Humility is the path to death, because in death it gives the highest proof of its perfection. Humility is the blossom of which death to self is the perfect fruit. Jesus humbled Himself unto death, and opened the path in which we too must walk.

There must be a time when, in our own words and in our own way, we say to God, “Do with me what you will.” Until we experience an abandonment of this kind, faith simply cannot be given to us safely.

One of the main reasons we have such little faith is that we have not lived through the process of abandonment and come to the place where God can trust us with great faith.

Once we have abandoned our lives to God, we are ready to receive the gift of faith that will en...

Love with patience. Love without conditions. Love without irritation or anger. The kind of love we receive when we walk in the humility tha...

Father, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you, I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.4 —CHARLES DE FOUCAULD

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

Faith (trust), death to self, and agape love support our Psalm 23 life as a triangle of sufficiency.

Each is a precious gift of God, who, in his graciousness, gives them to us and enables us to receive them in ever increasing abundance. He gives them to the willing, seeking heart through a process in which that willing and seeking is consistent, and even that is a gift.

God loves us, and because he loves us he delights in us, focuses upon us, relates to us, and serves us. So when we hear that a person is seeking God, it is evidence that God first loved him and has already “found” him....

Trust in God and death to self open the floodgates for God’s agape love to flow into us. God supplies the faith you need for this to happen, and your job is to position yourself so you can receive it.

We are often troubled about our faith because we are trying to have faith for a particular thing, like patience. But the faith God wants to give us is not for that thing, but for trusting him.

Remember, faith has two parts: will and vision. We must be willing to see God as he is before God can further reveal himself to us and give us more faith. This requires us to live in such a way that we are consistently seeking him and growing in our faith, and this...

Death to self is submitting all your desires to God. This abandonment of the self to God is the way to experience abundance in God. It means that, in God’s hands, we a...

The more faith we have in God, the more death to self becomes the natural daily way for us.

It is essential to remember that Jesus did not give himself up to God in death with an attitude of resignation. He gave himself up in faith, certain that he would rise again and that the kernel of wheat that fell to the ground would bring forth abundant fruit.

Death to self is abandonment to God in faith. It is laying down the satisfaction of my desires with confidence in the greatness and plenitude of God.

We can practice this through spiritual disciplines such as fasting, which can help us stay sweet and strong when we do not get what we want. If we can cheerily give up Twinkies, and peanuts, and steak, and things of that sort for a while, this will bring us to the place where we can say, “Lord, you’re quite sufficient for me.

He didn’t say, “Don’t have treasures.” He didn’t say, “Don’t own things,” or, “Don’t eat steak.” He didn’t say any of that. He said, “Don’t make this your god.”

Faith has drawn us nearer to God and positioned us to receive his blessings. Death to self has made our life a willing receptacle for him, and now agape love flows into us like a river and out into a desperately thirsty world, completing the triangle to fulfill all that is needed for a life without lack.

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.

Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back.

Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap.

The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence becaus...

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.

If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

When people love one another like this it creates a self-contained circle within which there is complete sufficiency in human terms. Children who are deeply loved and raised within such a circle can endure almost anything.

The pure, unfiltered love of children is why they have such a redeeming effect on people, and why in Isaiah’s vision of the kingdom of God on earth he tells us that “a little child shall lead them” (Isa. 11:6).

People who have grown up in an environment of love, even if it is only human love without a consciousness of God, will always have a tremendous resource that can never be taken away from them.