Most everyone is familiar with the opening words of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Truly understanding and applying what this verse teaches is one of the keys to the Christian life. The Hebrew is literally: “Yahweh is the One shepherding me, I shall not lack.” In other words, it is because Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is our God, that His followers will not lack anything necessary for life and satisfaction.

But we should not read this in a materialistic sense. In fact, the opposite is really true. Material things are not the “prize” for the Christian; it is God HIMSELF who is the prize! David said in Psalm 16:5, “Yahweh is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.” He wrote at the end of that same Psalm that it is in His presence that “fulness of joy” is found, and it is from His right hand that there are “pleasures forever.”

Thus when Psalm 23 opens by saying, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”, it expresses a truth greater than many of us realize. If the Lord really IS with us, leading us, guiding us, fellowshipping with us, giving us joy — then we truly will NOT lack anything else, for He is the One who makes all other things worth having, and without Whom nothing else really matters. It is just as C.S. Lewis wrote: “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.” If you truly have HIM Who will be our eternal source of joy and satisfaction, then surely you shall not lack!