Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. We want to be happy. We want to have our needs met. We want to be comfortable all the days of our life, and suddenly we're being called into this place called the Valley of the Shadow of Death to go across that bridge and to die to myself and to live for the benefit of others. Welcome to this week's edition of A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. You may have heard the phrase, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It means not to worry about something until it happens. But as Carter reminds us in today's message, we also cross over a bridge to take us to a deeper, more meaningful place, a place where we face our fears, a place where God is waiting for us.
Let's join Carter now. Psalm 23, beginning of verse one. The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil.
My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I want to take a unique look at Psalm 23. I want to examine it in the context of a life well lived in God. Keep in mind these songs are songs and every life that's here today, what is writing a song through you that's going to be a song for eternity? A song about your life? What's your life look like?
What did it amount to? Was it a complete life? Was it a well lived life in Christ? Did you take the full journey with God?
Or did you stop some way, somewhere that's just short of what God had for your life? Now I believe it's my opinion that the Christian life at least has been our experience in this country is generally lived in two stages. Now both these stages are ordained of God, both are supernaturally lived and both are divinely appointed. There's a bridge though between those two stages of the Christian life and that bridge in Psalm 23 is found in verse four, a place called the valley of the shadow of death. Here's David's Psalm began. His song began when he said the words, the Lord is my shepherd.
That's the beginning of our song. It's something that you can say and I can say when we've transferred the ownership and direction of our lives over to God. First Corinthians six 20 says you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Can you say today the Lord is your shepherd? Have you truly transferred the ownership and direction of your life over to God? If I stood here today, for example, and I said at the end of the service today, I'm going to give you my car. I'm not going to, but let's say I said I was going to do that and I called you out by name and you came forward.
While the transaction is not complete until the deed for that car, until I sign off on the deed of that car and then you have to go down to the department of motor vehicles and it has to be registered in your name and then you can rightfully with the deed in your hand say this belongs to me. Now a lot of people want to call Jesus Christ their Lord and their savior and their shepherd, but they do not ever want to release the deed of their life to him. They come to the house of God and make an agreement with a set of facts, but I want to remind you today that an agreement with a set of facts is not necessarily salvation. I may understand there's a heaven. I may understand there's a hell.
I may know there's a cross that stands between the two. I may know that Jesus died for my sins. I may also know that he requires me to open my heart and invite him in to be my Lord and savior. I may know all of that, but yet still may not be a Christian until I've come to the point where it's not just a mental agreement with a set of facts that I feel are going to keep me out of hell for eternity and grant me access to heaven, but there's a point where I have to sign the rights to my life over to the one who bought me with a price. He paid with his own blood and until that deed is signed to my life, I can't honestly say he's my shepherd. I can't until I've come to the point of saying my life is yours now, Jesus, with all its flaws and all its frailties and all its struggles and all its trials and all its fears. If you thought it was worth it to shed your blood for this life, being almighty God in the flesh, and I give you my life, I give you the rights to my future, that my brother, my sister, I believe is the evidence of a genuine conversion in Christ. It is the evidence of salvation.
It's beyond just the knowledge of our sins and the knowledge of our savior. Now, a lot of people want to retain joint ownership. They'll come to the altar and they'll sign over the deed, but they'll also say, well, I'll be a co-owner now with you of this vehicle that you've purchased with your blood. Well, I'm telling you something.
Jesus will never be a passenger in any car. You sign the rights to your life over. It's not a co-ownership. He owns it. He owns you. He owns the right to your future. He owns the right to whatever he calls you to do and where he calls you to go and what he calls you to be. It all belongs to him.
And then there's a third stage. I think of people who hear the word of God and they, they want to be the lien holder. Okay. I'll give you the rights to my vehicle. I'll give you, I'll sign it over, but I'll be the lien holder. In other words, if you're not nice to me the way I think you should be nice to me and I'm taking it car back and a lot of people come to the altar and say, okay, I'm coming, but if you don't do for me what I think you should do, then I'm taking the rights to my life back.
No, I think when we come to Christ, we cast ourselves on the mercy of God. We jump into his arms and we make the choice. I'm not going back. I'm not turning back.
I'm going with him all the way. It's wonderful when you can say the Lord is my shepherd. When you get up in the morning and you know that yes, I have struggles and yes, I even argue with God, but he is the Lord of my life. He has the rights to my life. He has the right to lead me and to guide me and to use my life for his glory.
It's then we go to the second part of verse one where David says, I shall not want. You know, as a former shepherd, my wife and I actually had a sheep farm when we were younger for about seven or eight years or so and I would come home at night after working all day and I would go into the barn and sometimes I would just sit for an hour, half hour. I just sit among the sheep. We had about 68 females, about two males and a bunch of lambs depending on the season that it was in.
There could be as many lambs as there were sheep. I would just sit there in the middle of the barn and everything that I was at that moment concerned them. The needs that they had were my concerns and I would sit there and I would listen. I thought of it this morning on this platform. I thought, God almighty, you knew I was going to be here in New York City.
You knew I'd be sitting on this platform. You knew how many sheep you were going to bring into this barn but I could tell if there was trouble by just the way the tension in the air sometimes you could pick up as a shepherd. I could tell the way they chewed, if they were chewing too fast.
Quite often it was because there was a sick lamb in their midst or there was a snake or a rat had gotten into the barn and the sheep would begin to chew just a little too quickly and I could tell that there was something wrong and I'd have to get up and start looking around and I would always find it. I could tell. It became easy for me to understand when I gave my life to Christ that his heart is for me. His heart is to meet every need. His heart is to calm my fears. His heart is to feed me when I'm hungry. His heart is to reassure me just by his presence that all will be well and that I will be protected from that which I had once feared could destroy my life. Every need that I had was his deepest concern. Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 and 4 as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises.
It's amazing. Verse 2 says he makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. Oh thank God for my heart was as deeply troubled as anybody ever born into this world. I grew up in a house where I was taught to worry.
My mother used to worry if there was nothing to worry about she would worry about it. Every sentence she ever said to me when I was growing up had and die at the end of it. Don't run with those scissors you'll fall down they'll pierce your eye and you'll die. Don't eat your food too fast you'll choke and die.
Be careful crossing the street you might get hit by a car and die. Everything had and die at the end of it. No wonder I was a wreck by the time I was 13 I was an absolute wreck.
Got to the point where I was afraid to go out of the house when I was 15 and die at the end of every sentence. But when I came to Christ and gave him my life and knew he was my shepherd and knew it was in his heart to meet my every need he made me to lie down in green pastures. The green pastures are the word of God. He opened this book to me and I began to understand the meanings of life I began to understand why I was born. I began to sense there was a divine purpose for my life and by his promises it would be achieved. I began to realize that there's no weapon formed against me that could prosper that God had not given me a spirit of fear but a power, love and a sound mind and he led me to a place of stillness in my spirit.
A place where all those clanging voices of doom and despair and hopelessness for the future and of everything that could possibly go wrong in life. All those voices thank God were silenced and I found myself in a still place. I found myself opening the word of God reading its pages tears coming down my cheeks quite often because everything I'd ever longed for all the truth I'd ever wondered about was in the word of God. He makes me to lie down.
He leads me beside the still waters. Luke 12 32 Jesus said do not fear little flock it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. In verse three David says he restores my soul all the pain all the wounds of the past you've got yours and I had mine. All the things that you did or were done to you people who were there the people who weren't and the people who said they would and left.
All of these things and all the wounds that came and all these things that threaten to dominate your thinking and dominate your life forever. When you come to Christ you fully embrace him as your Lord and Savior. You trust his promises to guide you and to lead you. He restores your soul. He brings a healing that that can't come any other way.
You could join a hundred thousand self-help groups and you'll never be healed the way Christ can heal you. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. I remember in the early years of my walk with God he led me to forgive those who had hurt me. Led me to forgive. He leads us in paths of righteousness and paths of right living and paths of doing things the way God says they should be done.
He leads me in paths of righteousness. Many people today are not being led in paths of righteousness because they can't justifiably say the Lord is their shepherd. They're not willing to be led by God.
Not willing to give up old lifestyles. They're not willing to give up old hearts. They become so comfortable with it.
It's become part of their personality. He leads us there for his namesake. Did you know he's interwoven the honor of his name in you? That's an amazing thought when you begin to think about it. God says to the angels in heaven, you want to see what I look like?
Look at that person. I've interwoven the honor of my name in keeping that son or that daughter of mine and leading them and guiding them and changing them and transforming them into what they were destined to be before sin got a hold of their lives. I remember one morning I woke up and I was on my way to work and I looked out my kitchen window back on the days of the farm. About 20 or so of my sheep had gotten out through a hole in the fence and they were underneath my neighbor's deck next door. I didn't have time to gather a bunch of people to get them back.
I didn't know what I was going to do. I was already dressed for work. So, but they love oats. They absolutely love oats.
Oats are like the promises of God. And I put them in a can. I walked down the road a couple of thousand feet and I walked under the porch and I just shook the can. I said, here, Yos.
They're not used by the way, they're Yos. That's how you pronounce that word. And I shook the can and I said, here, Yos, come on, follow me. And even though there's 20 of them and there's only one little can of oats, they all feel like they're going to get that can of oats. And they all followed me down the road. You see, I couldn't leave them there because I get a bad name in the community. I couldn't leave them there because I get known as the guy who lets his sheep get out and lets them wander all over the place. For my namesake, I led them back to where they're supposed to be. That's exactly what God does. If you are his, if you are his and you're where you shouldn't be, you walk out the door or wherever that place is and you'll find somebody there with a can of oats before you.
And those oats are promises from God. You don't have to live here. You don't have to do this. You don't have to be in this relationship. You don't have to keep going to this club. You don't have to put that stuff in your veins.
You don't have to snort that stuff on Friday night anymore to get a sense of well-being. You don't have to do this. Follow me. Follow me. I have something for your life. I've got a place of safety for you. For the namesake of God, follow me.
Walk away from what you need to leave behind and walk towards what I'm calling you to be. And where he's calling us is always safety. It's always provision. I would never call my sheep home out of the field and leave them high and dry in the barn. I'd take, break a bag of oats open and just fill the troughs and everybody would have as much as they wanted.
I would never call them in and not feed them. Fear not little flock. It's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It's his, it's his good pleasure to give you the heart you've always longed for, to give you the life that you thought God could give you. It's his good pleasure to take away your fears and your struggles and your trials and give you courage and strength and a sense of purpose for the future. Now up to this point, verses one to three in Psalm 23, it's been all about me. I want you to notice that the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want, makes me to lie down. He leads me, restores me. He leads me in passive righteousness. It's been all about my comfort, my promises, my healing and my beginning to follow his leading. And all of these things are important.
You don't make demands of a child when they're learning to walk and when they're learning to read and when they're going to school and they need that constant reassurance. Everything's going to be okay. I'll be there tomorrow. I'll make sure you get to school. Don't worry. You're going to have lunch.
It'll be there when you open your lunch box, your lunch will be there. It's all about me, but it brings us to the bridge. And I called Greg Thomas last night and I said in a song, what, or I texted him rather, in his song, what is a bridge? What is the bridge in a song?
And he said, the bridge is a climactic build to something bigger. And so from verses one to three in Psalm 23, it speaks to me about the beginnings of the Christian walk, how God says, I'll be with you. I'll comfort you. I'll provide for you. You're every want.
I'll be aware of it. And now we come to the bridge, a bridge that's going to take us to a deeper place as sons and daughters of God. And in verse four, it says, though I walked through the Valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff. They comfort me the bridge to something deeper in God from, from just that place of youthfulness and infancy, that place where we become sons and daughters of God, where we represent him in the earth. It's not just about our own healing. It's a place where we face our deepest interferes.
It's a place where we feel incapable of going and doing what Christ is asking of us. Just like when Peter said to Christ, when he saw him walking on the water, Lord, if it's you bid me to come. And he stepped out of the boat and he began to walk on the water until he saw the wind until he saw the waves. It was technically a bridge in measure in his life to what God was going to call him to a place where he couldn't go. You remember later on in his life, he told them when you were young, you went where you want to want it to go and you dressed yourself.
In other words, it was all about you. But when you get older, you're going to be led to a place that you don't want to go. And you're going to be led there by the strength of God.
It's a place where we feel incapable of going. It's a place with shadows and voices of all the going forward might mean though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Elijah was going over the Jordan and that that always represents death. It always represents the death to an old way of living and the birth to a new destiny. Elijah was already a young prophet in training, but he was being led by the older prophet to somewhere that only God could carry him. And out of the cities that he was passing by came these little gaggles of prophets and all they could see was loss.
If you follow this, you're going to lose your master. It's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. All these voices are just shadows of all that might go wrong. It's a place where many turn back and others stand idle in indecision. For the scripture tells us that when Elijah crossed over the Jordan and Elijah was right behind him, that people stood who knew truth and watched it, but they wouldn't take the journey themselves. It was the journey to power. It was the journey to life, but they wouldn't because it meant dying to something they didn't want to die to. It meant giving up something they didn't want to give up. It meant a lifestyle that they were not prepared to embrace. They didn't mind studying the scriptures.
They didn't mind knowing the history. They didn't mind singing the songs, but to be given for a failing fall in society is not something that was palatable to these people at this time. Paul said to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 1 and 2, he said, I brethren could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ, I fed you with milk and not with solid food for until now you were not able to receive it.
But even now you're still not able. The Corinthians were meeting in the house of God around themselves. The self was still their focus. In America today, this has been the source of the weakness of the testimony of Christ. Hear me on this.
If you've never heard me your whole life, hear me on this. This is why the American church is so weak because the theological focus is on ourselves. We've lived in verses 1 to 3 for the last 50 years in this country and because of it, the whole country is headed to hell now in a hand basket. Society is turning against the testimony of Christ. I say it's time. I say it's time to go cross the bridge in verse 4. I say it's time that we move on to something bigger, something deeper for all of our lives and many won't cross the bridge because crossing over means the death to our own desires, the death to the pursuit of our own comforts, the death to the gratifying of our own needs, which means entering into the work of God as a mature son or daughter of God, which simply means just like Jesus did, we chose to live our lives for the benefit of others.
That's a mature son and daughter of God. It's not easy. It's not easy for any of us. We want to live life the way we think it should be lived. We want to be happy. We want to have our needs met.
We want to live in the barn. We want to be comfortable all the days of our life and suddenly we're being called into this verse 4, this place called the valley of the shadow of death, this place where everything I thought that I should be, the hand of God comes out and says, I want to take you deeper. I want to take you farther.
I want to take you into, I want to take you into something that is deeper than just living for yourself. No one can do this unless we allow God to lead us through this fearfully and naturally undesirable place. I fight with it just like you do knowing that he's with us. David said his rod and his staff, they comfort me and he's working through us an honor, honorable and eternal purpose. Many people in our generation are not going to see heaven until this church age makes the decision to abandon constantly living in verses one to three and surrender to verses four to six. When we finally say, God, I'm taking the bridge. I'm going to go through that valley of the shadow of death. I'm going to trust you, God, that what looks to me to be a disaster for my own life has an eternal purpose because now I know it's not about me. I am representing the one who went to a cross. It was not about him.
He did it for me. And now you're calling me to go across that bridge and to die to myself and to live for the benefit of others. If King David had not crossed through his first four experience, he would have finished powerless and in the wilderness. Psalm 61 verse two, David said from the ends of the earth. In other words, when all my natural strength says I can't go on, I will cry to you. And when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I lead me God when I when I can't go lead me Lord. When I know in my heart I can't do what you're asking me to do. Lead me Oh God when I don't want to do what you're asking me to do. Lead me Lord when I'm hanging on to the certificate of my life and I do not want to hand it over. It was theoretically nice as long as you didn't ask me to do something, but now you're calling me.
But for your sake, going over the bridge and you have to go over it one time in your life. Let's go. Let's be everything that God's called us to be. Let's believe him for the supernaturally outlandish that he would take us and do with us what we could never hope to do in ourselves. We would let God be God.
We would find that table in the presence of our enemies. Find that anointing. Let's go. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
