Walking Through the Valley

Walking Through the Valley

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4

I remember as a child trying to memorize the 23rd Psalm. At the time it all just kind of seemed like gibberish to me. At the beginning of this Psalm, it says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” As a kid, I thought it meant He is the shepherd that I don’t want. I thought that was weird, why wouldn’t you want the Lord? Now that I’m grown, I look back and understand that it means I won’t want for anything because the Lord is with me. I do have to admit I’ve had times in my life that I walked a path leading away from the Lord and in those times, I guess the “shall not want” followed more what I believed as a child. 

The more times you read a verse, the more meaning it seems to have to you. I think the Lord wants the Bible to be that way. He wants you to gain more knowledge of Him the more you study the Bible. Sometimes I believe that He uses the Bible to give us hints and clues about Him to help us draw nearer. Or maybe it is that when we are reading we are near to Him and we can just hear him better! As I read Psalm 23:4 recently, it seemed to me that He was speaking to me and I saw this verse in a whole new light. I was reading this Psalm after bringing to light one of my deepest and darkest sins. You see, I have been on a sort of “trail of confession” recently and kind of feel like I have been walking through the “valley of the shadow of death”, only it has a whole new meaning for me. You will see throughout the bible that sin equals death. I have walked through the valley of the shadow of my sin in these past several weeks and it is a very scary place! Walking out of that valley and confessing your sins to others can leave you feeling completely bare and exposed for all the world to see. Knowing that others can see your failings can be very humbling. 

We often wonder what other people think of us, but we really shouldn’t because the Lord is with us. The Lord is the only one that we should worry about pleasing. If we have confessed to Him and asked forgiveness, then He has forgiven us. No more worries because He loved us enough to send His son, Jesus, to die for us. He will carry us through this valley and out of the shadow of death!