This particular story is based on a real person I encountered in my ministry years. I extrapolated in order to make more of a story of it and apply a certain angle of thought from the psalm. If you find it edifying, there are more such stories in The Lord Cares for Me book.
- David Sellnow
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The LORD gives me peace
The LORD is my shepherd …
He lets me lie down in fields of green grass.
He leads me beside quiet waters (Psalm 23:1,2).
He leads me beside quiet waters (Psalm 23:1,2).
The story of Tammy Jo
Tammy Jo grew up in West Texas. She
never like going to church. Church frightened her. As a little girl it hadn’t been so bad … but
still wasn’t a happy experience. As a
child, she went to the children’s church room.
There they learned Bible stories and were taught to be good. The constant emphasis on “being good” bothered
her.
Tammy Jo remembered lessons like …
- Adam and Eve ate fruit that God had told them not
to eat. They did a bad thing when
they went against what God said. We
should always do what God says.
- God told Noah to build a very big boat because a
flood was coming that would cover the whole world with water. Noah did what God said. Because Noah and his family obeyed God,
they had a safe place when the flood came, and many animals were kept safe
with them.
- Jesus spent forty days in a dry desert area. While he was there, the devil came and
tempted him to sin. Each time Jesus
answered the devil with a quote from the Bible, and he did not sin. We should be like Jesus and fight against
sin. We must learn the Bible well
so we can say no when we are tempted.
The lessons in children’s church weren’t scary, but they weren’t comforting
either. All the lessons had the same
sort of idea: Be good if you want God to be good to you. Tammy Jo never felt like she was good
enough. So she never felt sure that God
loved her or would care for her.
Church got worse for Tammy Jo when she became a teenager. She didn’t go to the children’s room
anymore. She began to go to the main
worship room with her parents. That’s
when things got really scary. The
preacher looked angry and spoke angry words.
He yelled about how everyone was going to burn in hell if they didn’t
quit all their sins and start living right.
And then some of the old men suddenly would get full of the Spirit (or
that’s what the preacher said was happening).
They’d run around the worship room screaming and waving their arms
wildly. Sometimes they’d fall on the
floor and start shaking. Their bodies
would twist and turn. Their eyes rolled
back into their heads and spit spilled from their mouths.
All of this made Tammy Jo shake a little herself. She was scared and uncomfortable whenever she
was in church. She told her parents she
did not want to go anymore. That only
made them angry, and they were harsh with her.
“Do you want to go to hell?” her father scolded her. “You will
go to church! You must go to church … or
else!” When Tammy Jo tried to stay home
one Sunday, her father took off his belt and beat her with it several times,
then pulled her to the car.
Tammy Jo obeyed her father (and his belt) for the next couple of
years. But when she got done with high
school and turned eighteen, she planned to leave home.
An aunt in Memphis had invited Tammy Jo to come and stay with her. Tammy Jo used money she had saved from her
part-time job and bought a bus ticket to Memphis. Her aunt, Gracie, welcomed her lovingly. Gracie could see how much Tammy Jo had been
beaten down and made afraid. The poor
young woman hardly ever smiled. She was
timid and unsure of herself. She was
very quiet and spoke just a few words when she did say anything.
When the weekend came, Gracie said to Tammy Jo, “I’ll take you to church
tomorrow.”
“Please, I’d rather not,” Tammy Jo begged.
“Church was the main reason I left home.
I don’t think I can take any more of the ranting and raving, telling me
I’m not good enough and scaring me about the devil and hell.”
“I understand,” Gracie said. “A lot of churches can be that way – and it’s
the wrong way for a church to be. They
aren’t understanding God’s message to us very well. Yes, the devil and hell are real … but Jesus
is the one who rescues us from those evils.
We don’t have to do it ourselves.
We don’t get to heaven by our own effort or goodness. We need Jesus.
“When Jesus was born on earth, angels from heaven showed
themselves to simple, everyday people like us.
They came to shepherds out in the fields near where Jesus was born. They said, ‘Do not be afraid.’ They brought a message of great joy for all
people. They told the shepherds, ‘Today
a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. … May glory be given
to God in the highest heaven! And may
peace be given to those he is pleased with on earth!’ (Luke 2:10-14). Jesus came as God from heaven to be with us
here on earth, to save us and not to frighten us. The most famous passage of the Bible, John
3:16, tells us that Jesus came because God loves us. God does not want to condemn us or send us to
hell. Here’s what it says: ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his
one and only Son. Anyone who believes in
him will not die but will have eternal life.
God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world. He sent his
Son to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).
“Hmm, I didn’t hear much of that in my church back home,”
Tammy Jo said.
“Come to church with me,” Gracie invited again. “I promise it will be different. It’s a place where God brings peace to us,
not a place where you’re shouted at or made afraid.”
Tammy Jo agreed to go. When they arrived at Gracie’s church on
Sunday, right away people greeted Tammy Jo with friendly smiles. They made her
feel welcome. The worship hour began
with a song, “Amazing Grace,” and already Tammy Jo could tell there was a different
feel to this place. The preacher spoke
about the grace of God – love that he gave to us when we didn’t deserve
anything from him. He talked about sin
and the fact that we aren’t good enough, but said that’s why Jesus came as our
Savior. The promises about Jesus said he
would be called “The LORD Who Makes Us Right With Himself” (Jeremiah
23:6). We don’t become good in God’s
eyes by the things we do, but God sees us as good because of what Jesus did for
us. And knowing Jesus is our Savior and
our Brother, now we have strength to do good things that we never could do by
ourselves. “Jesus said he is like a
vine, a root in the ground, and we are like branches connected to him,” the
preacher said. “‘No branch can bear
fruit by itself. It must remain joined to the vine. In the same way, you can’t
bear fruit unless you remain joined to me,’ Jesus said (John 15:4). So our lives depend on Jesus. We can do everything by the power of Jesus. He gives us strength,” the preacher said (see
Philippians 4:13).
After church was over, as they drove home, Tammy Jo said
to Gracie, “Thank you for convincing me to come. I’ve never felt so much peace in my heart as
I did today. Going to your church was
like getting rest for my frightened and weary soul. It was like getting a cool drink of fresh
water when I was so very thirsty. It’s
just what I needed.”
“That’s what church is meant to provide, Tammy Jo. It’s a place where God speaks his words to
us, and he speaks words of rest and peace and refreshment. It’s like the psalm from the Bible says about
God being like a shepherd to us: He lets us lie down in fields of green grass. He leads us beside quiet
waters” (see Psalm 23:2).
The lesson: The LORD gives us peace
Can you imagine a shepherd who mostly screamed
at his sheep or beat them with a stick?
That would be a harsh and uncaring kind of shepherd! That’s not the kind of shepherd that Jesus
is.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the
sheep” (John 10:11). Jesus doesn’t yell
at us and demand we do things for him.
He came and gave up his own life for us.
He said about us as his people, “I have come so they can have life. I want them to have it in the fullest
possible way” (John 10:10).
Jesus’ message to us is one meant to give us
peace and hope and joy because we know he is on our side. He loves us.
He forgives us. He encourages us.
Life in this world often isn’t very
encouraging. People push us down and
treat us harshly. Sometimes even our own
parents and families are the ones pushing us down, discouraging us or
threatening us. Sometimes even people we
think are our friends push us down, hurting us or being mean to us. Sometimes even churches are the ones pushing
us down, scolding us with angry messages, beating us up with harsh words
because we aren’t good enough. We so very much need words that refresh us,
that give us hope. Jesus gives us those
words in the Bible. Families and friends
and churches that know the hope Jesus gives will speak those refreshing words of
Jesus to us. And when we know the hope
Jesus gives, we will speak his refreshing words to others.
“The LORD is my shepherd,” David wrote in Psalm
23. “He lets me lie down in fields of green
grass. He leads me beside quiet waters” (Psalm 23:2). It’s like we are sheep that are worn out and
tired from the hot sun and the LORD finds a cool shady place in the grass for
us to rest. It’s like we are dying of
thirst and the LORD takes us to a pool of clear spring water to revive us and
give us strength again.
As people who belong to the LORD, we learn to look for the “green grass”
and “quiet waters” where God brings us comfort and peace. We look for a church where the emphasis is on
God’s grace – on his endless love for us, forgiving us all of our wrongs. We look for Christian friends who will
support us with words of hope and encouragement in Jesus. And we try to be the sort of friends and
family members who provide refreshing and encouragement to others by pointing
to Jesus. He is our Savior, our good
shepherd. He gives us peace.
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