Writing your college application essay. Interviewing for your dream job. Planning your first date with the person you’ve prayed about for years.

Preparing for all of these can be anxiety-inducing. You desperately want to get it right because you desperately want to be accepted. Acceptance is the end goal.

But what if you started at the end? What if you lived like you’d already been accepted? How different would you be and how different would you act if instead of working for acceptance, you worked like you already were accepted?

As we continue our series journeying through Psalm 23, the psalmist – and Jesus! – invites us into a different way of life that begins from a different starting point. A way of life that starts from the place most people see as the finish line.