After completing the sermon series on the 23rd Psalm last week I felt it necessary to say just a little bit more and so comes the title of this week's sermon "The Shepherd Revisited". Let our prayers unite that the Good Shepherd would bring healing and strength to our nation as we face such difficult times.

Our future can scare us to death! How we see the future has much to do with how we are living our lives today! 3 things become our focus this Sunday:

1) God is watching over me! 2) God’s grace is working in me! 3) Heaven is waiting for me!

Read I Peter 1:4-6, Psalm 103:2-11, and John 10:27-28

When we are hurting we get so stressed that we can make some very bad choices in our life. One choice puts us on the road to being healed though and that is the choice we make when we are hurting to turn to God and his love in Christ. Jesus comes to soothe our wounds. He brings healing through his church, through prayer, through worship, and through ministry. Our theme is to celebrate the way God brings healing to our life.

Dark and troubled times do a number on us. We all end up in the “valley of the shadow of death” at some point in our life. Valleys are inevitable, unpredictable, impartial, temporary, and purposeful. And the theme of the day is how God comes to us when we are facing such valleys in life. God is with us!

Read 1 Peter 1:3-9 and Colossians 1:9-14

Life is a series of choices…of decisions. Success, it has been said, comes through wise decisions! We make our decisions and then our decisions make us. Consequently many of us wrestle with indecision. Indecision can stress us out! Our theme today moves us to see the God who comes to guide us for his name’s sake. He doesn’t leave us alone in our confusion about where our lives should be headed. A major focus today is the importance of God’s Word. God comes to speak to us through people, places, and things too, but there is nothing quite like God’s Word for guidance!

Read Psalm 25:9, James 1:5-6, Proverbs 3:5

We get beat up by discouragement, depression, and despair and we face fatigue, failure, and frustration. We get hurt – life is tough! We have damaged emotions and this is the major malady theme of the day. God comes to take away the emotional garbage! God deals with our guilt, our grief, and our grudges. He “restores my soul!”

Read Psalm 38:4-6, Romans 3:23-24, 2 Samuel 12; Job 18:4

"GREEN PASTURES, STILL WATERS"

Worry is the first of 7 things that stress us out! The 23rd Psalm addresses all 7 of these. To deal with our worries GOD CALLS US TO SEE HIM AS OUR GOOD SHEPHERD. God calls us to TRUST HIM as our Good Shepherd and that is the key theme for the day. Coupled with God’s picture of himself as the Good Shepherd is seeing Him as OUR LORD! Accepting Jesus as the Lord of our life is another major theme of the day. We worry because we fear things are out of control. Nothing is out of control for the Lord! Our problem is that we are usually trying to control too much. In the face of our worries God call us to turn to him in prayer. The power of prayer is an underlying theme for the day. God loves you, He cares about your stress, and He can help you.

April 12, 2020 – Easter Sunday

(Palm Sunday) We conclude our review of the Lord’s Prayer today. It is an important message because it focuses in on what all of life is to be about, namely God’s Kingdom. We can easily forget the importance of God’s Kingdom and that is what we will talk about.

Read Romans 11:36; Romans 6:10-11; I Thes. 2:12