ESCORTED BY ROD AND STAFF!!

Psalms 23:4b – I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

When we truly and wholeheartedly believe that the Lord is with us at all times, there cannot be any scope whatsoever for us to have even an iota of fear. If we believe that the Lord is all sufficient in all our situations, there is no scope for us to be anxious about our future. When we believe that the Lord is by our side, how can any evil ever come to possess us? So even when seemingly bad things happen to us, they are not the end of the story because our Lord works it all together for our good. Our belief about His presence with us has to be understood in terms of its positive realities and possibilities and never in terms of any negative probabilities. These negative probabilities, if nurtured in our hearts, will develop anxiety in us instead of causing us to praise Him. Whatever that comes our way will work together for our good even though sometimes they may not be seen to be good. So we will have to equip our minds with the help of the Spirit of God to think and believe that there is no reason for us to be fearful because He will not allow any evil thing to destroy us. If any evil thought comes, our Shepherd has His rod and His staff to comfort us. If we hand over all our situations for Him to handle, He will use His rod to drive away the evil and negative thoughts along with all fears and anxieties and cause us to praise Him. If we ever lean towards any evil and negative thoughts and feelings, His staff will pull us back to His presence. Thus His road and staff perform wonderful ministries of comfort for us by standing guard.

Dear reader, are you living with the full realization that you are the sheep of the Great Shepherd? A battle is going on for your mind with its thoughts and feelings. The enemy of your soul will try to disturb your life with fears and anxieties through thoughts of negative probabilities. He wants to batter you with the consequences of these probabilities. But you are in the fold of your Shepherd who leads you to His quiet waters and green pastures where you will find enough remedies for negative thoughts and probabilities in your life. Jesus had to ask the disciples to live practically by trusting in the Lord and not in probabilities. He is the guard at the door of your heart to prevent any negative thoughts or probabilities from entering. His rod will drive them away and His staff will pull your heart from going their way and become fearful and anxious. But such experiences are available to only those who continue to dwell in His presence. Even as our Lord keeps our hearts at peace with Him, we also need to have a life of continuous surrender to Him. Whenever the evil one comes to drag us to negative thoughts and probabilities, we must resist him and his seemingly intelligent probabilities. We must rebuke these negative thoughts, fears and anxieties and commit them to the Lord for proper disposal. David trusted his Shepherd when he passed through negative thoughts and reasonable probabilities which haunted him. Joseph had to overcome negative thoughts when he was in the pit and in the dungeon. Negative thoughts would have spoken visibly and loudly to Daniel in the den as the lions looked at him. But at every such moment, his Shepherd used His rod and staff to keep Daniel’s heart at peace with Him. Our Lord did the same ministries to all His servants as they were tempted by the evil one with his tactics of negative thoughts and probabilities. He is with us today to ward off all negative thoughts from our hearts and prove to us that we have no probabilities, but only possibilities in and through Him. We become more than conquerors in all of our negative circumstances because of our Shepherd’s rod and staff for which we praise Him.

Mark 9:23 – “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

Thought for Today