Any talk of exhaust reminds me of the 23rd Psalm, now your saying, “Robby that a stretch”. For me the 23rd Psalm has everything to do with exhaust.You see much like a car, you can tell how well a person is running based on their exhaust.
King David understood sheep having spent those years as a Shepherd and he knew all to well what would happen to the sheep if they were shepherded properly. When they were led beside still waters and laid down in green pastures and if he anointed them with oil to keep the bugs off, if he set a table for them in front of the bear or the wolf then something miraculous happened. He explained it with the help of the Holy Spirit in the last verses of the 23rd Psalm and it has everything to do with exhaust.
A few times on this show I have shared the story of Johnny Hendrix who was dying of cancer as he came to know Christ.
What I have never shared is that a few days before he died his wife Geraldine came to me and told me that the doctors had given him less than a week to live, they had wanted her to tell him and she just couldn’t do it. So she asked if I would go in and tell Johnny he had but a few days left to live…
Not being a pastor or a doctor I never dreamed I would be the one to share such news, yet the spirit was clear, this was my task to do.
So I went into the Chapel at the little hospital there in Mocksville, NC and asked God what I should say.
God recalled to my mind this very Passage that King David spoke of in the 23rd Psalm. Having then been encouraged by the Lord I walked into the Room with Johnny.
I looked at him, and said, “Johnny I have some really bad news I need to share with you”. His countenance changing as he went flush, his eyes rolled back as he certainly knew what I was going to say…
I recalled my own feeling the day in The Hospital when my nurse told me, “Robby this is your last chance this is the strongest Antibiotic we have and if it doesn’t work we won’t have but a couple of days, your brain abscess will have gone too far to recover.”
Yes, the comfort God had given me was now allowing me to help comfort Johnny. My first thoughts were similar to Ecclesiastes, Meaningless, Meaningless my whole life had been meaningless! But God pulled me up short with the understanding of the end of the 23rd Psalm and the beginning of the Song of Songs.
Johnny then asked me, “how long”?
I shook my head and said, “A few days.”
I told him that back when I had been shared that news I was angry and cried out meaningless, my life has been meaningless!
I then asked Johnny if he was feeling that way and he agreed he was trying to understand.
I then went on to say, “Johnny lately I’ve been reading a book called A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. The book explained that when sheep have a good shepherd that If they were led beside still waters and laid down in green pastures and if he anointed them with oil to keep the bugs off. When he set a table for them in front of the bear or the wolf then the sheep will take a completely barren piece of ground and turn it green and lush, based on the way they graze and their manure, (exhaust as I would now put it). In fact in the middle east sheep are called the animals with the golden hooves.
The book went on to say that when David says that, “surely goodness and mercy will follow me”, that this is what he meant.
The result of The Good Shepherd leading David besides still waters so he could drink, laying him down in green pastures, was that he would leave a fertile pasture that was able to feed the world for centuries, and so it has for me and you to this day in the Psalms…
King David’s son Solomon understood this when in The Book of Song of Songs in the first chaptered the Shulamite girl asked, Where to find the one she loved? The answer “ Song of Songs 1:8 “If you do not know, most beautiful of women, follow the tracks of the sheep”
So, I told Johnny, “all that have seen your transformation in Christ, all the Love, Joy and Peace you have brought to your friends and family those are fertile fields for all of us to feast on for eternity.
That’s the meaning of “Surely Goodness and Mercy will follow me all the rest of my Life and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.””
Johnny’s exhaust based on the Good Shepherd has now been feeding me since his death a few days later.
Any talk of exhaust reminds me of the 23rd Psalm, now your saying, “Robby that a stretch”. For me the 23rd Psalm has everything to do with exhaust.You see much like a car, you can tell how well a person is running based on their exhaust.
King David understood sheep having spent those years as a Shepherd and he knew all to well what would happen to the sheep if they were shepherded properly. When they were led beside still waters and laid down in green pastures and if he anointed them with oil to keep the bugs off, if he set a table for them in front of the bear or the wolf then something miraculous happened. He explained it with the help of the Holy Spirit in the last verses of the 23rd Psalm and it has everything to do with exhaust.
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