I give my time to the ordinary means and the people God has placed under our care. But saying it’s been freeing doesn’t mean it’s been made easier. Quite honestly, it’s more demanding than ever because I understand what these things are. The true biblical understanding of the fear of God takes greater space in my heart when I consider preaching, sacraments, and care of the people of God. But knowing the calling is clear and freeing; I know whom I belong to, and what that requires of me, in a light that before I only knew through observation and not personally.

In 2020, Dr. Clark interviewed me about my unconventional route to becoming a Presbyterian pastor and how I ended up receiving a call to the congregation I serve. It is strange to consider how much change can take place in only a few years. I still remember sitting in a coffee shop over ten years ago asking Clint, the first Presbyterian pastor I’d ever met, questions about polity, baptism, and covenant theology. Though, in hindsight, I wish it hadn’t taken so long, this eventually led to our joining a local PCA congregation four years ago as a member and having our children baptized, which to this day remains the highlight of all parts of this process. And now here I am, pastoring a PCA congregation.
I remember, on one of the last Sundays before we headed out of town to begin our new call, hearing a sermon preached by my good friend Daniel at the congregation where we had joined. As he was preaching, my heart was anxious about moving my family away from everything we knew to pastor a congregation of people I didn’t know, in a presbytery and denomination with men well beyond my gifting and wisdom, and in a denomination with a polity structure and Book of Church Order (BCO) that seemed the size of a congressional budget bill to this former Baptist pastor. Admittedly, I don’t remember the text of his sermon, but I remember his calling us to see that Christ has called us to Himself, and our tasks in the kingdom are for His sake, and that He equips us with the Holy Spirit, and we are to fear not. While the sermon certainly wasn’t given that day to me personally, it was a unique kindness from the Lord to help me in these last few days before heading to Woodstock, Georgia.
As of this writing, we have lived in Woodstock for nearly three years, and are very happy the Lord called us to this congregation, presbytery, and denomination. I can say now that in the beginning, things didn’t go as I would have thought, but at the beginning of January 2020 we never could have known the changes our country was about to face. However, our time here has been fruitful as I’ve had the privilege of baptizing a handful of covenant children, as well as two adults, and God opened an opportunity to secure a permanent facility for our church in July, 2020. We have seen our membership and regular attendance increase, and the congregation has graciously tolerated and welcomed me as their pastor. I’ve been able to give my time to pastoral care, preaching, teaching and praying, which in God’s kindness has developed a loving relationship between my family and the congregation. One unique aspect has been helping a number of new members find a home in a presbyterian church in the same way I did. How gracious of God to provide this in a time in our country—it would be easy to assume it would be the opposite.
In this kindness, the Lord has afforded me the ability to understand and mature in my beginning days of being a Presbyterian pastor. Though I had pastored for many years before and learned many things during that time, the particularities of being Presbyterian are new. I had never even been a member of a session, much less the moderator of one. I’m sure the other members have laughed thinking of the times when I clearly had no idea what I was doing.
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We want to sow in our minds and in our relationships what we want to harvest in our lives. The seed we reach to scatter must be taken from the bag marked “wisdom from above,” not “wisdom that is demonic.” Both stand open before us. 

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:17, ESV)
Contrasted with demonic wisdom is wisdom from above (Jas. 3:15). James gives us a bio of genuine wisdom that has its source in God.
He begins by describing genuine wisdom as pure, even giving purity a position of first importance. We might think of purity in terms of chastity where we are fully and exclusively devoted to God. Everything about us is sacred, set apart as holy to our God. That’s how wisdom operates from the perspective of the fear of the Lord. Purity contrasts with what is defiled.
From the starting point of purity the operating system of wisdom works itself out in all the fruit of saving faith forged by the Spirit of God and founded in the person of Christ. Gentleness serves well as a trait of the tongue. Listen to how Paul uses gentle as a governor to our speech: “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:2).
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Christ keeps His sheep rotating through different areas of sanctification, assuring us, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10). Yet Phillip Keller notes that shepherds also take the sheep into deep wells of dark caverns for water: “Many of the places we may be led into will appear to us as dark, deep, dangerous and somewhat disagreeable.  But it simply must be remembered that He is there with us in it.”[8]

J. Douglas MacMillan shares how fisherman alerted him about one of his sheep stuck on a lonely cliff’s edge with nothing left to eat.  And having had no water to soften and digest the food, it later died.[1]
In contrast, Psalm 23 promises that God will always guide Christians where they can eat and drink, ensure that they do, and provide only what’s best.
Your Good Shepherd will always provide for all your basic needs and nourishment.
Verse one proclaims,  “I shall not want.”  John McNeill interprets the phrase as, “I’m looked after. Kept, provided for.”[2]
And in verse five, God prepares your table in advance.
Phillip Keller explains how he took his sheep to the “mesa” (Spanish, “table”) in the summer mountains, a high-topped plateau.  He suggests David may have had in mind how the shepherd first finds the best place for the sheep and labors to clear and cultivate it ahead of time.[3]  Just as God told the Israelites He had prepared Canaan for them with builded cities, ready-made and furnished houses, pre-dug wells, and farmed vineyards and trees.[4]
Christian, Jesus said: I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:2-3). Meanwhile, He lays out His communion table to satisfy you with His righteousness.[5]
Sadly, we often lose our appetite.  So, as McNeill wisely comments, “He is preparing a place for us, and preparing us for the place.”[6]
Your Good Shepherd will always provide you with an appropriate appetite.
Verse three sighs, “He restoreth my soul”; literally in the Hebrew, “My soul he brings back,” translated elsewhere, “repents.”

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