by Samantha Arp | Feb 12, 2026 | Featured, Life Advice, LO Library
Psalm 23
Every time I go to the store I forget to buy Command hooks. I just moved into a tiny apartment where floor space is scarce, so the majority of my square footage exists as a wall—a wall in which I cannot drill or screw in or nail anything, because my residence there is, well, temporary. Thus the temporary hooks, which I keep forgetting to buy. To be truthful there are still lots of things I need that I don’t have: dish rags, more trash bags, a bath mat, a working lamp. A recent close call with an HVAC fire has also made me consider the necessity of something my landlord called “renter’s insurance,” although I’m not sure what I would insure given the whole of my earthly possessions amounts to little more than consigned clothes on mismatched hangars and too many throw blankets. Not much on the walls yet, either—I keep forgetting those hooks.
There are all kinds of things we think we need. More seriously than my dish rags and trash bags, we all need to be seen, loved, cherished, chosen, and respected. We need to pay our very real bills that have very real consequences for not paying them. We have real people to feed and clothe and drive around to practice and dance lessons. Some of you have medical expenses, unsaved family members, terminal diagnoses, wayward children—burdens that only our Father knows and sees. In times like those, we feel our need deeply. We think about it daily.
And then we open our Bible, some of us less often than we’d like to admit, and we see a God who cares for other peoples’ needs. He split the sea, healed a disease, made the sun stand still, and raised a little girl to life, all for other people. We start to believe that God provides for the needs of other people, but He seems to have skipped right over us. Do you know that feeling?
One particularly frustrating morning between me and the Lord began with me sitting down and wasting no time to get right to complaining about all the ways He had not met my needs that day. I could see a long list of things on my list that He had not seen to yet, and I felt justified in my anger. Right in the middle of my spiritual temper-tantrum, the Lord sat me right down in Psalm 23 and (gently, as good Fathers do) put my nose to the page. If it’s been a while since you read it in the NIV, it starts like this: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
As you can imagine, that sentence ran totally against the grain of all my feelings. So I read it again. And again. I had my list of “things” I lacked. I’m sure you do too. How can God be faithful to his Word while we still “lack?” We stand, as anyone who follows Jesus often does, at a crossroads between God’s Word and our feelings. I really don’t like it there. But it’s here that God refines and molds us—not when everything is perfect. It’s here where we sit and listen, and He kindly bends His knee to teach. It’s here where He can take a heart of stone, weathered by pain and disappointments, and make it beat again if you’ll let Him. This is the hard part, the best part, when we “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in His temple” even when it costs us something (Ps 27:4). So bring it to him. See what He says.
“The Lord is…” There’s lots of ways we could finish that sentence. Mighty, holy, perfect, strong, powerful, loving—all true, all good. But not what He says. He says “The Lord is my shepherd.” Interesting. That’s not the most glamorous thing He could choose. Shepherds sleep on the grass, clean up after animals, and are the sole reason that sheep don’t run off a cliff or thirst to death. Shepherds tend to, feed, guide, protect, and sometimes even carry their sheep. The Lord creates with a word. The Lord exists in continual, celestial worship. And this Lord is your shepherd.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” Not “our” shepherd. Not the shepherd of the people who perform perfectly, or those who seem to have all their prayers answered, or have enough money or time to meet all their needs themselves. This isn’t talking about your kids or your husband or your pastor. In some way, somehow, by some miracle of grace, you belong to Him. You get to call Him “mine.” The God who speaks, who bends the knee to listen, who comes to you, who loves you without any condition, who died to make a way for you, and the God who will not let you go is the one who shepherds you. This God is not called “the shepherd of millions” or “the shepherd of your family” or “the shepherd of the ones who get it right all the time” but he is your shepherd. It’s really a marvel when you think about it.
I think that’s why David had the audacity to say the next part. Because the Lord is your shepherd—not a human limited by time and space and energy, not a being with little care for your soul, not a god somewhere who must be appeased and convinced to love you—”you lack nothing.” Do you think that a Father who gave His Son for you would withhold anything else? In the midst of counting the hairs on your head, do you think He forgot what you need? He says He knows “even before you ask” (Matt 6:8). Because it is Him who shepherds you and Him to whom you belong, “you lack nothing.” I hope you feel His loving eyes on you, compelling you not to sidestep His promises that He means to land squarely on you. “The Lord is your shepherd, so you lack nothing.”
So what do we do with our lists?
I find that my greatest frustration with God comes when I start to have a theology problem. I forget what God is really like, and start assuming that God is like me: worried, anxious, selfish, stingy, or mean.When the Spirit gets through my stubbornness and fixes my eyes on who my Father really is, I look down at my list again. It’s no less serious than before, but it is less terrifying. If the Lord is my shepherd, then He knows when rent is due. He knows the needs of our children. He knows how tired I am, how difficult marriage is, how tight budgets are, how hopeless I feel—He’s God. He knows. He can handle that. And if the Lord is my shepherd, then He will act in perfect love towards me, no matter what His answer is. If He tells me to wait, then I’d better trust what I don’t see. If He says no, then I must not need it. If He says yes, then I enjoy His blessings. For any answer, I can marvel that the God of the universe heard me.
Instead of staring at the beginning of Psalm 23 in defiance, looking to all the ways God hasn’t answered, what if we started leveling it as an arrow to the Enemy’s lie to us? I’ve found it starts to read a little differently and puts some courage in my bones. What can the world do to you, if the Lord is your shepherd? You lack nothing. We are safe, right in the palm of His capable hands. He knows everything, has everything, and forgets nothing. I still have to remember to get those hooks, though.
“Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”
Psalm 34:10
by Samantha Arp | Oct 9, 2025 | Anxiety, Featured, Life Advice, LO Library
Do you remember the first time you ran and hid? The first time you felt a genuine sense of fear, the first time your guard went up, the first time you felt the inclination to shrink in shame? For most of us it happened young—for me it was a nightmare that gripped my little heart in total fear. I was young enough to be sleeping in a princess nightgown, and in the dream I got up from my bed and walked into an empty living room. When I looked outside, there was a huge tree growing right in the middle of my front yard. As I got closer to the tree, I saw the feet of a giant standing beside the tree, so tall that I couldn’t even see his head for the clouds. That’s the only image I remember—next thing I knew, I woke up paralyzed in fear, scared to get out of my bed to find my family.
In hindsight, my little nightmare was probably a reaction to the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale I heard that day, an innocent story that grew so much in my imaginative mind that it wrapped me in fear hours later. Those of us with active imaginations understand what it’s like to talk ourselves into a totally unnecessary, ridiculous fear. That tree was real, the giant was definitely as big as I remember, and I was in grave, immediate danger—at least, that’s what the little girl in the princess gown thought. And no one, no matter how rational, was going to convince me otherwise.
Fear seems to be our thing these days. Just today, as I sit and listen, everyone is talking about it. Fear of what the world will become in the hands of people in power. Fear of the wrinkles starting to form around our eyes. Fear of that friend who we have to see tomorrow at school. Fear of not being able to pay for bills, or cars, or school uniforms, or family vacations, or eggs. Fear of what might be, fear of what won’t be, fear of what is or is not to come. We over-medicate, under-meditate, over-caffeinate, get side-hustles, get botox, get chickens—all while rest, true rest, is always at our fingertips but never on our calendars. Don’t mishear me. Most of those things are not bad things. The problem is this: we, as people of God, have accepted fear as the perpetual undercurrent of our reality.
You may have heard it said that the Bible contains the command “do not fear” 366 times. That’s enough to hear a new one every day of the calendar year and then some, just in case you have a particularly fearful leap year. If you haven’t looked into all 366 of these, you should. There is so much of the goodness of God we can see in his constant reminder against fearfulness. But our culture has tricked us into a deeper, more sinister, and harder to identify form of fearfulness that I would call victimhood. It’s more than just fear—it’s souls in constant state of defense, always waiting for the next misfortune, offense, or crisis. Instead of having momentary, circumstantial, everyday fear, we take our responses to fear, which are very real (anxiety, depression, anger, materialism, constant entertainment, etc) and slap it on our chest like a nametag. We’ve made fearfulness an identity.
Some of this isn’t a personal problem. We were not created to take in so much negative information, violence, contention, and evil on a daily basis. We have all kinds of opportunities to fuel our fear, to feel like a constant victim of evil and never fight back. Lots of us, instead of looking to what Scripture says, have taken our coping mechanisms and claimed them as identities, content to live under the banner of “anxiety,” “depression,” “anger,” or a number of other things for the rest of our lives. It’s where we live now—and that’s just “how it is, I guess.” But if you are in Christ, the name of Jesus speaks a better word over you.
It is a scheme of the Enemy to keep us in that kind of bondage. If the Enemy of God can look at God’s people, people who the Bible says are “seated in the heavenly places with Christ” (Eph 2:6) and “held together by the word of his power” (Col 1:17), who have been “given all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18) and who “will soon crush Satan under their feet” (Rom 16:20) and make them cower in fear instead of march forward in confidence, then he wins. If he cannot keep us from believing in Christ for salvation, then the next best thing is to keep us from living in the victory of it.
Here’s the truth: we cannot be content to live as victims anymore. The world is too lost, God is too good, and your inheritance in Christ is too rich to let fear make you a victim. Romans 8:35-39 speaks directly to this: “Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present or things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Even if you have been a victim of sin (your own sin, the sins of others, or the general brokenness of the world), in Christ, that’s not who you are. In him, you are more than a conqueror.
Even when it doesn’t feel that way, even when it feels like the Enemy is taking ground, even when you fail, even when tragedy strikes, none of those things are stronger than your Savior’s grip on you. Death, angels, authorities, powers, uncertain futures, insecure incomes, unstable homes—nothing can separate you from his love. Nothing gets to name you, claim you, or rule you but his total, complete, and overwhelming love for you. It will not leave, it will not fail, it will not give up. Victimhood isn’t your reality—God’s love is.
Which takes me back to my princess gown and my giant. So many of us are staring at giants of fear, and the words of Jesus feel shockingly small next to a giant with his head in the clouds. Until you remember what is true: that giant of fear, whatever it is, is just a schoolyard bully next to our God. He reigns supreme and undefeated. No giants, no nightmares, no fear stands before his love for you.
What is that thing controlling your heart and your mind? What is the giant of fear, taunting your faith in God? That isn’t who you are. Stop naming yourself by it. Replace that lie with the truth of God’s Word, and cling to it. There is too much available to you, and too much Kingdom work to be done, to settle for anything less than His love for you.
by Samantha Arp | Aug 3, 2023 | Bible Reading / Study, Forgiveness, Life Advice
We spend a lot of our energy convincing others of the love of God. In fact, for the most part, we seem to be convinced of it for others— fully believing that the grace of God covers every sin of theirs and that their Heavenly Father profoundly loves them. For many of us who are familiar with church, it would be a simple thing to biblically prove that God loves His people.
But sometimes we find ourselves distant, anxious, and unsteady in His presence. We know that Jesus makes it possible to be in His throne room and that He is sufficient to cover sins. We just don’t think God wants us there.
I went to Him cautiously, thinking that He was accepting, but displeased. I went to Him reluctantly, convinced He rolled His eyes when I showed up. I went quietly, on my best behavior, not wanting to take up any space where I already felt unworthy. If you’ve ever felt like me, give the Bible a chance to convince you otherwise— His presence is the safest, most joyful place to be, and He really does want you there.
First, it is commanded that we go to Him. He is the one who commands it. Matthew 11:28-30 starts with this: “Come to me, all…” This is an imperative command. A deliberate instruction. Jesus is commanding that all come to Him. He says the same thing in John 15, commanding us to abide in Him. But how can we come to Him?
Second, we know the holiness of God, and that our sin makes it impossible to go to Him on our own. The Father knew that too. Since the beginning, He has been making ways for us. Establishing covenants, using men as mouthpieces, dwelling in tents made by human hands, leading in pillars of cloud and fire, honoring sacrifices, responding to prayers, and finally, coming down Himself. The story of the Bible is one of God constantly seeking broken people. He subjected Himself to human life and death—why? For His glory and our participation in it. That we might be called sons and daughters. So He commands that we come to Him, and He made it possible to come to Him.
Third, it was the joy of Christ to hang on the cross on our behalf. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus went to the cross “for the joy set before Him.” The joy of bringing us to the Father was great enough to justify the torture of the cross. He called it “joy” to endure the cross when He saw our communion with Him on the other side. In fact, Hebrews calls Him the “author” of our faith in this sense. He chose the cross in order to choose you, and He wrote it that way.
So we have a command to come to Christ, the path to Him accomplished by Christ, and a declaration that it was His joy to bring us to the Father. Maybe He does want us to come— and still, there’s more.
Jesus “knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14) He is not shocked by our weakness. 1 John says that “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” We are even told that His power is made perfect in our weakness. That we are hidden in Christ. Seated with Him in the heavenly places. So when the Father sees us, He sees the sufficiency of Christ.
The deeper our need for forgiveness, the more the worthiness of Christ is put on display. His sacrifice was enough to accomplish not only our sinlessness before Christ, which is a miracle in itself, but it was enough to accomplish His delight in us as well.
To go to Him anxiously believing that He is secretly disappointed is to reject the truth that the blood of Jesus is enough to cover your failures. This weight on our shoulders is enough to keep us from His presence, which is the very point of Jesus’ sacrifice in the first place. Why would He command you to come to Him, give His life to make it possible, call it joy to endure the cross, and then hide you in Christ and include your life in His glory if He didn’t want you in His presence? Even delight in your coming to Him?
I’ll submit to you what I have been leaning on for life: The Father is greatly pleased when you trust the blood of Jesus enough to walk into His throne room with confidence. This confidence does not come from faith in yourself, but complete knowledge of your complete unworthiness, matched and exceeded by the sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf. He knows your frame. He knows your weakness. He knows your sinfulness— much better than you do, actually, for He felt the whole weight of it— and He has covered it to the uttermost, accomplishing not only your righteousness but joyful communion with your Father. I can personally testify to what a life lived with Jesus is like. Living this broken, messy, heartbreaking and difficult life can take a toll on any soul, no matter how resilient it might be. The Bible, and our Lord, does not diminish the difficulty of life. In fact, He often warns us about how hard it is. But if no one has ever held your hands and looked you in the eyes, and through tears promised you that He really means what He says, then let me be the first. There is nothing that compares to the embrace of Jesus. There is no sweetness like the Gospel. There is no freedom like His friendship. There is no greater joy than sitting at His feet. There is no Father who is tender like Him. I know this stuff can be hard to believe— trust me, I do. And I know that this life can harden hearts into believing that there is no ultimate good. But I can look at you with confidence and say that I believe Him. His Word truly is life, He really does love you, and He really does know what He is doing. He is trustworthy. His will is the greatest adventure you could ever know, friend. So here’s my final plea to you: go sit at His feet. Go to Him first, go to Him quickly, and go to Him often. He is so pleased when you do.
by Samantha Arp | Dec 20, 2022 | Life Advice, Wisdom |
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubt, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” James 1:5-6
Have you ever read this verse and wondered why God chose wisdom as the guaranteed yes? When I read this verse, I was slightly frustrated. Why couldn’t the guaranteed yes be something more exciting than wisdom? We would prefer a promise for healing, a promise for a timely answer, or a promise for financial security—surely these things might provide more practical peace and fulfilling prayer than wisdom. Although wisdom may not sound like the ideal answer from the Lord, I think you & I have an improper view of the value of biblical wisdom. Once we search the Scriptures and understand what is promised to us by this verse, “wisdom” can become the most treasured guaranteed “yes” from our Father.
The author of the book of James put together a book that seems like a miscellaneous collection of practical Christianity, with commands to remain steadfast, be impartial, watch your tongue & be mindful of how fleeting life is. But if you read this book with the wisdom literature of the Bible in mind (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, mainly), it’s easy to see that James is teaching his readers to live in light of the “wisdom from above” that he defines as “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere” (James 3:17) and every “practical” point that he makes finds its roots in Old Testament wisdom principles. So, when James tells us in chapter one that this “wisdom from above” is given generously to all, what does that mean? Why can wisdom be so freely given?
As James did, let’s look back at Old Testament wisdom in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is a book of practical wisdom that is meant to teach readers how to “fear God, and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7) and most of the chapters deal with day-to-day issues. However, just because the author of Proverbs is teaching us how to be wise doesn’t mean he isn’t teaching us about Jesus. In chapter 8, wisdom takes the stage and defines itself:
“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…when He established the heavens, I was there; when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above…when He marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside Him, like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man” (Proverbs 8:22-31).
Who does that sound like to you? Who was, according to John 1, “in the beginning with God” who “all things were made through”? Who delights in the works of the Father, rejoicing in the world and the people He created? Jesus does. He holds all things together, He is before all things, and He is the fullness of God sent down to us.
Paul sees this in Scripture and includes it in his letter to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 says this: “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Wisdom describes Himself in Proverbs chapter 8 as standing next to the Father in creation. John tells us that Jesus was in the beginning with God, by whom He made all things (John 1). 1 Corinthians tells us that Christ is the power and wisdom of God. So, what is Biblical wisdom? The person of Jesus Christ! How AWESOME is the Bible? Jesus was the One who was with God in creation, He is the power of God, and He is God who put on flesh and dwelt among us. To know Jesus, then, is to know wisdom—He is wisdom itself!
James says that God gives wisdom generously to all without reproach. Why does God promise to give us wisdom when we ask? Because He gives His Son freely to all who ask! Because “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). The Father has not withheld Jesus from us, and Christ is the “wisdom and power of God”, so if Christ is not withheld from us, then the wisdom found in Him isn’t either. When we accept the gift of salvation in Christ, the forgiveness, kindness, love, and grace of God are freely given to us. The Holy Spirit becomes a guide and a friend, as we walk through life seeking to know and honor Him. And, as we look to God for wisdom on how to live a life that brings glory to Him, He is always giving us more wisdom because He freely gives us Jesus.
When we ask God for more wisdom, He bursts at the seams to say yes because we are asking for more of Jesus—and that is a prayer He bled and died and rose again to say “yes” to. There is nothing in this world that can restrain His love toward His children. Let us seek wisdom with all of our heart, and rejoice in finding it at every turn as our Good Father answers “yes” to our every need for Him.
My name is Sam Arp and I am a college student in Charleston studying writing! I just really love studying and teaching the Bible & seeing people come to know Jesus for who He really is. 🙂
by Samantha Arp | Mar 31, 2022 | Life Advice
The Bible tells you to expect hardships. Christians who know their Bible and examine our culture know that following Jesus is not meant to be easy, and the world certainly affirms that truth. There is little expectation for this life to be free of trouble, uncomplicated, or painless- but what we did not expect was to walk through all of that alone.
We, as a people, feel desperately alone. Especially those of us who live in places where people who follow Jesus are few to be found. Last week, I was taking a walk in the park right in the middle of a city, walking through swarms of people. People from all walks of life, from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds- and I was overwhelmed by it all. That was the second time I had that feeling.
The first time was last summer, when I was living in a different city in which the inhabitants were 80% unreached with the Gospel. I stood at a high point, looking over the city, and asked the same question that I asked last week: “Lord, is it only me here that knows you?” And, I know I’m not the only one who’s asked this. It’s the same for you who looks over your college campus, or your high school halls, or your family, or your city. The core of the question really is this: “Lord, have you forgotten us?”
Elijah asked the same question. It was a time of pagan worship under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, and he felt like the only one left. He says this in 1 Kings 19:10, “I have been very jealous for the Lord of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Elijah tells the Lord that he is jealous for the glory of God among these people who don’t know Him. They have broken their covenant of faithfulness, they have worshipped idols, they have killed the other prophets, and now they want to kill Elijah. His despair is clear in his plea. He sees no hope, he’s alone, and he doesn’t know what God is doing. Does He not care that His people have forgotten Him?
To answer Elijah, the Lord asks him to go outside to the side of the mountain. The Lord Himself was going to meet Elijah.
A great wind tore through the mountain, so strong that it broke rocks into pieces, then an earthquake shook him where he stood, then fire swept through in front of him- but after all three of these massive demonstrations of power, the Bible says that “the Lord was not in the wind… the Lord was not in the earthquake…the Lord was not in the fire.” But don’t these show the power of God? He answered Elijah’s questions with rock-breaking wind, mountain shaking earthquake, and consuming fire-why didn’t God show up in those?
The Bible says that after these came the sound of a “low whisper.” And when Elijah heard it, he hid his face and walked out to meet God. The Lord was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire- He was in the whisper. Why answer this way? Here, God was demonstrating to Elijah a truth about Himself.
Elijah was wondering why God didn’t use the same rock-breaking power to show Himself mighty to all of these people who rejected Him. After all, if everyone knew that Elijah believed in the true God, then he wouldn’t be alone. And Elijah knew the power of God- it had been demonstrated in the chapter before. But God didn’t show up that way. Not in magnificent demonstrations of power, but in a low whisper.
Isn’t that true of our Savior? He came, not as a king with a sword, but as a servant who washed feet. He had great power, yes, but Jesus was not interested in showing off His power to those who didn’t believe Him. Peter wanted Him to- when they came to get Him, to take Him to the cross, Peter grabbed a sword and started fighting. But Jesus emptied Himself, and became obedient to death on a cross. The disciples felt alone. Elijah felt alone. You and I, we feel alone. Why doesn’t God just send an earthquake to show all of our friends that we aren’t crazy to believe Him? Why didn’t God show Himself in the fire?
It’s because He has never been a God who seeks to win hearts this way. He’s much more powerful than that, friends. We understand power through great demonstrations because our view is so limited by our finiteness. The Lord has the earth as His footstool. He is sovereign over much more than the natural world- He is sovereign over every human heart.
God answers Elijah’s disbelief with this: “ Yet I have kept for myself seven thousand people in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” He is able to raise up believers from the remnant of a people who want nothing to do with Him. That’s what it looks like to wield power and grace in the same hand. He is gentle, and patient, and able to see beyond your current loneliness to accomplish His greater, sweeter purposes. He is sovereign over the human heart, too.
Do you feel like you’re the only one? Do you feel like He has forgotten you? When Elijah felt that way, God reminded him that the Lord has much more in store for His people than we could ever imagine. He wanted to show Elijah that His ways were higher than Elijah’s ways. His thoughts are higher than ours, too. He is able to turn the hearts of men towards Him whenever He would like, and when we would despair, His is a gentle reminder that He is much bigger than we imagine, and His hand is not shortened to save. Maybe it’s time that our prayers were different- not that we forsake asking Him to move in a mighty way, because we should pray boldly, but also pray that He would change our eyes to see Him in the whisper instead of waiting on the earthquake. And who knows? Maybe He is raising a new 7000 from our midst, too.
Hi! My name is Samantha Arp and I am a sophomore in college. I am studying writing and theology and serve in the women’s and college ministry at my college. I have a passion for the Word of God and teaching our generation how to find joy in it! I love LO sis and I’m honored to share this today 🙂
