“The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord restores my soul.” – Psalm 23

When we stress over self-improvement and such we may be getting in God’s way. The Lord is the restorer of our souls. And much more.

“Restore” translates from the Hebrew action verb shuwb (sounds like shoob). Shuwb appears around 700 times in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis-Malachi) where it gets converted into our English action verbs: return, repent, recover, repair, return, refresh (to name a few).

Just imagine! Our Shepherd-Lord is doing each of these for our soul. The Lord is actively restoring, returning, repenting, recovering, repairing, and refreshing our inner being.

We can rest in this. We know that “it is God who works in us to will and to do  to fulfill the good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13, TNIV)