Good Shepherd (Testimony) Lyrics By Joe L Barnes

[Spoken: Joe L Barnes] I don’t know what’s going on, we’re having a lot of technical difficulties today. It’s crazy. Keyboard fail, guitar strings breaking
We come against the devil that’s in the sound system
I’m joking. I’m joking. Lord Jesus
How y’all feeling?

Well, I guess while we’re fixing that, I’m just going to give you guys a story and give you the backstory of why we chose to name the album The Good Shepherd

So… I, uh… My friend Israel, where is Israel? Yes, my friend Israel, it was his birthday week
And in our friend group, The Wood, I have literally The Wood on my arm, sorry. Little circle of friends. Love y’all, my brothers
We decided to make a tradition out of spending the week with our friends for their birthday. So we celebrate them the entire week. We go out, we go to restaurants, we go bowling, we literally just… Spend and have game nights at the house. Like, we do whatever that person wants to do for the week
So, this particular week, he was hosting, he was a part of a conference from his church in Baltimore. So, he’s like, hey, we’re doing it one day conference. I kind of want to do this for the day and I’m we’re like “Man it’s your week, whatever you want to do.” So, we go to the conference

Conference is incredible. Like, they go through deliverance. They apologize on behalf of, like, absent fathers, absent mothers. Like, it was an amazing, like, conference. And then the last session of the day, one of the pastors of the campuses came to preach on Holy Spirit. Anybody know me? I love Holy Spirit. Hello? Love Holy Spirit. So I’m, like, I’m excited. I’m locked in

And in the middle of him, like, talking, he gives this story about a young preacher goes up to… um… the pulpit, and he churches down the 23rd Psalm, just like, the Lord is my shepherd, shall not want, like, churching it down, like, and people love church, so
Even when he was telling the story, the room was getting stirred, because we love church, we love the organ, we love the things. And then he said that after him, an older gentleman, like, more seasoned a saint, Comes up to the pulpit and kind of hushes the crowd. Just kind of gets everybody settled and situated. And then he quotes the psalm

He doesn’t sing it. There’s no theatrics. There’s no hooping. There’s no tuning. He’s just quoting the psalm. And as he’s quoting it, the Lord is my shepherd. And I shall not want. And he maketh me lie down in green pastures. And he leads me beside still waters. Like tears begin to come down his face as he’s quoting it. And the room becomes unhinged
People can feel a shift in the room. You can tell that God had stepped in the room

After the service was over with, the young preacher chased him down, like trying to avoid anybody he can to get straight to him. He makes a beeline and says, “How did you do what you just did? We both quoted the exact same song. How did you make the room do that?” And the older gentleman looks at him and says, son, you know the song really well, and that’s a good thing. But I know the shepherd very well, and that makes the difference

And I couldn’t hear a single thing after that. After that, he’s talking about Holy Spirit, and I can’t pay attention to anything else that he was saying, because God took me on a nosedive. I’m going to let y’all in. Y’all ready? Here we go

So, Jesus. God was just talking to me because… my whole life, I had looked at the Lord as this very distant, disappointed, dictating God, just a deity far off. And if I did what he liked, then he would hate me a little less today than he did yesterday
And then under the shepherding of Apostle Damon and Papa Mark, and-. They convinced me that that was the wrong posture about the Lord. They would look at me and say, if you think that God is distant and dictating, but then Jesus would say something like, “When you see me, you see the Father.” But Jesus is kind of approachable. Why would you think the Father is any different? Papa D said that Jesus is everything God has to say about himself. So then it just unraveled all of the things that I thought about the Lord. I’m like, I thought that You hated me. I thought Jesus had to calm You down. I thought Y’all were playing good cop, bad cop. And that was wrong

But I never thought to look at You as the shepherd
I never looked at You through the eyes of a sheep
Why would David write from this vantage point?
And then God began to unravel the 23rd Psalm
So for the past 10 months, I’ve been just avowing the 23rd Psalm
One of the lines I’ve been hinging on, I talked to Roosevelt about this, I talked to Ty about this, talked to the team about this, is that we think that David’s talking just beautiful poetry, the entire 23rd Psalm, but each line has… years of history attached to it

My favorite one is, thou anointest my head with oil. So to give you the back story, shepherds that have flock hate the summertime. They hate the summertime because the summertime comes with insects and bugs. One particularly is called the nose fly
The nose fly flies about the sheep’s head trying to land in its nose and plant eggs. If they are successful, the eggs will hatch and the larva will hedge and bury themselves into the flesh. They will crawl up into the nostrils and even to the brain and bury itself. And it’s very painful for the sheep. And a lot of times your sheep rubbing their noses in the dirt and banging their heads against rocks and against trees and against hard surfaces. Sometimes even to death because they kill themselves trying to kill off the internal struggles that they can’t seem to get freedom from. And I was like, God, what is- this is crazy, but what does this have to do? He said, well, look around the industry you’re in. Look around at your peers. Look around at the world. You see a lot of people that are successful, and they look happy. And then you get a random alert on your phone that says they’re worth millions of dollars, but they killed themselves. You’re looking at people that you love getting involved in all kinds of things that don’t. It’s not necessarily becoming of who they are. It’s not their identity
You’ve seen them trying to find peace at the bottom of a bottle
You see them trying to find comfort at the end of a blunt
You see them hopping from bed to bed trying to find some form of relief
They can’t sleep at night. They’re dealing with anxiety and depression
And they’re doing everything they can to try to kill off what’s going on
So they’re banging their heads. And they’re rubbing their noses in the dirt. And some of them ultimately take their life because they can never seem to find Jesus

And then He said, but if you notice, this is what the shepherd does. He’ll take the tedious process of covering their heads in oil. And the oil does three things. One, it reaches in and it pulls out the larva, pulls out all the dirt, the grime from the inside, healing the inside. It provides a protective layer around the nostrils so that that doesn’t happen again. But it heals the bruises that were left behind from them banging their heads against the rock
And I’m like God please, please anoint our heads with oil
Anoint my friends and my loved ones. Anoint their heads with oil
I don’t want to see another divorce, God. I don’t want to see another separation. Anoint our heads with oil, please. Please
I don’t want to see another peer of mine lose their life
I don’t want to see them take their lives anymore. Please
It’s only Your oil. Give them sweet peace. Give them sleep at night
God, heal the anxiety. Heal the depression. Anoint our heads with oil, God, please

Sorry. I’m not sorry
Well, I guess this is a good time to do Good Shepherd
We were going to do something else, but anyway
Can I get some water, please? So this next one is called The Good Shepherd