Surely.

Psalm 23:6
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Good old Psalm 23; it never lets me down. It’s just so full of encouraging words, beautiful metaphors, and the promises of God. How could anyone read these 6 little verses and not feel good about the God of the Bible, our everlasting Savior?

I thought about this verse the other day after hearing a local pastor preach on the radio how he no longer sins. I believe his words were (and I’m paraphrasing here), “...I don’t drink, smoke, look at pornography, or gamble...so don’t use me as your excuse to sin, because I don’t sin...” As I heard him (yelling) into the microphone I thought to myself, “What a delusional fool!”

The sad truth is that there are a lot of Christians out there who feel the same way this man does: that because they don’t drink or gamble or look at porn on the internet, they are no longer sinners. The reality is that we are all still sinners; from the greatest of sins to the least of them, sinning is sinning in the eyes of a just and holy God. It doesn’t matter what you don’t do anymore (or have never done), but what you have done in the past and will do in the future. Maybe you didn’t literally kill your neighbor for ruining your garden, but you thought about it! Maybe you didn’t have an affair with the aerobics instructor, but you sure did look at her for a good long while. The point is that no one is free from sin, but rather, through Christ we are free from the curse that sin brings.

That, my dear friends, is why both goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. God’s goodness shall follow me all of my days because I am blessed, loved, and highly favored in His eyes. I am made perfect under the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ. But His mercy shall follow me because I’m still human and am subject to my still human nature. I will sin. Regardless of what my spirit wants to do, my flesh will win from time to time. This isn’t a worldly perspective of Christianity, but rather a Biblical understanding of my life made new! (Romans 7:15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.)

So, God’s goodness shall follow us around all the days of our lives. Wherever we go, God’s goodness will follow us there. His blessings, His favor, and His love, cannot be removed. Likewise, His mercy is following us as well. When we stumble, His mercy is there to break the fall. When we sin, His mercy is there to restore our righteousness.