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The shepherd
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The shepherd

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The shepherd

What is the role of the shepherd in the pasture? He’s the whole purpose. He’s the one who wants the sheep and calls the sheep and cares for the sheep. But not just the sheep. He cares for the collies and the lamas too. He knows each animal in the field and knows how each one needs to be cared for. He also knows which sheep is hurting, which is afraid, which is prone to run away, which gets lost easily. He knows each sheep by name. He sits in the cold, the rain, the dark, the blazing sunlight, the icy snow and he watches over His flock.
God is the great shepherd. Psalms 23.
God knows each of us, He knows our names and He knows our minds, our hearts, our strengths and our weaknesses. He knows who needs a shoulder to cry in or who needs a healing hug. He knows who needs a hand to hold and who needs a gentle poke from the staff. Rain or shine He us always there. Night or day He is with you. He knows you and how to take care of you, not just as one of the flock, but as (insert your name here). He doesn’t say “it’s okay number 33687.” He says “it’s okay Lynne. It’s okay John. It’s okay Max.” Because we are special to Him as individuals.
Some of us are sheep
Some are lamas
Some are collies
But there is only one true shepherd and I thank God for shepherding me.

Sheep
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Sheep

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Sheep

Sheep are… followers in truth. Sheep will follow eachother without a second thought. What is their role in the field? They are the purpose for the field. They are why the lama is there, they are why the collie is there and they are there because the shepherd chose them to be there.
Many, if not most, Christians are sheep. They are in the church because they love God and want to grow in Him. They aren’t prayer warriors, they aren’t going to the depths of the earth to help those who have fallen away, they are simply going through the motions of being a good sheep. So what is their purpose in the church? The sheep ARE the church. The sheep are the ones who are doing their best to serve God as they can. Some days that looks like volunteering at a soup kitchen, most days that looks like making sure you pray before bed. Each sheep is fighting an internal battle against the preditors who come at them through TV and social media. Each sheep wants to please the shepherd and in doing his or her best is setting an example for the other sheep. How are you leading the other sheep in your fold? Are you reading your Bible and living a life worthy of a child of God? Are you talking to the shepherd and getting to know Him? Do you ever volunteer at your church? The sheep will follow and copy eachother, sheep always do, so when the other sheep follow you, where are you leading them?
God protect your sheep. And bless and guide them as you know best.
Tomorrow we cover the shepherd and end our journey through the pasture. At this point, do you know which part of the pasture fits you? Are you a lama? A collie? A sheep?
Ask God to show you who you are and where you thrive so you can fulfill your full potential.

Collies
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Collies

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Collies

Yesterday we talked about the role of the lama, in the field and in the church, today we will talk about the role of the dog.
What is the dog’s job in the sheep pasture? They keep the sheep in line. Without a dog to herd them the sheep will scatter and wander off when moving from field to field. When it’s time to go from summer pasture to winter it can be a fairly long walk, depending on where you plan for your animals to graze. Without the dog strays will get lost and lambs can go astray. The dog knows the sound of the shepherd’s whistle. He knows what to do when someone falls away from the group, and he will fight any animal that comes against his flock. The dog isn’t always our favorite person in the church. He or she is the one who gently points out the places we are falling short from the commands of the shepherd. But he is also the person who will show up to the house of the recovering addict because she didn’t come lunch like she usually does. He’s the one who will go into the bar to find the sheep who has turned to something harmful to escape his problems. He’s the one who will sit up all night with the person struggling with depression who just can’t take another day. She’s the one who bakes a casserole for a friend who needs help to get by. She’s the person who cries in her prayer closet for the sheep who wouldn’t come home. And she’s the one the world doesn’t want to mess with in regards to her flock, because she’s the one who will go down fighting.
The dog isn’t always loved in the church because he or she can look like someone who is critical or judgemental at times. But the dog is the one who will fight for you against yourself when you become your own worst enemy.
For those of us who are the dog of the church, let’s not be hard on ourselves when we get scolded by the sheep for only listening to the shepherd, it’s His voice we should follow anyway. And next time one of the dog’s points something out to you, pray about it and see if it is something God wants you to fix instead of getting angry.
God bless the dogs of the church.

Tomorrow we will cover the sheep and then lastly, we will move to the shepherd.

Lamas
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Lamas

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I just want to be a sheep, bah bah bah bah. Remember that song? Maybe most don’t. But when I was a child we used to sing a song about wanting to be a sheep in God’s pasture. But perhaps not all of us are sheep. God said that He would send shepherds to lead the sheep -pastors. But what about those who aren’t simply part of the congregation but have a specific calling inside the church, not as pastor, but as one of the other ministering bodies in the building?
For this let us take a moment to look at a sheep farm. On the farm you have your shepherds, then you have your lamas or donkeys, then you have your collies or terriers, then you have your sheep.
We all know what the shepherds do, but what does a lama or donkey do? We have several shepherds in our area and they will tell you that the lama or donkey is there to protect the sheep. They will fight off wolves and wild cats and keep the sheep safe. They aren’t social and don’t always spend time with the sheep, but they are always there to silently protect and defend. They are our prayer warriors. Our prayer warriors aren’t always social people, they are often missing from group prayer meeting, because they are in their own corner fighting on their knees in a place where they can’t be distracted. They are battling for you against the enemy and keeping you safe. They are the lamas.
Tomorrow we will talk about the collies and terriers. The next day we will talk about the sheep. But for today, be grateful for the lamas in your church. Praise God that He gives us all a purpose.

Hey there little red. Who have you been listening to?
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Hey there little red. Who have you been listening to?

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Hey there little Red. Who have you been listening to?

Imagine how that story would have gone if Riding Hood had listened to the wolf. She would have been a lovely dinner for a hungry wolf family and the story would have been shorter and without space for all the sad remakes.
We too are walking through the woods, we don’t really know where we are going or if it’s going to stop being dark. What we do know is that there is an enemy waiting for us. Prowling. If we listen to what he says we will be dinner. The wolf says stuff like, “everyone is doing it.” “It’s legal now.” “It won’t hurt anyone.” “God loves me despite my flaws.”
The wolf isn’t stupid. He takes things that sound good and use them to twist the truth. Lots of things that are legal are that way because they are fine, but some are legal because the law makers gave into pressure, or chose to lower the law’s standards to make extra money. Sometimes when everyone is doing something it’s a good idea, like brushing your teeth or eating less salt. But lots of stuff everyone does is simply people living according to the flesh and not God’s word. It won’t hurt anyone is a good policy, unless it will hurt you and you haven’t considered that a worthy concern.
God does love you despite your flaws. But it doesn’t stop there. God want you to leave your sins behind and follow Him.
See? Twisting. The wolf is always twisting the truth. He speaks softly in your ear and tells you half truths that pull you off the path and lead you to his den. Sometimes he even infiltrates grandma’s house, (the church, your small group, your friends, your family) and gets to you that way.
You have to not listen to the wolf to get back home safely. Going into the woods is mandatory. Going off the path is optional. Listen to the word of God. As one of my favorite preachers once said, “get to know God so well that when the devil comes to tell you lies, God’s voice blocks him out.”
Take God’s hand and stay on the path. Beware the false words of the preditor and trust the Truth of God.

( disclaimer: I do not believe actual wolves are evil. They are wild animals and need respect but should not be killed or trapped due to fear. Use sense and caution when dealing with all wild animals.)

He is the breath
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He is the breath

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He is the breath

He is the breath inside my lungs, I am just the breather.
I am simply using what He has given me to get through each day. We make everything about us. We make music meant to worship Jesus about our carnal relationships, we make our bodies meant to honor Him a temple of worldly pleasures, we make our minds that were meant to serve Him a battleground against Him. We don’t even acknowledge that God gave us all these things. That they are gifts from Him.
He is the breath inside our lungs, we simply use what He has given us.
Like CS Lewis said when speaking of God. He said, ‘we are like children, who ask their Father for money to go and buy Him a gift. And like the good Father He is, He always rejoices when we give our lives back to Him.’ -Mere Christianity (rough quote from my memory. I recommend reading the book for he says it so much better than I have here)
When we give our lives to Jesus, we are simply giving back to Him what always was His. We think we belong to ourselves, but we belonged to Him first.
He is everything that is important about us. Do we make Him our desire? Do remember to prioritize Him? He prioritizes us. We are His desire. We are nothing but hollow human shells without Him filling us with life. He is our redeemer. Let Him redeem you.

The Shepherds humility
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The Shepherds humility

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This weekend was my last weekend for camping before winter comes. My dog and I took our first day at our camp spot to go hiking. The fall colors were beautiful and we went for a long hike down the trails. At the end of the trail we had chosen we ended up in a farmer’s field. He had just finished taking off all of his wheat and the sharp unbending stocks stood in our way. My dog is a Jack Russell, so he’s not very tall. The stocks were too high for him so I had to pick him up and carry him. We have been hiking for a really long time or else I would have turned us around and taken us back the way we had come. But the road lay ahead of us just beyond the field so I picked my dog up and carried him in my arms. He’s not a very light Jack Russell. He was too heavy to carry in my arms the whole way so I placed him up on my shoulders, like shepherds do with sheep. In doing this I realized a couple of things. We often see images of Jesus carrying lambs (representing us) on His shoulders as He traverses a rocky or dangerous area. He is always carrying the lamb on His shoulders, because that’s what shepherds do. When I placed my Jack Russell, who’s considerably lighter than a lamb, up on my shoulders it caused my body to bend forward in a position of bowing humility toward the terrain that I was navigating. Holding his little feet on either side of my neck and having him trust that I wouldn’t let him fall all seemed to he symbolic of the way Jesus carries us. And of the way He carried the cross. He humbled Himself. We hear people say that all the time but do we really acknowledge what it means. He humbled Himself. Bowing is often a sign of respect or humility. I see Jesus bowed under the weight of the cross on His back and shoulders, like He would have carried the lamb in the images we see. When Jesus placed the cross on His back, He was carrying us every one of us. Every person, every name that would ever exist was attached to that cross, when He sacrificed Himself for our sins. And like the images we see of Him carrying the little lamb on His shoulders, He had to bow forward. To put a sacrifice of humility on someone who didn’t ever need to be humbled, God didn’t need to humble Himself, if anyone had the right to not be humble, it’s the guy who created the whole world. But He still chose to humble Himself for us, in dying on the cross, in carrying the cross, in carrying us He had to bow forward to take the strain and the weight of our sins upon Himself as He carries us forward toward the end goal. We can’t do it on our own, we just don’t have it in us. We can try and we will fail, but He will never fail. Like I said earlier we have to trust Him, as He places us on His shoulders, to never drop us. But He won’t, He’s God, He loves us. And He buys Himself forward to take our weight on to Him, because that’s just who He is.
Happy October 1

Let all idols fall
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Let all idols fall

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When the ark of the Lord had been in Philistine territory seven months, the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.” They answered, “If you return the ark of the god of Israel, do not send it back to him without a gift; by all means send a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been lifted from you.”
1 Samuel 6:1‭-‬3 NIV

I love this. It scares me too, we often forget just how powerful our God is. I love that God’s enemies thought they had won. They paraded around and celebrated defeating Isreal and taking the Arc of the Covenant. They mocked God by placing His Arc next to the false idol of their god, thinking it was greater than the God of Israel. Then came day 2. God struck them with plague after plague and set death and sickness on every city His Arc was brought to. He showed His enemies His power until they repented of their actions and sent His Arc back to His people, alone with a guilt offering, so basically an apology. God decimated those who mocked Him. I love this because it’s cool. I also love it because it reminds us that we don’t have to fight in our power against the enemies of God who are also our enemies. God will fight for us, through us and for Himself. He destroys evil with the flick of a hand. We simply need to wait and know He can do it. Somedays it feels like God will never slay Goliath, Somedays it feels like the lions will eat their fill and the furnace will burn us up. Somedays it feels like the light will never win. But He does win! He has won! The cross declared it. God is the Victor over the devil and all evil. The devil keeps fighting even though he knows he’s lost because he wants every soul he can get to break God’s heart. But God has defeated him. He has thrown down the devil’s idols before and will do it again. We simply need to trust and be patient in His timing.

Lesson learned from Timothy
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Lesson learned from Timothy

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Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
(Point: Sometimes God let’s us go through hardships to show us His power. Lazarus would have been qaiting for his friend, Jesus to come and heal him. The sisters were waiting for Jesus to renew the body of their brother. Each was suffering in his or her own way. One physical, one emotional, both serious and in meed of Jesus to come, Right NOW! But that wasn’t God’s plan. That is so hard to deal with and happens often in our lives. God let Saul hunt David for so long because it was part of God’s purpose and plan. God permitted the three Hebrew slaves to be thrown into the fire to prove His power. Even Jesus being born the way He was was a struggle that happened due to God saying years before that He would prove Himself by sending His son in this way. Just because you are struggling does not mean you are outside of God’s plan, sometimes the struggle is God’s plan. Before anyone says something about a good father not permitting struggle and pain to His kids, let us take a moment and recall Gethsemane and Golgatha. He is good, but hard times will still come. But the blessing is that He will be with us during those times and won’t let us fall farther than we can bear.)

Continuing the Scripture:
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.” After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
(They still didnt get it. They were physically with Jesus everyday and still couldn’t understand that He knew all and had everything in His hands. This is why He was glad He had not been there to save His friend from death, because now the deciples were going to see an even bigger miracle, one that would guide them to have even more faith, faith that was about to be kicked down and stepped on in the death of Jesus. They needed Faith that Jesus really COULD bring people back from the dead. Sometimes when we dont get it Jesus will permit us to go through a trial that proves He is still God and He knows what He’s doing. It hurts and shakes us, but in the end we will see and understand exactly who we serve.)

Next passage of the verse:
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Let us go that we may die with Him.
I’m a Thomas fan. Mostly because I relate to him. He was a realist. He wanted things he could see and touch and make sense of. Which can be hard when following Jesus. Thomas gets a lot of criticism for his upper room moment, no one criticizes the other deciples for doubting the women when they came and told them that Jesus had risen, yet Thomas gets everyone’s scorn. No one recalls that earlier in history Thomas had been the only one to encourage the others to go back with Jesus to Judea where they had literally! Just escaped from. Some have suggested that the upper room shows that Thomas was being sarcastic here. Or a nay sayer by suggesting they would die. I don’t see that. What I see is a man saying to Jesus. ‘I know I will die, but I’m coming with you anyway.’
Whatever his statements tone really was back then doesn’t matter. He knew the risk and still wanted to go back with Jesus.

Do not forsake
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Do not forsake

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not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
Hebrews 10:25 KJV

7am on a Sunday. Other people are still in bed and look to a day of doing nothing. But you are up and getting the coffee on. Walk the dog. Get dressed for the day and grab your stuff for the Sunday service. Are you a greeter? Part of the worship team? The person who sweeps snow off the sidewalk before Church? Maybe you are the pastor. Give it another couple of hours and the congregation will be there. They too got up on a day when PJs and hot chocolate would have been so much more pleasant. In come the body of Christ and you all sit down and chat. Then the worship starts and you praise God. Then the pastor comes and you hear God’s word. Then you go home.
It sounds so simple. This ‘Church’ thing. But it is one of the most important things you will do in your week. Too many have come into the habit of streaming Church from their living room and making the effort to become part of a Church family. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that we can stream Church is great! And there are days when you can’t get to Church physically and need to live stream. The fact that that is possible is a blessing. But it shouldn’t be all you do. Church is so much more than a sermon from the pulpit. It’s a place where you can serve God. You get to physically be part of a Church family and to have that happen it takes commitment and effort on your part. You have to keep attending and start volunteering, doing little things that connect you to the people and the pastor. God does not want us to stop gathering with other believers. That might not look like Church as we know it in up coming days. It may look like a home Church or a small group. It may be simply someone reading the Bible as you gather together and then discuss God’s words. For many people Church is a secret and dangerous affair. These people could spend time with God on their own each week and not risk getting caught by gathering with other Christians. Yet they gather anyway. Why? Because they understand the power and importance of being with other Christians. They get that we need to encourage and be encouraged. We need prayer circles and a safe place to go where Jesus is the center. Though the body is in peril or discomfort their souls know they are safe there with others like them.
If they can gather together, why can’t we? Why would we even consider stopping? Our greatest worry is whether or not we feel like crawling out our warm beds. And yet we consider staying home and simply streaming. We must gather in the upper rooms we have been gifted. Whether that’s a Church building or someone’s home, or perhaps a hidden chamber in the basement of some forgotten building where our enemies cannot find us. No matter what it looks like we must continue to gather.