A couple of days ago, I suddenly thought to myself, "shouldn't shepherds go out to where the sheep are and do their jobs in shepherding the sheep back to a safe place?" But then I remembered John 10:27.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27 NIV2011)
So which is it? I'm pretty sure God wouldn't start revealing something to me that contradicts with what is in the Scriptures so I dug deeper. I was very interested in this thought because for the past few days, I have been praying for direction with regard to a certain ministry calling and one of the things I realized that we, as ministers (or shepherds), should bring the Church to the lost and not the other way around where we wait for them to come. That's when it hit me.
There are two kinds of sheep:
- Those who have one ear perked up ready for God's voice calling them and ready to go to where the voice is; and
- Those who are in the vicinity but trapped in some kind of circumstance that's preventing them from hearing and following the Lord. This could be a choice they make but that's another story.
A Christian is someone who listens to God's voice, recognizes His sovereignty, and is ready to obey Him. While it may be true we accidentally become hard of hearing sometimes, we should have a deep-seated desire to be that kind of person more and more as God continues to work in our hearts.
The second aspect is what has been on my thoughts these days. I've been having a very strong yearning to make sure that my influence extends beyond the norms of society into my spiritual identity. Simply put, I had strong feelings about learning to demonstrate properly what it means to be a child of God, to minister to those around and help form Christ in their hearts, and to shepherd the lost back to the Lord.
How? Admittedly, it's not something I know for sure but one thing I want to start doing is to lay down my experiences, my biases, and my comforts and just go back to the basics of my personal relationship with God. After all, our walk with the Lord is not a to-do list that we need to accomplish to be someone or something. At the end of the day, I just need to keep on communing with Him, obeying Him, proclaiming His Word, meditating on His Word, and living as a shepherd.