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Sheep

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. ‘What a huge harvest!’ he said to his disciples. ‘How few workers! On your knees and pray for harvest hands!'” (Matt. 9:36-38, The Message).

I’ve observed that so many people are like sheep.

They will follow whatever is trendy and fashionable, no matter how ridiculous it seems. Six months later, they will jump on the next fashion bandwagon and laugh at those who are still into the old fads.

They will believe whatever the leaders of their chosen political party tell them without question.

They will never take the time to find out the truth for themselves, choosing to believe whatever the media, i.e. Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN) and those in power tell them.

This doesn’t apply to all of us, right? Surely some of us are learning to think for ourselves and not see everything though either red- or blue-tinted glasses, right?

I’m a sheep. You’re a sheep. We’re all sheep.

Jesus called us sheep. It wasn’t a compliment.

Sheep are smelly and stupid. They are helpless without the shepherd.

It wasn’t an insult either.

Jesus Himself proclaimed that He had come to seek and save the lost sheep. No matter how foolishly His sheep act sometimes, He still loves them enough to have died for them.

Maybe wisdom is admitting that I am anything but wise and trusting Jesus who is perfectly wise.

How much does Jesus love His sheep? His parable about the shepherd who leaves the 99 in search of the one who strayed is really autobiographical.

Jesus would have died for one sheep, if that was all that was lost. Even if it had been you. Even if it had been me.

I’m so very thankful for a Shepherd who never stops looking for me when I wander off, who never stops guiding me back on to the right paths, who never for a second leaves me defenseless, and who will not fail to get me home in the end.

A Disciple

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what being a disciple of Christ really looks like. I think it looks like more than someone who is a fan of Jesus, who likes Him on facebook. It’s more than someone who goes to church every Sunday and reads the Bible every now and then.

Back in the day, if you wanted to be a disciple of a rabbi, you would literally leave your family and your job and go live with the rabbi. You would eat your meals when he ate his, go wherever he went, and sit at his feet and hang on every word he spoke. You would try to become just like the rabbi you were a disciple of.

That’s what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. You leave everything else behind and immerse yourself in Jesus’ words. You spend as much time with Him in His Word and in prayer as it takes. Which honestly is a lot more than I typically spend in either of those things. More than knowing about Jesus, you want to know Him and follow Him.

A disciple is someone who belongs to Jesus. Oswald Chambers put it best when he said, “If any man come to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his life also, he cannot be My disciple,” not, he cannot be good and upright, but, he cannot be one over whom Jesus writes the word “Mine.” Any one of the relationships Our Lord mentions can compete with our relationship with Him. I may prefer to belong to my mother, or to my wife, or to myself, but if that is the case, then, says Jesus, you cannot be My disciple. This does not mean I will not be saved, but it does mean that I cannot be ‘His.'”

A disciple is willing to stand up to both political parties and hold them both accountable to what the Word of God says. Not what FoxNews or CNN or MSNBC say, but what God in Scripture has already said. A disciple is willing to stand up for the unpopular truths that will get him or her possibly ostracized and ridiculed and thought of as old-fashioned and narrow-minded and out of touch with reality.

If those are some of the qualifications of a disciple, then I’m not there yet. I still love my comfort way too much and I have too many allegiances and loyalties to people and things other than Jesus. Probably the majority of Christians, especially in America, would be in the same category.

Lord, make us disciples who are willing to forsake everything to follow You, no matter what.