Sometimes Shepherds Have To Holler

Sometimes, God speaks with a whisper, and sometimes he hollers — well, speaks very loudly, anyway. He wants our attention, and we need to give Him our attention. Like the sheep in the video, we can have our eyes on the greener, more plentiful grass on the other side of the road and totally miss the fact that a large truck (circumstance, etc.) approaching rapidly that could run us over.

I had a professor while in seminary who sometimes grew tired of looking at the top of our heads while we were furiously taking notes. He would say, “Okay, let me see your eyes. I’ll give you a paragraph to write down later.”

Sometimes, we get so busy with life, even church life, that God uses circumstances to say, “Let me see your eyes.” While we may be totally focused on that circumstance, we may be totally unaware of what He is protecting us from.

Giving God our attention is not a narcissistic demand. This is the call of God who created us and thus knows that more than anything else, what we really need is Him. We need to know Him. We need to regularly experience His love. Sometimes there are sin issues that must be dealt with, but those are dealt with “in the hug,” as my friend Dave Busby used to day. Dave would explain that most of us “perceive God as one who stiff-arms us until we get everything cleaned up in our lives so we can approach Him.” Truth is, if we accept Gods invitation by faith to follow Christ, then, with His arm around us, God says, “I love you. Here are some things we need to work on to make our relationship better.”

It isn’t very flattering to be compared to a sheep. They are high maintenance animals. But, all through the Bible, we humans are compared to them. Isaiah 53:6 says, “all of us like sheep have gone astray, every one of us has turned to His own way.” But this prophetic utterance goes on to say of Christ, “and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” When Jesus was on earth, he compared us to sheep in John 10. His sheep know His voice. He is the good Shepherd.

I could have hollered at those sheep in Medgidea all I wanted, and they would have moved no faster. But they knew their shepherd’s voice, and when he spoke, they moved. That obedience saved sheep.