The Good Shepherd

Following the Good Shepherd

gives us many advantages in life.

The Creator of this world

has created us

to love him

and fashioned us to need him.

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This is Part Two of a Two Part Teaching.

For Part One click: Shepherd

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An earthly shepherd insists that the sheep
stay close enough to him
to hear his voice.

But Jesus doesn’t force us to stay close to him.

We have a choice each day
to put ourselves
in a position
to hear
the voice of the shepherd or not.

Wisdom says:

But as for me, I get as close to him as I can!

I have chosen him

and

I will tell everyone

about the wonderful ways he rescues me.

Psalm 73:28 TLB

Sheep do not easily follow a shepherd.

For a sheep to follow a shepherd, the sheep has to bond to the shepherd. This is done by spending time with the shepherd.

Until sheep spend personal time with their shepherd

(and come to love him and trust him)

they will resist following him.

So a shepherd spends individual time with each sheep. He is affectionate toward each one.
They each have a name
and a
special place in the shepherd’s heart.

We are like sheep in that

we do not easily follow our shepherd.

-

As the song below reminds us:

We are prone to wander.

We do not easily follow

Jesus the Good Shepherd

and his Bible teachings.

We frequently try to

rationalize or ignore

the Bible verses that we don’t like.

Until we spend quality time

reading the Bible and praying to our shepherd,

we will not choose to follow him

in those difficult spiritual growth areas

that our shepherd

is leading us

toward.

Food

&

Spiritual Food

People like sheep, do not know how to get food on their own – here I am talking specifically about spiritual food.

People do not know how to get spiritual food on their own. Lots of harmful things look good to us. If we are not full of God’s Word, we will follow many dangerous and immoral paths.

This is obvious in the sexual arena.

People easily fall into thinking

that they have lots of perfectly acceptable

choices

about their sexual life.

But that is not true.

Our good shepherd calls to us

to follow him and his biblical principles

in order to have life and have it more abundantly.

We are spiritually defenseless without the guidance and the covering of Jesus the good shepherd.

I mentioned that sheep fall down and get over on their back and cannot get up by themselves.

We easily get tripped up in this life and find ourselves down and unable to get ourselves up again.

During those times, we are frequently tempted to turn to addictions and relationships that are bad for us - unless we have bonded to the good shepherd and are regularly following his leadership.

Sheep naturally lack wisdom

in who to follow.

If one sheep starts wandering off, others will easily follow. We are like sheep. We easily follow our friends and popular people. We need to make sure we do not follow people who are wandering away from Jesus the Good shepherd.

If we follow those people, they will bring trouble into our life and take us to places that are not good for us.

Every person in our life

creates a peer pressure pull toward us.

Some people make us feel good about serving and obeying God. Others, who are not faithful to Jesus, will make us feel embarrassed, inferior, or unintelligent if we follow Jesus. It is important to spend time with people who will encourage us to follow Jesus.

Like sheep, we all too often

give in to

unhealthy peer pressure.

We must bond to our Good Shepherd and reject the guidance of those who are not faithful to Jesus our Good Shepherd. We must love Jesus so much that rejection from those who don’t follow him will not sway us.

To quickly sum up….

We are like sheep in that until we bond to our shepherd, we are in danger.

We are like sheep in that we really don’t know right from wrong without our good shepherd teaching us.

Without renewing our mind, we will think polluted, dirty water is good drinking water.

We need to love and follow our shepherd.

My last point is an important one.

Jesus is the good shepherd to HIS sheep. Jesus will not force us to be HIS sheep. We have to choose him as our shepherd.

We have to intentionally bond to Jesus.

When we spend lots of time with our Savior
through reading his Word, 
we begin to love his voice and his leadership.

~

The closer we stay to our shepherd

the more

we become like him.

It is good for me to draw near to God.

Psalm 73:28 

Copyright © 2012 Beth McLendon of Inspirational-Prayers.com

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