My Shepherd

As I looked out from the kitchen window yesterday, I watched a lamb, half-grown by now, wander up the hill, it's coat smeared with mud and filth diluted by rain.  Our sheep trail through the pasture keeping their own schedule of grazing, masticating, and resting--accompanied by a lone Holstein, his black and white contrast visible above the fresh green grass.  Years of working with and enjoying them make passages like this both personal and meaningful:

John 10:1-21
v. 14-15:  I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.

Impression:  My relationship with Jesus and the Father is based on His care for me and the giving of His life for me, the sheep.  The dumb, unworthy, filthy, wretched little sheep.  Why would a shepherd die for a sheep?  Sheep are many.  They can easily be replaced.  They  are quite useless to the shepherd—they do not protect him or serve him or do things to make his job easier.  They are simply His charge, they are at His mercy.  They are cared for because of the affection of the shepherd or a charge given.  Nor more, no less.

Application:  What a great God!  To love and care and bless and lead us apart from benefit to Himself; in spite of our tendency to wander, to get lost, and hurt, and dirty, and into trouble.  There is no justification for His saving grace apart from Himself—His love and mercy.  The Lord is  my shepherd, I shall not want….

Learning Humility I

"From the moment I awake, I've learned to make statements to God about my dependence upon God, and in this way I'm humbling myself before God."  So writes C.J. Mahaney in his book, Humility: True Greatness (p. 69).  The focus, the constant focus, is the cross of Christ.  The death of Christ on my behalf.  "Far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness, and we can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit."  (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.12)

So, as I'm exercising practical steps toward humility this morning, I invite you to join me in acknowledging your need of God, and only God.  Are you wholly, humbly in need?  I have a hard time getting to that place in the lap of so many good things, but I must. 

In coming to the book of Leviticus this morning I am asking: God, make me your under-rower today.  Make me the one under the ship who puts his whole back into it, pleasing the Master, unconcerned about the direction, trusting You with the goal.  Give me the heart of one who serves because I am served; one who loves, because I am loved; one who gives freely because I freely receive.  Change me until the only part of me that exists is You."

But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14

Putting the Extra into Ordinary

Simon Estes is singing in my kitchen as I write!  Yesterday Grace turned on the CD player and it about blasted her out of the room.  "Mom!  Were you rockin' out in the kitchen?"
"No, I just cranked up Mr. Estes so he could help me do housework."

Mr. Estes came to our high school last Friday and Saturday.  Our older children had the opportunity to listen to and interact with him at an all-school assembly Friday afternoon.  Saturday night Matthew sang in the choir as Mr. Estes joined us and I had the privilege of accompanying them.  Now, as I listen to his album of spirituals, I continue to be touched by messages of equality, angst, Providence and hope.  We were also blessed by his guest, Chris Johnson, who chose selections that took any focus off himself and emphasized the goodness of God.

God has groomed Simon Estes to be a man of gentleness, deep reverence, humility and uncanny excellence.  All credit and appreciation for his gifts are redirected to God, the Giver of all good things.  I cannot put into words the fullness of participating alongside him, receiving his thanks, and bowing hand-in-hand to the appreciation of the audience.

David Roper, in his book, A Man to Match the Mountain, describes Jesus as a beautiful man full of grace and truth.  "Everything he did was truthful, and yet He was unfailingly gracious."  Simon Estes represented Christ in this same way.  May we remember that, "True goodness is not doing extraordinary things.  It is doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way." (Roper, Seeing God, p. 129). Most of us will never have a platform like Simon Estes, but our daily lives can reflect the grace and truth of God in the integrity of our decisions.  It is not what is seen that makes a man, but what is unseen.

"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them.  If you do, you will have not reward from your Father in heaven." (Matthew 6:1)