Present & Future Defense

Jer.23:⁴ “Then I will appoint responsible shepherds who will care for them, and they will never be afraid again. Not a single one will be lost or missing. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

The story is told about a missionary in Africa who needed to get to a particular village, but it was on the other side of a jungle. As he walked behind the local that had been assigned to get him to the village,he noticed that all the man had was nothing but a machete in his hands. “No map?”, he wondered. This jungle had no path but with his machete, the man slowly and steadily cut through the jungle and created a path until finally they got to the village. The missionary of course was curious to know how the man did it, “You have no map, there was no sign, and no path. “So how did you know your way through the jungle? How were you able to get us across to the exact location without missing your way once?” he asked. The man responded, “I do not have to know the way, I am the way”. He explained that there were a group of them in the village called the path, because they know the jungle in their head.

Jesus says to you and I, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Jesus is the path and that means I just follow Him. When He turns, I turn; I may not know where the turn will lead but I just follow Him. You need to be pretty dumb to do that, right? Sometimes people will question the moves you make. “Why are you resigning?”, for example and you give them the dumb sheep answer, “I do not know, I just feel like God wants me to resign.” “But why are you going in that direction?” “I am not so sure, I just felt a leading in that direction.” Everyone will conclude that there is definitely something wrong with you. Many of us do not want to be in that state of “foolishness” so, we resist being sheep.

Second reason we resist being sheep is that the sheep is defenseless. The sheep has no fangs, no claws, no stingers. When a bird senses danger, it flies away. The sheep cannot fly. When some other creatures sense danger, they can run fast but the sheep is not fast. Some animals like the duck can go on the lake and swim, the sheep cannot swim. The sheep is totally defenseless, in fact, no one wants to be associated with sheep. There is no sports team that is named after a sheep. Everybody wants the strong and aggressive animals as their icons, but nobody wants the sheep. People can confidently depend on an aggressive puppy for protection, but no one uses sheep for protection. Have you ever seen a “beware of sheep” sign on any house? In fact, if you visit any one and find a sheep on a leash in front of the house, you probably would think it is barbeque time.

Prayer [song]: I have no powers of my own, I have no powers of my own, Holy Spirit, I look up to You, help me. I have no powers of my own. Amen!