What a Good Shepherd Does

REFERENCE: Eze. 34:2-5 What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep? 3 You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. 4 You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. 5 So my sheep have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal

Observation: Here the shepherds of Israel are warned to feed the sheep and not just themselves. To take care of the weak, sick and injured. To go looking for hte lost. Since they have not done their job the sheep are scattered and are being picked off by wild animals (predators).

Application/Confession: As I shepherd I must watch out for the tendency, too common in us pastors, to spend our time and energy with the "easy sheep", the healthy and compliant ones. God is calling us to more. To see those who are weak, sick, injured and lost and to go after them. In America today there are millions and millions of lost sheep who have wandered away from the fold. Some of them would have gone no matter what we pastors would have done, some are gone because we (I) have not done our jobs right.

PRAYER: God help me. I want to be a good shepherd for your sheep. Give me the wisdom, insight and fortitude to strengthen the weak, see the sick and injured healed and to go after the wanderers. I repent for doing what was easiest  instead of what you have called me to do. You said that you came to call the sick (not the healthy) to repentance. May I be the same way--more and more!!