By Joel Samways
In John 10:1-21, Jesus is talking about His people being the sheep in a paddock, and He calls himself the good shepherd.John 10:4 – When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
When we make Jesus our shepherd, we allow Him to go ahead of us. He goes before us, He prepares our way and leads us into safe pasture. He doesn’t let us venture into a place that He knows is too dangerous for us to handle. He is with us, leading us and watching us the whole way.
Not only so, but when we put Jesus as our shepherd, we become familiar with His voice. It says ‘they follow him because they KNOW HIS VOICE’.
In a paddock of sheep, with the shepherd in the middle, it is the sheep in the center of the paddock that are able to hear the shepherd’s voice most clearly and loudly. It is those sheep that can clearly recognize the voice and they become familiar to it. But the sheep who hang around the fenced border of the paddock only faintly hear his voice, it is harder to recognize WHO’s voice is actually being heard.
This can be seen with any relationship, as the more time we spend with people, the easier it becomes to recognize their voice. That’s why for most of us, the voices that are most recognizable in our lives are those of our families.
If we want to become familiar with the voice of God, then we need to be sticking close to our shepherd, not dancing on the borders of our relationship with Jesus, but clinging onto him so tightly, because we know that letting go of Him is like free falling from a plane with out a parachute.
John 10:11-13 - I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
We need to make sure that Jesus is the one who is shepherding us, that it’s His voice we are listening to and following. It’s easy to start listening to the other people we have in our lives and we can often place their voice over the voice of Jesus. These ‘hired hands’ are the things and people that we put before God, but these things don’t really care about us, at least not in the way that God does, so when the ‘wolf’ comes, they just buckle and run away, leaving us in a broken place. Things like shallow relationships, partying, the lies our friends and family may feed us; all of these things may comfort us in the now, but when that wolf comes, whatever it is that wolf may be, those things we were following and listening to will be nowhere to be found.
But we have a God who loves us and cares about us in a way no one else ever could. Our shepherd lays down his life for us when the wolf comes around. He sticks by outside.
John 3:16 - For God SO loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
So I challenge you, who have you got as your shepherd? Is your shepherd still going to be there when the going gets tough?…..
And if you do have Jesus as your shepherd, how close are you really clinging onto Him? Are you holding on to Him with everything you have, or are you a sheep who dances on the fence?….. It will show by how well you hear the voice of God.
Lets get familiar with the voice of God!
