Cowboy or Sheppard?

John 10:27: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me."

What exactly does it mean to ‘follow Jesus’? Sounds like a pretty basic question but I think we sometimes lose sight of what following Christ means.

In our western world we see cowboys moving a herd along by riding behind them, ‘driving the herd’ and they only ride up ahead if some of the cattle or sheep start to stray from the direction they desire the herd to move.

In the eastern part of the world, as well as in Biblical times, the Sheppard walked in front of his herd and they followed. Sound familiar? The words of Jesus in John 10:27: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me."

As Christians, we can far too easily move in any direction we want, all that ‘free will’ stuff, you know. Once we have decided, in all our sophisticated and worldly wisdom, what we want to do we ask the Lord to bless it…whatever IT may be. We like to think that calling ourselves Christians means God will bail us out of whatever mess we get ourselves into…after all, we asked Him to bless our mess, didn’t we?

In that regard, we are no more following Christ than a herd being driven are following the cowboy. The old saying about ‘getting the cart before the horse’ comes to mind. We are putting ourselves before Christ when we make decisions and plans or take actions or behave the way we want before taking it up with the Lord. I can look back on some of the things I wanted or did on my own and it makes me shudder to think how arrogant I was to think I knew what was best.

I don’t think we have to ask the Lord if we should choose Del Monte or Van Camp canned peas; He did offer us common sense and wisdom to think, but how we live, how we worship, how we serve Him, how we behave and speak…those are biggies.

We know more about how the Lord would have us live by reading and studying His word. We are to live and walk and talk more and more like Jesus as we grow as Christians. Take a moment to stop and reflect back on yesterday alone. Did your actions and words reflect Christ or worldly man/woman? Were you following Jesus or bolting off like a wayward bull hoping He would come running if you fell off the cliff?

Something to think about….