Following the Good Shepherd to Abundant Life

``It matters who you follow. It might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it matters whose voice you listen to. It matters what you let in. It may sound simple, but it's a very profound reality. Who we listen to, who we follow becomes one of the more consequential impacts in our life. The voices we trust, the leaders that we allow to shape us, the stories that we live into will relentlessly determine the shape of our lives. Whether or not we live in freedom or in fear, whether we have wholeness or fragmentation, whether we have life to the fullest, life abundantly, or something far, far less. [00:30:18] (54 seconds)  #FollowWisely

It matters who you follow. It matters what voice you listen to. It matters who you surround yourself with. It matters who your king is. Thieves will steal. Hired hands will promise, over promise, and under deliver. They'll eventually abandon you. But the good shepherd will lay down his life. The good shepherd will take off his life jacket, hand it to you. And when we follow him, we don't merely survive. We don't merely make it through another day. We receive what he calls abundant life. [00:48:46] (41 seconds)  #FollowTheGoodShepherd

We probably will never have to give away our life jacket so that people can feel safe and loved. Right? But we can give other things away. We can give away things like our kindness. We can give away things like our encouragement and our support. We can give away things like our love to people. And the bible tells us that when we give away those good gifts to people so that they can feel safe too, that God keeps giving us more and more love. We can never run out of it. [00:25:08] (35 seconds)  #GiveLoveFreely

Jesus knows that, and that's why he says the sheep hear his voice. The sheep listen for the voice of Jesus. He calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them up. Listen to the intimacy of that. Jesus, the good shepherd, knows your name. He knows your story. He knows your needs. He knows who you are, and he calls you by name. [00:39:53] (26 seconds)  #HeKnowsYourName

Jesus says, I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as the father knows me and I know the father. Don't rush past that sentence. Go home and read that again. I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as I know the father, and the father knows me. In other words, what Jesus is saying is that the same kind of relationship that he has with the father, an eternal relationship of endless and infinite love and trust and faithfulness, that same relationship is the relationship that he invites his sheep to enjoy with him. [00:46:31] (46 seconds)  #KnownAsHisSheep

Hear his voice. Learn to trust his voice above all other voices. We learn to trust the voice of Jesus above political voices. We learn to trust the voice of Jesus above religious voices, including this one. We learn to trust the voice of Jesus above the voices of our family, our community friends, our media, and we learn to believe what he says, where he leads us, even in the wilderness because we understand that he always leads to life. [00:47:51] (44 seconds)  #ListenToJesus

There are religious voices who will tell you, if you say the right prayer and believe the right thing, you can have health and wealth and power if you just believe it hard enough. There are moralistic voices that say the goal of life is simply to be a good person, be a better person, try harder, be nice. There are cynical voices that invite us into complaints and sourness, inviting us to criticize everything and build nothing. There are misguided voices that say we should fear whatever is different. [00:41:18] (50 seconds)  #BewareFalseVoices

The voices can be persuasive, can't they? The voices that we hear around us can be persuasive because they're so confident and they're loud and they're so frequent and we live in a dangerous world. And a voice that seems confident gives us a sense of safety and security to hold on to. Jesus doesn't deny that we live in a dangerous and chaotic world. In fact, he names it the danger the danger doesn't disappear. Water is scarce and food is limited. Predators lurk. The shepherd had to use wisdom and patience and sometimes courage to lead the sheep through such a place. [00:42:08] (49 seconds)  #ShepherdsLeadWithWisdom