The Shepherds are Few

Matthew 9:35-38

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. [36] When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. [37] Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. [38] Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

I think I used to always read this passage through the lens of evangelism. And to be sure, there are implications for that in these verses. However, it occurred to me that what led our Lord to make a plea for “workers” was the noticeable need for shepherds over the harassed and helpless flock of God. The text says that the flock was in such poor condition, that it was as though it didn’t even have a shepherd at all.

And so Jesus makes the point that the need is great, but that the workers – those who would be shepherds – are few. He then declares to his hearers that they (we) should ask the Lord to send such workers into these very fields that are in such desperate condition.

God’s flock is in need of faithful shepherds today as well. There are many families without a faithful shepherd in the home. Churches often have greater needs than the one “professional shepherd” on staff can respond to. The wayward, helpless flock of God is in dire need of faithful shepherds who will lead and guide her, nurture and feed her, defend and guard her, admonish and instruct her – love her to the point of pouring his life into her – even to the point of losing his life for her.

The need is clear. So why aren’t there countless shepherds standing in line to care for God’s flock?

One reason can be found in these words of Gideon,

“How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15).

Whether false humility (cowardice) or real, many flee responsibility before God because they do not feel that they are “up to it.” But since when has God been counting on unaided man to do his bidding? His answer now is the same as it was to Gideon, “I will be with you” (Judges 6:16).

This reminds us of Paul’s words to the church at Corinth regarding God’s use of the weak and foolish things of this world to confound and humble the “strong and wise.” God uses us, but he isn’t “dependent” on us. There’s an important distinction here. And that’s one reason the shepherds are few.

Perhaps another reason is the sacrificial nature that is required to be a shepherd. It’s not a romantic or glamorous post in God’s Kingdom. For those seeking their own end, however, it has often been used as a vehicle for their own name’s sake.

To such Peter says,

1 Peter 5:2-3 – Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers–not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; [3] not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.

For those who would use their position of shepherd as a stepping-stone to their own power, fame, and wealth, Peter’s words must come as quite a shock. He reminds us that shepherds have been entrusted, by God, to care for his tender lambs. And their watch over them must come from the heart – from a genuine willingness to serve them. It isn’t a means to personal fortune. It ought not be drudgery. If certainly should not be a means by which power and control are sought after. It is sacrificial – my life for yours – your life for theirs.

To be an example to the flock is to be always “on duty.” It is to always be intentional in your thoughts, words and deeds. It is thinking, speaking, and doing rightly – Christianly – and then caring for the flock accordingly. This isn’t easy. It is a dying to self. But unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot produce many seeds (John 12:24-26).

And that’s what we’re shooting for – many seeds – fruit that is good, lasting, and abundant (John 15). Our Lord has told us that the need is great. We needn’t look any further than our own family, church, friends – all of our spheres of influence. The harvest is plentiful, but the shepherds are few. Won’t you be a shepherd for God?

Stand Firm,
Dale

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A Prayer for Fathers and Their Children

Unto The Next Generation

Deuteronomy 4:9 – Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Lord, a family friend planted fruit trees, although years would pass before anyone benefited from his action. I realize that it takes a special individual to plan for the next generation. Develop an obligation in me to pass on what I have received and add to it. Let me plant seeds in my children’s hearts. May I nourish them so they grow into honest and upright citizens who reflect their Creator. Amen.

Children of Power

1 John 5:14-15 – This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.

Heavenly Father, I pray my children will understand that they can make a difference through prayer. May they recognize your power and what they can accomplish when they pray in your will. May they pray daily so that they will grow in faith and become the Christian leaders this country needs. I ask you to anoint them with wisdom and give them strength and protection. My desire is that they choose to walk in your will all their days. Amen.

Taken from Prayers with Purpose for Men, Barbour Publishing, Inc. 2010

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40 Ways for Fathers to Make a Difference

by Michael Farris at Crosswalk.com

Michael Farris’s lists are always helpful, fun (and convicting) to read. With Father’s Day around the corner, I thought I would share this one again. It’s a great one for dads.

Here’s a snippet…

During the holidays, dads often have a little more time to do things with their children. This is a time of year when moms definitely can use an extra hand. Few things will mean more to your wife, or help her as much, as spending extra time in beneficial activities with your children.

 

I often am asked to give practical suggestions to fathers. Usually, I have approached these requests in an organized fashioned that presents principles, ideas, and methods. However, a lot of really important things that all dads–including home-schooling dads–can and should do with and for their children are not subject to this kind of systematic thinking. Here are my “Top 40 Practical Ideas for Fathers” for your consideration:

 

1. Read your little children a story.
2. Do flash card drills to hone your children’s memorization of math facts.
3. Do a science experiment with your children using Jane Hoffman’s Backyard Science materials if other resources are not available.
4. Give your children their spelling tests.
5. Read your bigger children the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

Click here to read the rest of the list.

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Choose This Day

Choose This Day

Joshua 24:14-15

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. [15] But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

James 4:4

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

The road of life is filled with many choices:

• Whom will I marry?
• Where will I live?
• What will I do for a living?
• How will I raise my children?
• Who will educate my children?
• Will I believe in God? And if I do, is there more to it than simply believing he exists?
• What will be the standard of my moral conduct?

Today’s Scripture highlights the most important choices we must make. And, as the rock group, “Rush,” observed, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

In the preceding verses of Joshua 24, Joshua took the children on an historical reconnaissance in order to remind them of who God is and what God had done for them in the past. Implicit in this was the covenant that God had made with Israel and how they could, therefore, also look to the future fulfillments of God’s promises…IF.

When God made covenant with Israel, it included blessings and curses. Obedience, faithfulness, and loyalty would be rewarded with divine blessing beyond their wildest imaginations. Disobedience, unfaithfulness, and treason, on the other hand, would result in God’s curses. It seems so obvious as to which should be preferred.

And so, after laying out the history of God’s love for his people, Joshua presented the people with a choice. He told them to serve God only and to throw away the idols of their past. Whom would they serve – the gods of their ancestors or the living God? Joshua answered as the covenant head of his home by declaring publicly, “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

It is interesting, and quite telling, to see how this theme of choosing between the Living God and the god of the age – between covenant-faithfulness and spiritual adultery – is repeated over and over again in God’s Word. The fact is, we will all bow before something or someone, simply by the living of our lives. Who will be the object of our worship is the choice ever before us.

James lays out the choice before us with crystal clarity. He says that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. What exactly dos he mean here? Well, he’s not talking about loving people and desiring to minister to them. Instead, he has in mind what Paul had in mind in Romans 12:2 – love for and conformity to the sinful, fallen, disobedient patterns of this world, this present age of man and its ruler, this kingdom of darkness (as Paul puts in Colossians 1).

James follows by saying that “anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world [in the way described in the previous paragraph] becomes an enemy of God.” James is essentially putting before God’s covenant people in the New Testament the same choice that Joshua put before God’s covenant people in the Old Testament: Who will they bow their knees to: the gods beyond the River, the gods of the Amorites, the state, secular worldviews, modern American materialism, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy hedonism, the falsehood of neutrality in education propagated by secular humanists, the superficial entertainment mentality of much worship in today’s churches, selling out the gospel (compromise?? Embarrassment??) by watering down the message, and on and on and on?

James calls people who do this “adulterous.” They have left their first love to cozy up to the gods of the Amorites and the gods of Egypt.

People cry out for their free will, their rights, and their autonomy. God gives them that option, but not with impunity. There are consequences to foolish choices. This seems to be so patently obvious, that it needs no examples. People may choose Baal or Molech or Ra or the god of this age if they so choose. They can exercise their moral choice to their heart’s delight. They can revel in their “free will.” But the wrath of God will be leveled against all such unrighteousness and ungodliness as a manifestation of the curse.

This curse can come in countless ways. After all, its dispenser is an infinite Being. A corrupt culture, pagan children, radical illiteracy, increased levels of crime, escalating godlessness in the public square, countless babies born to unwed mothers and into extreme poverty, babies who never make it outside the womb, drugs, violence, sexual and monetary hedonism, the worship of self (even in…or especially in the church), etc. Don’t misunderstand me: God is not going to curse us for these things. These things are the curse.

Had God’s covenant people not spent the last 100 years committing spiritual adultery with the temptress of the age, we might not be experiencing all that we are.

By God’s grace, however, we learn that God’s people are always being called back to covenant faithfulness – to throw away all the other gods of our past and love, obey, worship, and serve the one true God… and him only. Each and every day that we are granted another day to live, we are given another opportunity for repentance and covenant-faithfulness. And like all covenants, it starts with an individual and his family.

So choose this day whom you and your household will serve. There’s only one right answer.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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My Life for Yours

(I thought I might share this devotion again. I wrote it a few years ago.)

John 12:24-26

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. [25] The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. [26] Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

In our scripture Jesus is teaching his disciples that he is going to die, but that he must if they would live. A kernel of wheat must die if it would produce many seeds.

Why hasn’t reformation and revival broken out across the church at Southside…or any other church around us lately? There are perhaps many reasons, but could one reason be that we are holding on too preciously and tightly to our own lives – unwilling to die – so that we might reproduce many seeds through our deaths? Do we love our lives too much in this world, so much so, that we are actually losing our lives?

My life for yours. Genuine, substitutionary, and sacrificial living. Following and serving our King wherever he may lead…to whatever end. This brings honor from the Father. This glorifies the Father.

My life for yours. Training and nurturing our children in the Lord – when we rise, when we go to bed, as we live throughout the day, when it’s convenient, when it’s inconvenient – making sure that our children are not merely “taught at” but saturated in the things of God each day, all day – because they are eternal beings and heirs of the King. “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

Are we leaving a godly legacy to and for our children and our children’s children for a thousand generations? Are we dying so they can live – really live? Can we think outside our individual lives to see how our own deaths will extend the Kingdom of God by producing many seeds? Will we believe the promises of God that he has made regarding faithful, covenantal parenting? My life for yours and for a thousand generations after you. Talk about a payoff!

But this is hard. That’s why it’s called death. Death to self. It is intentional, committed, disciplined. It’s every day, all day. It’s the discipling of our children because it is our joy, blessing, and responsibility before God to do so. Our lives for theirs. The Kingdom of God grows in such ways. Darkness is engulfed by light through such ways. Reformation and revival are ushered in through such faith and obedience. God promises blessings to such as these.

We must die. We must do with less stuff if it means more time with our families. We must wrestle with our children at the end of the day…even when we are tired. We must discipline our children, even when we would rather not. We must cast a God-glorifying vision before our children (and reiterate it every day) of who they could be for Jesus. We have to read great stories to our children (even when we’d rather doze off) so that their imaginations can ignite as they put themselves in the places of the characters in the stories. We have to read to them about the heroes of the faith who have gone before us, so that they might see how others have given themselves for Christ and his Kingdom. We absolutely must teach our children who our God is – his person, plan, power, purpose and so on. We must drive home again and again what the gospel is and is not (after all, we’re not trying to merely make better citizens or “behaviorally correct” robots). We must teach them grace and show them grace. They must learn what it means to know, love, and follow Christ. They have to understand that our faith is a total world and life view that addresses every sphere of life.

We are called to create Christian cultures in our homes though the power of God’s Word and Spirit, that those cultures might spill out into every other sphere of life. This is first and foremost our (the parents’) responsibility, not others…not even the church. Our lives for theirs. We must die so they can live.

Can we let go? Of our wants, things, desires, passions – our very lives? We must if we would find real life – abundant life – eternal life. Life in service to the King is not our own…it’s better. Only in dying are we raised. Only in dying are more seeds produced, and therefore, more fruit. Our lives for theirs.

From our commitment and hard daily labor now, what might God do in response? Might he use one of our children, (or one of our children’s children), to bring many to Christ, to redeem the culture, to usher in reformation and revival in the church, to extend the Kingdom of God as never before? We have every reason to believe he will! But we must die. We must fall to the ground and die. We must hate our lives in this world. We must give our lives for our children’s lives, and for their children after them, that God might be pleased and choose to honor us by blessing those for whom we gave our lives.

My life for yours. Our lives for theirs. This is biblical faith.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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My Life for Theirs: A Multi-Generational Vision

Here’s a snippet from a new post at Pursuing Godly Manhood…

My life for yours. Training and nurturing our children in the Lord – when we rise, when we go to bed, as we live throughout the day, when it’s convenient, when it’s inconvenient – making sure that our children are not merely “taught at” but saturated in the things of God each day, all day – because they are eternal beings and heirs of the King. “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

Are we leaving a godly legacy to and for our children and our children’s children for a thousand generations? Are we dying so they can live – really live? Can we think outside our individual lives to see how our own deaths will extend the Kingdom of God by producing many seeds? Will we believe the promises of God that he has made regarding faithful, covenantal parenting? My life for yours and for a thousand generations after you. Talk about a payoff!

Click here to read the whole post.

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I Love Being A Dad!!!

Since tomorrow is Father’s Day, I thought I would celebrate with all the dads out there and encourage them with some articles and videos on fatherhood… some new ones and some older ones that are well worth reading.

Happy Father’s Day,
Dale

1.) Fathers: Key to Their Children’s Faith by Michael Craven at Center for Christ and Culture

2.) Two Sermon Ideas for Father’s Day by Joe McKeever at Pastors.com

3.) Without Fathers, Who Knows Best? by Jeff Myers at Passing the Baton

4.) Courageous (movie about fatherhood)

5.) Ten Conclusions About the Power of a Husband and a Father by Brian Dodd

6.) Action Points for Fathers

7.) 40 Ways for Fathers to Make a Difference

8.) Superdad or Superdud: Which One Are You?

9.) The Council of Dads

10.) Dad’s Duct Tape from Bluefish TV

11.) Fatherhood Matters

12.) The Tragedy of America’s Disappearing Fathers

And the classic…….. Dad Life

And here are some things I’ve written with “dad the family shepherd” in mind…

• A Few Notes on Family Worship
• A Few More Notes on Family Worship
• Discipling Your Kids
• Passing the Baton to the Next Generation
• Raising Her Up in the Lord
• Shaping Culture for Christ
• The Legacy We Leave to Our Children
• Choose This Day
• The Shepherds are Few
• A Basic Key to the Universe: My Life for Yours
• Thoughts on a Covenant Home
• Thoughts on Reading to Your Children
• Pass It On: To Our Children and to Our Children’s Children
• Shepherding Sons
• Future Men (My Introductory Thoughts)
• Passing the Baton, Part 1 (from a sermon I preached in June, 2009)
• Passing the Baton, Part 2
• Passing the Baton, Part 3
• Covenantal Blessings
• The Value of a Family Dinner
• Great Bible Story Series for Your Kids
• Fathers Are Essential (Added April 8, 2011)

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