9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
God is calling us to be true, devoted followers of the Lord Jesus. That comes as we surrender ourselves completely and recognize that He knows what's best for us. He has shown His love by giving His life, and as we give our lives, we enter into His love. If we are distracted and become curious about things that don't contribute to spiritual growth, then we place ourselves in spiritual peril. We can have confidence in Him and experience His victory over the power of sin as we continually trust in Him.
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Prior to His giving His life on the cross, Jesus used the cross in an illustration about Biblical
submission. In Luke 9, we can read:
23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.
25 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?
Adrienne Ivey is a rancher in Saskatchewan, in Canada. Recently, she and her husband observed 150 of their cows - heifers - clumped together in one of their pastures, according to a report on the CBC News website.
They wanted to check out what was going on, and they discovered that the herd of cattle was following...a beaver. That's a rather moooving sight!!
Ivey said, "He was out and about, I think looking for a new place to build a beaver lodge, and they were following him," adding, "There was about a three-foot space around him. They didn't want to get closer than that." Heifers are cows which have not had children yet, and she said they are "a curious bunch." She added that, "They're kind of like teenagers," and they were following the beaver because they "couldn't figure out" what it was.
Did you know the beaver is Canada's national symbol? According to Ivey: "A Canadian beaver leading around a bunch of Canadian cattle just makes it even more funny."
You really do have to watch the video - it's posted on the CBC site.
There are four concepts I want to share with you today:
First of all, here you have a small animal who is taking control over 150 cattle - just one is a much larger animal, but 150 of them? So, what magical power did the little critter have over the cows? I think curiosity was a factor, but I think a lesson for us is that true leadership can project an attitude. You may not be the fastest, the strongest, or the wisest, but if you have confidence - and, in the Lord, you can have great confidence - you can see Him project His nature through you. Sometimes it's a matter of taking the lead.
I also think you can apply this image to the spiritual battles we face. Mr. Beaver here was certainly outnumbered, and I'm not sure that these cows represented a physical threat, like a stampede, but he certainly wasn't intimidated. I think of battles in the Bible when the people or leaders who were devoted to the Lord were outnumbered and they triumphed anyway. Remember, as the Bible tells us, greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.
I think it is important that we develop a healthy sense of curiosity about the right things. Curiosity about sinful activities can lead us to discover things that God does not want us to know. But, curiosity about His Word and His ways can lead to a new level of spiritual growth.
Finally, we can ask the question, what or whom will you follow? Jesus calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Him. However, we can become distracted and follow the lures of the world or the desires of the flesh. We can set ourselves up to be our own God, rather than submit to the one true God - we do so at our peril. The Lord is calling each of us into an exciting relationship with Him.
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