Need for Shepherding

"Savior, like a shepherd lead us,  much we need thy tender care;  in thy pleasant pastures feed us,  for our use thy folds prepare.  Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus!  Thou hast bought us, thine we are."

He will carry the lambs in His arms!

(Arthur Pink)

"He will feed His flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young." Isaiah 40:11 

Our Lord has . . .
  many weak children in His family,
  many dull pupils in His school,
  many fearful soldiers in His army,
  many lame sheep in His flock. 
Yet He bears with them all, and casts none away.

By Christ's gracious aid, the believer is preserved from being totally submerged by his doubts and fears. 

By His renewing operations, the spark of faith is maintained, despite all the fierce winds of Satan which assail. 

By His mighty enabling, the sorely harassed and groaning Christian is kept from sinking in abject despair. 

By His quickening power, hope is still kept alive, and the voice of prayer is still faintly heard.

There is no danger of the individual saint being overlooked amidst the multitude of supplicants who daily and hourly present their various petitions--for an infinite Mind is as capable of paying the same attention to millions, as if only one individual were seeking its attention!

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are . . . Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Hebrews 4:15-16

 Dr. Morris, world traveler, has seen shepherds in the 20th century. Both in Africa, and the Scandinavian countries. I remember talking with a Shepherd near Bergen Norway. He talked about how dumb sheep really are, "That he must keep his eyes on them all the time." Of course, Christianity was a foreign language to him, but I said, "We are all so much like dumb sheep, so easy to stray, we so need direction."

In my personal life, I so need direction, so wish I had a shepherd tell me what to do with most decisions I have to make.

I was talking with two officials from a local University just yesterday. I said, " I get so tired of these paid advertisements about how people should respect veterans, do you know the VA pays the NFL and other sports programs to tell the public how they should respect veterans? The VA does not respect veterans at all, they talk about the disgrace of so many veterans committing suicide (3 each day). The VA would like it if all veterans committed suicide, it would be so much cheaper for the country to buy a cheap 'tin' casket and a flag, and burry every veteran. Instead of the continued expense of sick care, such as it is, at a veterans hospital." I have written about this before, and will not go into it again. The insult to the veteran, and the embarrassment to the nation, is the VA "sick care." Each time a VA doctor asks me, a totally blind- 100% disabled- Medical officer veteran, if I have any thoughts of suicide, my reply always, "everyday." But that gives me the opportunity such as the opportunity I get in every area of life, to present my Christian testimony. Because, without flinching, "my faith keeps me going." I did not wear the uniform, to get free healthcare. In fact, I keep paying for my healthcare. Not that I have not paid for VA care, but my civilian doctors want me to keep coming to them.

In the poverty ridden home were I grew up, and the images just as vivid now in my blinded eyes, as it was as a child when I could see, there was a picture which my parents had acquired early in their marriage, of Jesus carrying a small lamb next to his heart. I used the scripture above, I would always say in prayer at any church or institution were I was asked to pray, that we can "find grace to help in time of need." Our faith is all based on grace and I so need that grace to walk blinded in faith. "For we walk by faith not by sight" (Corinthians 5:7)

#1732

From The Goo, To The Zoo, To You

I was in the middle of my 8 years of university education in 1953 when the scientists, Watson of Chicago and Crick of Cambridge, announced their discoveries of DNA, the genome of life. I actually believed that this would end the debate about creation and evolution. The promoters of Godless evolution are so intent on living a Godless life that they will do anything to give man a Godless, hopeless existence.

A recent university graduate challenged me recently on my faith in God, even though I have degrees in science. I said to him, “I can write out all the formulas for the clotting of blood. I can write out all the formulas for the photosynthesis of plants. I can write out all the mathematical equations for the bending of light rays as they enter water.” At one time in my life, I could trace a drop of blood through every blood vessel of the chief of God's creation, your marvelous body. At one time in my life, I could stick a hat pin through any anatomical structure and tell you the cellular structure of every cell it penetrated. Your body is made up of trillions of cells, 14 billion in the human brain alone, each cell, with enough DNA information concerning your family, to fill 10,000 pages of printed material. It takes more faith to believe in evolution than to believe in the sovereignty of God. Pride is the beginning of every sin. Only the pride of man, would lead one to believe that he has the intelligence to understand the formation of the universe. (Genesis 3:22).

The most important thing in life is this knowledge, to know Him. (Philippians 3:10). To the young university student, I said, when you die, even as sanitized as modern man has made death, you just become fertilizer. As Carl Sagan said in his TV program “Cosmos”, “This is all there is to it. There is nothing more.” When I die, my body, too, will deteriorate. But, I have a soul (you cannot see, weightless and without mass). My soul has an eternal life. This is the difference in a scientist who has a sane belief system. He knows the absolutes of right and wrong, the absolutes of atomic weights and the periodic table, the absolutes of the decibels in the music scale, the absolutes of the colors of light refraction, the absolutes of the colors in chemical elements, the absolutes of Newton's laws of motion, the absolutes in the speed of light. Scientific evolution is a myth, a fraud. Anyone who has ever seen rust on metal, seen the deterioration of a virus, knows the scam that has been perpetrated on mankind and is still upheld by academia because man is inherently evil, and does not want to be held accountable for anything. He would believe in God if God would behave according to his wishes. All over the earth, men, wanting to believe in something greater than themselves, have carved out their own gods, of wood or stone, and then just discarded the scrapings.

The unbeliever, the atheist, the agnostic, easily recognizes hypocrisy. This is the first thing they throw in your face regarding Christianity. “I am just as good as so and so, and he goes to church.” They never recognize holiness. As I said to a group of university students in China, “Enlarge your thinking. You think your computer nanotechnology is marvelous. I have been to both the Arctic and Antarctic. There are 4.5 million square miles of glaciers at both the top and bottom of the world. The God I worship designed every snow flake, every ice crystal found there. The God I worship holds the oceans of the world in His hands. With His fingers he measures the heights of the Himalayas. He sticks his foot into the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, as His foot bath. Yet, the very hairs of the heads of His children are numbered.” (Luke 12:7)

Faith is action based on belief, sustained by confidence. Ninety percent of faith is just raw courage. Have the courage to test this faith. It is only available to those who trust him. (There is not much future for the rest of you.)

I do not see how a person survives life in these troubled times without an all-consuming faith. Man's inhumanity to man, since the Garden of Eden when the first brothers, one killed the other. There has been warfare involving individuals and nations.

If one ever questions the ability of God, He can take a boy born in poverty on an eastern NC tobacco farm, see him through years of professional education, protect him through a long military career, send him around the world many times and preserve him for continued service. It is not a chance that this type of thing could happen anymore than it is a chance that this universe could just fall into existence. Do you really think that a beautiful rose, a child's smile, a magnificent crystal, just happened?