Like sheep we are in need of a Good Shepherd with a story from the notes of Dr. Moody.

SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 40:11 (NIV)

He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.

STORY as shared in Dr. Moody’s notes:

Dr. Andrew Bonar told me how, in the Highlands of Scotland, a sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get into places that they couldn't get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it, and they will jump down ten or twelve feet, and then they can't jump back again, and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass. The shepherd will wait until they are so faint they cannot stand, and then they will put a rope around him, and he will go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death. "Why don't they go down there when the sheep first gets there?" I asked. "Ah!" He said, "they are so very foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed if they did!"

OBSERVATION:

The comparison between sheep and us is uncanny. They follow their stomachs. They never lookout for dangerous situations until it is too late. They can find themselves in precarious surroundings and all they know how to do is cry (bleating). They need a shepherd – a protector, a rescuer, a savior that will come and save them ... and on every front so do we.

Like the sheep in Dr. Bonar’s story, we too won’t feel the need to be rescued until we discover that we have lost everything, that we have no friends, that there is no other way out of life’s situations. We will try everything to save ourselves, after all we are self-made thinkers and doers, and then, alas, the final discovery and conclusion is arrived at – we need the Good Shepherd. So, finally we give up trying and surrender to the idea that we have to let Christ save us. And, this is the painful part, Christ will save us, but he will save us in his own way.

“All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live … All to Jesus I surrender, Make me, Saviour, wholly Thine; Let me feel the Holy Spirit, -- Truly know that Thou art mine.”

PRAYER:

Eternal Father, pride and arrogance get in the way so help us today to surrender more completely, more totally to you as our only means of salvation. Christ, you are our Good Shepherd. We have discovered that going it alone doesn’t work. We’ve looked around us and we are alone. Come quickly Lord Jesus we cry out to you. Amen.