Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, hello again.
[00:00:02] This is Shanna Williams with the Grace and Grit Mindset podcast. Thank you for joining me.
[00:00:09] I hope that you are having a blessed week and that God is showing up big in your life, or maybe that you're actually seeing that he is showing up and you may not realize it. That's often the case.
[00:00:22] We are sometimes spiritually blind to all. All of the wonderful things that God is doing in our life. And on that note, we had started, I started with you a couple weeks ago on a series that we're going with called the Steadfast One.
[00:00:39] And what we're doing here is we're looking at different aspects of God's character, and we're realizing that he's steadfast in every one of those aspects.
[00:00:52] And eventually what we want to do here is kind of bring that truth into our heart, and it's so secure and so deep that we become steadfast as well. So this is not just, oh, we have a steadfast God. That's amazing, and that is amazing. But what we learn is that because our God is steadfast, we can lean into him. And therefore we become steadfast as well. In our walk with him, in our responses, in our communities, we become a steadfast place for people. We become.
[00:01:26] In our relationships, we become more steadfast. So that's kind of the idea of this series. And the reason that I'm doing this, if you caught the first episode, I talked a little bit about this.
[00:01:39] I decided to do this because a few years ago, I could not get away from this word steadfast. As a matter of fact, I actually used it in one of my songs years and years ago.
[00:01:53] But you do see this word in the scriptures a lot. But I couldn't get over this steadfastness of God, and I was drawn to it. And what ended up happening in my life is my life just became this huge circus disaster full of trauma over the past seven or eight years. And so what I held on to was God's steadfastness in every aspect, in any way that I needed Him. He was always steadfast in that way. He is the only fully steadfast one that we. That we have.
[00:02:26] And so I wanted to share with you in this series, just grow our faith in him and our peace and our joy and knowing what we have with Him.
[00:02:38] So last week we talked about God is my Father. It was the step steadfast one, and God is my Father.
[00:02:44] This week we're going to be talking about God is my Shepherd.
[00:02:48] And this is kind of a foreign concept to most of us. I don't think most of us can relate to sheep herding or being around sheep very, very much at all. I think most of us, when we think of shepherd, we. We probably think of like a rancher and cows. And because I'm in Texas, you know, so I mean, cow. We got a lot of cows here, horses, you know, we. We have some ranches around here. Maybe you do where you are too, or maybe you do have shepherds and you do have goats and things like that. But in my area, it's just not something that I grew up seeing that. So it's kind of a cultural thing that I don't think that we fully understand. The way that shepherds interact with the sheep and that relationship that they have, it's quite amazing, as a matter of fact. So we're gonna go through some of that, and I hope that it encourages you so you can see how good of a shepherd he is to you and how you can trust him and how your life can be so it can be full of so much peace because of that. So I want to just start with reading you a few passages that talk about God being our shepherd. And I cannot believe how many there are. I. I probably will not be able to go through all of them. But I just want you to know this is all through the Bible, not just in the New Testament where Jesus talks about himself being the good shepherd, but it's also in the Old Testament. And you know it because of Psalm 23:1 4, which is probably the foundational passage of Anytime anyone talks about a shepherd, they're going to pull in Psalm 23:1 4. Of course I'm going to read it to you. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
[00:04:34] He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters, and he restores my soul.
[00:04:41] And there's something interesting about this. When you see Lord in all caps, this is.
[00:04:49] This is referring to referencing God's covenant name with Israel. And it's Yahweh. Y W Yes, Y H, Y W Yahweh.
[00:05:06] And this is the most holy name of God. But what I find interesting about this is that David says, yahweh is my shepherd. And he didn't just say, yahweh is the shepherd. Yahweh is a shepherd. He says, yahweh is my shepherd. And I think that is so interesting because it says such a personal relationship that he is saying, I have this personal relationship with the self. Existent or eternal God, which is kind of what, when we look at Yahweh, what the translation, what his name means, besides being the national name of God to the Jews, it also is the self existent or eternal one.
[00:05:49] So David is making a pretty big statement that he's saying, hey, the covenant God and the self existent one is my shepherd. He takes care of me.
[00:05:59] And that's so amazing because this is the way that God introduced himself to Moses. When he comes to Moses and he says, here's who I am.
[00:06:12] And he calls himself Yahweh.
[00:06:16] But what you see in this situation is a people who never fully embraced God's shepherding all through their sheep wandering years.
[00:06:28] They never fully embraced that he was their shepherd.
[00:06:32] It was more of a fear based relationship. But David is saying, I'm not afraid of him, he's my shepherd.
[00:06:41] He tenderly takes care of me. Think about what a shepherd does.
[00:06:46] They provide, right? They provide food, water, they help the sheep get rest, they protect them so they can rest. They guide them, they restore them, and they soothe them with their presence. So this is a very, very intimate way to describe what a shepherd does and what David is saying here.
[00:07:10] And I think that it is so beautiful and so wonderful for us to meditate on this way that he leads. Because David is saying, he leads me besides the waters.
[00:07:23] So what is he saying about a shepherd? Shepherds don't drive from the back. See, I think this is where I was mentioning earlier. A lot of us who live in Texas or any kind of southern state or anywhere there's ranches and things like that. You see like sheep herders or you see, I'm sorry, you see dogs, Australian shepherds a lot of times, and they drive cows, they, they drive them where they want them to go. They bark at them and they, you know, they do their thing. That's, that's just what they're trained to do. But that's not the way shepherds lead.
[00:07:53] Shepherd's lead from the front.
[00:07:55] Super important to know that it's a completely different way of leading someone than what you and I are used to.
[00:08:05] I just want to read you a few more scriptures about God being a shepherd. This is Psalm 81:80, verse 1. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead. Joseph, like a flesh flock.
[00:08:19] And then Genesis 48:15, Jacob describes God. And I love this so much.
[00:08:25] The God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.
[00:08:30] So he's talking about God and he's describing him as my shepherd. And I think that is just so beautiful. Because he got it, right. He got it. He understood that God was his shepherd.
[00:08:42] He's an older man. He's looking back over his entire life that was full of, well, honestly, some things that were completely his fault, that. That he lied about and caused some destruction. But then he's realizing, even. Even through all the junk that I caused and even some things that weren't my fault, God shepherded me through all of it.
[00:09:06] And then let's look at Isaiah 40, 11. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young. So again, we see this very, like, caring, tender way of leading is even gathering up the ones that are injured or weak or whatever. He doesn't just leave them or toss them. You know, survival of the fittest. Sorry, little lamb, you're just not going to make it. So I'm just going to toss you out. He picks them up and carries them in his arms.
[00:09:40] Gently lead those with, that have young ones that have babies.
[00:09:44] He's so tender towards this.
[00:09:48] So you're going to notice words like, I want you to pay attention to these verbs that you see when you're seeing a shepherd. Tend, gather, carry, gently lead.
[00:10:00] So that is not, like I said a minute ago, that's not a picture of a shepherd who is driving from behind, forcing, pushing, making the sheep strive to get somewhere, pushing them beyond their limits. No, it's a very tender, gentle way of leading. And I just. Man, I love that about God that he can just be so gentle with us like that.
[00:10:24] But he also seeks out the ones who maybe have wandered away. Ezekiel 34, 11:12. For thus says the Lord God, behold, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out as a shepherd seeks out his flock.
[00:10:40] So he's not. He's not okay with just like, oh, the sheep disappeared. Oh, I'll just get another.
[00:10:46] Another flock of sheep. No, where are my sheep? I know, I'm gonna go find them. They are mine. Ezekiel 34, 15 and 16. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. This is so similar to what Jesus says when it. When he talks about leaving the 99 to go find the 1 lost sheep. This is the heart of God. I think it's so beautiful.
[00:11:16] So he is saying he will search out, he will rescue he will feed, he will make the sheep rest, he will bring them back, he will bind their wounds and he will strengthen them.
[00:11:26] So what I love about this is, what you see is it's not the sheep's job to figure it out. It's the shepherd taking responsibility for his sheep. They belong to him there in his pasture.
[00:11:39] So, and then when you keep going and you follow this thread into getting closer to the New Testament, you see this prophetic, this prophetic moment, or these moments where it is being basically prophesied out that Jesus or that God is sending a shepherd. He himself will be the shepherd, actually. But Ezekiel 34, 23, and I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David. And he shall feed them. And this is prophetic. Obviously this reference is not, not David, it's actually Jesus.
[00:12:14] So that becomes messianic. And it's pointing towards Christ. And then Micah 5, 4, and he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength the Lord. Again, prophetic, messianic.
[00:12:26] Then here we have Jesus who comes into the. Onto the scene. He's like, by the way, guys, I am the good shepherd. I am the one that was prophesied about. He says in John 10, 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. So he doesn't just lead them, he also lays down his life for them. This is something that's kind of unheard of. Like, why would a shepherd lay down his life for a bunch of filthy, well, seemingly worthless sheep? But Jesus says, I'm here and I'm going to lay down my life for these sheep. John 10:14. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me.
[00:13:11] And I think that's so important. How many shepherds or how many, you know, people who have. Are ranchers and they have cattle.
[00:13:23] Do they really know the cattle? Like, do they even know their names? Like, if there's 150 of them, do they even assign them names? Or it's like, oh, that's the number. They have a brand and they're number 125.
[00:13:35] You know, they probably don't even name the cows. But in this passage, we. We see that he intimately knows, not in a collective way. Like, these are all my, you know, sheep. No, these are my sheep. And I actually know them very intimately. I know all their quirkiness. I know which ones are prone to get sick. I know which ones sleep longer. I know which ones are lazy. I know which ones need more food. I know which ones need more attention. I know which ones are weak. Like he knows all about all those things about his sheep. And I think another interesting part about that is that they also know him.
[00:14:16] They know his voice. So this is what he says in John 10, 3, 4.
[00:14:20] The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
[00:14:30] And I think this is extremely telling of what the heart of this is about is because the reason the sheep can follow him and will follow him is because they recognize his voice.
[00:14:44] They know him, they've interacted with him. He's been so good to them. He's tended to them, he's given them food, water, he's gathered them up, and when they're injured, he's bandaged their wounds. They know him, and so they listen to him. This is so important for us as believers to learn how to recognize God's voice. Voice through our own personal relationship with him.
[00:15:08] I think it's a given that if you're a believer, you know, you should be not forsaking the assembly of the brethren in whatever way that might mean. That might mean small groups that you're a part of or home church or might be a regular, you know, brick and mortar 4 wall church or whatever God has you in is so important. But I think this is so much deeper than that. This is a personal relationship where I talk to my shepherd every. That's what he's talking about.
[00:15:37] I'm going to read you just a couple more. John 27, 28. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life. Then he says no one will snatch them out of my hand.
[00:15:49] That's incredibly powerful that he's not just leading him, but he's saying, they belong to me and no one can take them from me.
[00:15:59] There is a. There's a really strong ownership aspect of this shepherding that's different than what you would see, you know, as a cattle rancher, whatever, like we were talking about a minute ago, or pig farmer or something.
[00:16:14] But what I also love is he pursues the lost one. This is Luke 15, 4. Jesus.
[00:16:19] He tells the of the story of the shepherd who leaves the 99 and searches for the one that's lost until he finds it. And when he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
[00:16:31] He loves it. He's carrying this sheep. He found it.
[00:16:35] And I just. I see that picture in every prodigal. You know, I think about my husband who was a prodigal, and I see this Picture like, you know, Mike's life blew up basically. He made some horrible choices, but also a lot of it was a lot of the trauma that he had spent stuff down over the years. And then he finally just broke. You know, he was 50 something, early 50s, and he just broke. He couldn't do it anymore. And he came completely and just surrendered to the Lord. But I see this picture of the Lord rejoicing and carrying Mike on his shoulders. And he was so happy about it.
[00:17:22] So there's this, you see this repetition over and over of him carrying them. He said it in Isaiah 40, says it in Luke 15 that he carries them and then he also restores them in 1st Peter 2. 25. For you are straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your soul. So again we see this prodigal thing of us coming back to him and the shepherd of our souls.
[00:17:50] So it's, it's so much bigger than God. Just, you know, a providential thing where you're, you know, he's guiding everything and a bigger picture. This is like a real personal soul ish thing where he actually cares about restoring you, emotionally restoring even your body, restoring your mind when you've gone through trauma. I can just picture him as the Great shepherd binding up our wounds.
[00:18:20] That's amazing and beautiful. To me, he is the Great shepherd of our souls.
[00:18:27] And I love first Peter 5:4 because it calls him the Chief Shepherd. And when the Chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown floor, the Chief Shepherd. That's so amazing. I love it.
[00:18:41] I just, I love all these. This is so, so good.
[00:18:45] So I just want to just kind of remind you of all the things that he does as a shepherd for you. For me. He leads us, he guides us, he provides for us.
[00:18:58] He allows us to rest or actually makes us rest. It's kind of like a forced rest sometimes. Have you ever had those moments where he's like, no, you're going to rest. And like everything that you are working on, he put a halt to and forced you to rest. That's a shepherding trait.
[00:19:13] He restores us when we've been broken down by life, when we have gone through traumatic things, things that should have taken us out, he. He takes the time to reset our bones, to bandage us up, whatever we might need.
[00:19:31] I love that he seeks us out when we maybe decide to stray a little bit, you know, and I mean, we've all done it, right? Maybe you didn't stray all the way until becoming a full blown Prodigal.
[00:19:44] But still, I love the fact that even when it's just like a small, little bit of, I'm gonna hang out over here.
[00:19:52] I'm gonna go outside of my pasture a little bit and hang out over here, he still comes after us. I've. I've experienced that in my own life where it wasn't like I was intentionally, like, turning from him, but my heart was getting a little cold, and I was kind of looking over the fence into another pasture.
[00:20:11] And he came after me before I made those stupid mistakes. And I think he does that with all of us. I think he gives chance after chance to stop us so that we don't injure ourselves. But even if we do, he comes after us and he rescues us. That's one of the things a shepherd will do. He will rescue us.
[00:20:29] And I'm thinking of David and when he rescued his sheep from the lion and the bear.
[00:20:37] That is such a beautiful picture of the messianic picture of who Jesus was going to be as a shepherd.
[00:20:44] Then we see, you know, he carries us on his shoulders after he finds us, he protects us, he knows us. He speaks and he. And he stays with us. And I just want to throw something out there to you about this whole voice thing, because I was like, why is it such a big deal that the sheep know his voice? Like, I'm sure that she can also know someone by sight or smell maybe, but for some reason think she really liked the voice. And I think they really like to be lulled, you know, like, musically they are.
[00:21:25] I guess they're like us and that. So, you know, David playing his harp to his sheep, and they're just lulled into this place of peace and resting. And I think that's one of the reasons we're compared to them is we're kind of this. We're like this. You know, we follow anything or anyone if we think that, you know, that that might be the right way. But because sheep are just. I'm just gonna be honest. Sheep are not very smart. And it's interesting that God makes this connection and says, you know, we're. We're like sheep, and he's like a shepherd. We're just. Sometimes we're just not very smart, and we follow stupid people or stupid things that we should not follow. But here's what's interesting.
[00:22:08] The sheep. Jesus says the sheep know his voice.
[00:22:12] So here's what I found interesting as I was digging into this, you know, because in our Western mind, livestock farming and ranching is not really what it was back then.
[00:22:25] Back then, shepherds would have spent long stretches of time with the same flock.
[00:22:31] So they would have walked them, led them to pasture, led them to water, protected them.
[00:22:38] So the sheep became very well acquainted with these shepherds because the shepherds were with them all the time. And it wasn't like, you know, hey, I'm out here with you today. I'm gonna leave you guys, and I'll come back tomorrow, and hopefully you're still here. I mean, it was very.
[00:22:54] It was a very demanding time, you know, lots of time with them.
[00:23:00] So something that's interesting when you look at this historically is there's. There's communal sheepfold. So at night, more than one shepherd could have. More than one shepherd's flock could have sometimes be kept together in an enclosure for protection. So just think about that.
[00:23:18] So all these sheep may be going in these communal type, you know, the way that things were then, the communities, then all the sheep at night, going all into the same pen with other people's sheep. So then how would the shepherd go about separating everyone's sheep?
[00:23:39] And so they didn't. They didn't always do it manually. They. They were actually able to call them and lead them out. So here is this. That's the picture Jesus is giving us, is, I know my sheep, and my sheep know my voice. He's making this reference, which would have made sense to them back then, but it doesn't make sense to us, is, yeah, I can call them and they're gonna know my voice. Like, if they're in the same sheep pen over here with these other sheep. Think about. Think about this in reference to God calling us out of the world. You know, like, you're. Let's think about. You get saved when you're little. You decide when you're little, maybe 10, 11, whatever, that you want to make Jesus the Lord of your life. You want God in your heart.
[00:24:22] But then you decide, you know, as you get older, you kind of start straying away, and you end up in the other sheep pen that you should have never been in. But then there's the voice of Jesus calling you. And you know his voice. And you see so many people coming back because they recognized his voice. And I think it's so amazing. But the shepherds back then, they didn't manually sort these animals. They would literally just call them and lead them because the animals had learned that shepherd's particular voice call. So there may have been a specific call that they had taught their sheep. This is how. This is the call I make. When I'm calling you, it's like how we call our dogs or something. So it's. It's just.
[00:25:08] Yeah, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out.
[00:25:15] Yeah. This is so beautiful. So I hope that you're getting excited about the fact that you are a sheep and that you have a shepherd who is leading you so faithfully, so intimately, so tenderly, and, yes, you can recognize his voice sometimes. The reason we're not recognizing the voice of our shepherd is because we are panicked and we are not resting and we are worried, and we are over here trying to figure out how to get ourselves sustenance and water, and how are we going to fix this and how are we going to fix that, when really what we need to be doing is just looking to our shepherd, just following him. He's going to lead us by the still waters.
[00:26:00] He's going to take us to places to rest.
[00:26:03] He's going to carry us when we need to be carried. We do not have to figure all these things out.
[00:26:13] Yeah, I love it that he chose voice recognition.
[00:26:18] Yeah. So he calls them by name. I think I mentioned this earlier, that another fascinating detail in verse three is he calls his own sheep by name. That Greek word is catanoma, and it essentially means by name or name by name. So here's what you're seeing is that Jesus isn't describing an anonymous mass of animals.
[00:26:40] What he's saying is, I know exactly which ones belong to me, even if in there, in a bigger group, and they're all mixed together. I know exactly. I know their names. I know exactly where they are.
[00:26:54] They know me.
[00:26:55] So such a beautiful metaphor.
[00:26:59] And I hope that. That you know him that way. And if you don't, I pray that this podcast makes you just a little bit inquisitive and curious about, like, I want to know him like that. How do I do it? How do I do it? And I'm telling you, ask, seek, knock is what Jesus said. If you ask, you seek him and you knock, the door is going to be opened. It's that easy. We don't have to complicate it.
[00:27:25] But this whole metaphor of him being our shepherd, it's all about relationship. It's all about belonging. It's all about trusting him. It's about knowing him.
[00:27:36] It's all about becoming familiar with his voice.
[00:27:40] And the way that we become familiar with someone's voice is that we spend time with him.
[00:27:45] There was a show my husband and I were watching the other day. And it was a cartoon, it was animated.
[00:27:51] And I'm like, I recognize that person's voice. And I can't remember who it is now, but I was able to figure it out just based on the voice. And I know that you have done that too. And I don't even spend time with that person. That's just a few times that I've heard their voice or they had such a distinctive sound to their voice that I could recognize them without saying seeing them. And I think this is the same thing. His voice is so distinctive. It's so different than any other voice. And you know that if you're a believer and you've walked with him, you know his voice is different than any other voice. There's such a purity to it. There's such a calm, peaceful, beautiful feeling when he speaks. And then like, and I know, like, there's no doubt in my mind that that was him that speak and that's what he's saying.
[00:28:43] Man, that's exciting.
[00:28:45] So listen, I have talked to you about 29 minutes about this shepherd.
[00:28:51] God is my shepherd. And I pray that this week you dig into some of these scriptures. There were a bunch of them.
[00:28:58] Make sure that you like subscribe to my podcast wherever you are, share it with someone, tag it on a social media.
[00:29:06] You can Also go to shannonwilliams.com you'll find all kinds of resources there. My blog.
[00:29:14] And you can also find some of the books I've released, music I've released. But if you are struggling to make good choices mentally, you struggle with negativity, fear, anxiety, go check out my book Choosing Better on Amazon. You'll find it super easy. Order that. It will definitely help you. It's helpful. Helped some quite a few people that I've had the opportunity to go through it with them. So until next time, I pray you guys have a good week.
