I´m a Sheep (7/4/09 - 7/9/09)

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

While the work in Quchumi has been tremendously discouraging for our men´s team lately, we are so grateful for the way the LORD has encouraged us recently. He has used some recent happenings in that community to draw in more prayer partners and, in particular, He has kept reminding us of Isaiah 55:10-11:

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Praise Him for how He is faithful and true to His Word and for how He has the saints interceding for this tiny Quechua village!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Please continue to pray for those in Quchumi. The people there have been taking advantage of our guys in only wanting to use them for their work in the fields, rather than listening to the far more precious gift of God´s Word that they have to offer. Pray that God would prick the people´s hearts with the Word that they already have and that they would hunger and thirst for more of Him.

2. Please be in prayer for us as we begin Quechua language school next week. Pray that we would be diligent to study and to practice the language, even though it might be difficult.

3. Pray that God would give us opportunities to make disciples here in Cochabamba over the next six week and that we would recognize and take advantage of those opportunities.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

On the day before our hike into the camp, Jeremy presented us with a surprise: Two sheep (pictured here). There was one male and one female, and we were to herd them the ten miles to camp with us.

Heh. Yeah, our boss has a really sick sense of humor.

We named the sheep Jay (after our boss, whom we thoroughly despised by that point :)) and Bella (after Jezebel in the Old Testament). Believe me, they deserved those names. :)

When we first saw Jay and Bella, I thought of this passage:

"The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger´s voice." (John 10:2-5)

I envisioned us leading the sheep down the highway, calling them by their names and gently coaxing them down the road to the safety of our camp. Of course, they wouldn´t follow a stranger, but they wuld certainly follow us because we were their shepherdesses.

That thinking lasted for maybe fifteen minutes. After that, all bets were off.

See, those sheep wouldn´t obey us for anything. We were walking beside a busy highway with any number of vehicles going at high speeds but, if we let go of them, they immediately wandered into the street. We couldn´t get them to follow us, no matter what we tried. I finally resorted to dragging Jay by the rope around his neck and, honestly, by that point, I didn´t really care if I killed him. I just figured, if that happened, we´d have good meat to eat for our first few days in the jungle.

Even once we arrived in our camp, the sheep were the constant banes of our existence. They would bleat if it rained, but they would fight us if we tried to move them to a dry place. They would bleat if they exhausted their food supply in a spot, but they would try to go in the opposite direction if we tried to lead them to a place with lush pasture. They would bleat if they got tangled in the ropes with which they were tied to the jungle trees, but they would try to run from us when we approached to try to free them, only succeeding in entangling themselves further.

I´ve heard all my life about just how stupid sheep are, and I suppose that´s true. But the part that frustrated me the most was not their stupidity. It was their willful rebellion and complete lack of willingness to obey, even though we were trying to do what was best for them.

I´m sure the metaphor here is not lost on you. It wasn´t lost on me either. I fully understood that I was just like those sheep. I just didn´t like it.

I don´t like that I whine and complain when my situation isn´t to my liking, yet I fight the LORD when He tries to change it. I don´t like that I don´t trust the One Who laid down His life for this stupid sheep to lead me to green pastures. I don´t like that I get tangled and, rather than relying on Him to free me, I get myself even more bound up because I try to get myself out. And these are lessons I´m still learning daily, even though Jay and Bella are no longer with me.

But what strikes me even more than how much of a sheep I am is the incredible patience of my Shepherd.

After fifteen minutes with them, I was dragging our sheep through the jungle, not caring whether they lived or died. And, though I helped care for them during the next two months, I did it out of obligation rather than any genuine concern for them.

But I´m so thankful that Jesus is an infinitely better Shepherd than I will ever be. His Word says this:

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the

sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me - just as the Father knows me and I know the Father - and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." (John 10:11-16)

The LORD deals not only with my rebellion and murmuring and constant lack of appreciation for Him but with that of all of His sheep. Yet He loved us enough to lay down His own spotless life for those same stupid sheep.

Jeremy gave me a very fitting nickname that is preserved for life on the back of my Xtreme Team jersey: "I´m a Sheep." But Jesus gave Himself and even more important nickname that is forever immortalized in His Word.

The Good Shepherd.

Isn´t it good to be His sheep?