In learning to shepherd people according to God, we need to learn from the pattern of the Lord Jesus in His ministry, having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and being filled with His seeking and shepherding spirit in caring for others.
The Lord Jesus set up a pattern of how to shepherd the sheep, for He came as the good Shepherd, and He saw how the people of Israel were harassed and cast away like sheep not having a shepherd.
So the Lord took an all-inclusive tender care of His sheep, and surprisingly for many, He didn’t spend too much time with the good and self-righteous Pharisees but chose to be with the sinners, the sick ones, the tax collectors, the ones who drank wine, and the undesirable in those days’ society.
He cared for them, He didn’t criticise them, He didn’t point out their failures, and He didn’t try to correct them. He simply was with them, He healed the sick, He spoke the gospel, He ate and drank with the sinners, He cast out demons, He healed the lepers, and He saved many to be in His heavenly kingdom.
What a loving heart He had, and what a seeking and shepherding spirit He manifested when He was on earth. Such a spirit should also be in us, and in all we do in the church life we need to take the shepherding way.
We need to preach the gospel by shepherding people, we need to care for others by shepherding them, and we need to revive the church by shepherding one another. Shepherding is the key and secret to the gospel of John, and shepherding is the key to having a new revival, a revival that lasts and can be maintained.
Our aspiration in the church life shouldn’t be to lead others or to have authority, but to shepherd, to care for others by living Christ and taking Him as our life and person. The Christ who lives in us is the good Shepherd, and He is willing to care for others according to God.
When we touch the Lord, enjoy Him, walk according to the spirit, and live Christ, we will express Him, and we will shepherd people according to God, having the same loving and seeking heart, and being filled with a shepherding spirit.
May we be saved from trying to lord it over others and be saved from seeking to have authority or control others lives, and may we learn from the Lord Jesus to humble ourselves, love others, care for them, and shepherd them with a loving heart and a seeking spirit, so that they may grow in life and be built as the church, the Body of Christ, the one flock of God.
May the Lord’s heart of love for all men and His seeking and shepherding spirit spread throughout the world in all the local churches so that we may shepherd people by cherishing them in the Lord’s humanity and nourishing them in His divinity.
Having the Father’s Loving and Forgiving Heart and the Lord’s Shepherding and Seeking Spirit in Shepherding People
We need to shepherd people according to the pattern of the Lord Jesus in His ministry for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy. The Lord Jesus came as the good Shepherd, and He laid down His life for the sheep, so that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10-11).
In Luke 15 in particular we see the steps the processed Triune God took in seeking and gaining fallen people.
Here we see the Lord Jesus typified by a shepherd who, when one sheep is lost, leaves the ninety-nine in safety and goes to seek the one lost sheep, and when He finds it, He rejoices with great joy and even holds a celebration gathering for others to rejoice with Him. Christ as the Shepherd seeks out each of the lost sheep individually until He finds it, and then He brings it back to the flock.
The Spirit is typified by a woman who had two coins but lost one, and now she’s sweeping, turning on the light, and searching until she finds the one lost coin, and when she finds it, she rejoices and brings in others also to rejoice with her. The Spirit searches the hearts of the lost sinners, He turns on the word of God as light, and He sweeps in them until He finds them, each of them individually, and He brings them into the church.
The Father is typified by the loving and receiving waiting father, who saw the prodigal son from far away and ran to embrace him and receive him back. The Father always lovingly waits for us to come back to God.
We need to have the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and the Saviour’s shepherding and seeking spirit when we shepherd others.
When the Lord Jesus was on earth He sought those who were lost, and to many self-righteous ones it seemed that He spent a lot of time with the sinners, the tax collectors, those who were drinking wine, and the sick people.
He had a loving and forgiving heart, and He had a shepherding and seeking spirit as He was shepherding people. But today if we were to choose whether to care for someone who drinks beer or someone who is a good brother in the church, we would rather not be with the backsliding one. We may even gossip about the ones who go to movies, go to the pub, and drink beer.
We need to realise that in the New Jerusalem there will be no more drinking beer, but today the Lord Jesus is a standing heavenly ladder joining earth to heaven; He came to seek and save the lost, not the seemingly good ones.
The Lord as the heavenly ladder has to appear to many of those who are sinful, backsliding, and “not promising”, and the way He does this is by us having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and the Lord’s shepherding and seeking spirit.
We need to love all the saints, love all men, and love all the world, just as the Lord did. We should not classify and categorise or label people, and we should not choose the good ones to care for them.
Actually, very few of the good ones remain in the church life, but many of the seemingly unpromising and bad ones are still here.
The Lord chose someone like Jacob who was a supplanter, a gangster, one who cheated and undermined and always wanted to have others’ things. We may have chosen Esau, but the Lord loved and chose Jacob. We need to have the spirit of loving all men.
We need to ask the Lord to give us His loving and forgiving heart and put in us a seeking and shepherding spirit so that we may shepherd people, even shepherd all people.
Our not having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and the Saviour’s shepherding and seeking spirit is the reason for our barrenness. We may work much, be very diligent and love the Lord, but unless the Lord’s loving and forgiving heart is in us, and unless His seeking and shepherding spirit is in us, we do not bear much fruit.
However, if we live Christ by walking to the spirit, if the Father’s loving and forgiving heart is in us and the Lord’s seeking and shepherding spirit is inspiring us, we will have a revival in the church life as we cooperate with the Lord to shepherd people – shepherd both the good and the not so good, shepherd the saints and the backsliding ones.
Lord Jesus, give us the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and the Saviour’s shepherding and seeking spirit so that we may shepherd people just as You did. Save us from labeling people or criticising them based on what they do, and give us a heart of love for all men. Oh Lord, our heart is so narrow, so small, and so picky in whom to care for. Enlarge our heart, and duplicate Your heart of forgiveness and love in us. Strengthen our spirit and make it a shepherding and seeking spirit for the lost sheep.
Learning from the Lord to Cherish People and Nourish them for the Church Life
The Lord Jesus came not to save the good ones or the self-righteous ones, but those who were sick, the sinners, those who knew they had no hope.
He was enjoying feasts with the tax collectors and sinners, and He was being criticized by the Pharisees, who condemned Him for eating with such people (Matt. 9:10-11).
So the Lord took opportunity after opportunity, even in the face of criticism and opposition, to reveal Himself as the Physician who came to seek and heal the sick, and as the Shepherd who came to seek and bring into His flock the lost sheep.
He had a loving and forgiving heart toward the sinners, the sick ones, the tax collectors (who were hated by everyone), the lepers, the ones who drank wine, and the lowest in the society. The Lord didn’t come to judge man according to righteousness but to heal men according to mercy and grace.
The ones whom the Lord made people of His heavenly kingdom were lepers (Matt. 8:2-4), paralytics (8:5-13; 9:2-8), the fever-ridden (8:14-15), the demon-possessed (8:16, 28-32), those sick of all kinds of illnesses (8:16), the despised tax collectors, and sinners (9:9-11).
He came to minister to them as a Physician so that He may heal them, recover them, enliven the, and save them, for them to be reconstituted to be citizens of His heavenly kingdom.
We need to learn from the Lord Jesus and have His loving and forgiving heart and His seeking and shepherding spirit so that we may cherish people and nourish people.
We need to cherish people in the humanity of Jesus, making them feel happy, pleasant, and comfortable, just like the Lord Jesus did (Matt. 9:10; Luke 7:34).
Then, we need to nourish people in the divinity of Christ, feeding them with the all-inclusive Christ in His ministry of three stages (incarnation, inclusion, and intensification) for them to grow in life and be built up in the church (see Matt. 24:45-47).
To shepherd people we need to cherish them and nourish them; to cherish people is to make people happy and pleasant in the Lord’s humanity, and to nourish them is to feed them in the Lord’s divinity.
Christ is cherishing us in His humanity, causing us to feel happy and pleasant in the church life, and he is energised with His divinity to nourish us so that the churches may grow and mature in the divine life, and the saints would become His overcomers in His sevenfold intensification.
Lord Jesus, we want to learn from You to cherish and nourish people so that they would become citizens of the kingdom of heavens. Thank You for setting up a pattern of shepherding others through cherishing and nourishing them. Oh Lord, may we not condemn or criticise others but cherish them in Your humanity and nourish them in Your divinity so that they may grow in life and be produced as Your overcomers. Keep us under Your shepherding, Lord, and make us those who cooperate with Your shepherding today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by James Lee for this week, and portions from, The Vital Groups, chs. 4, 11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 6, The Apostolic Ministry in Cooperation with Christ’s Heavenly Ministry .
- Hymns on this topic:
# O to be like Thee! full of compassion, / Loving, forgiving, tender and kind, / Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting, / Seeking the wand’ring sinners to find. (Hymns #398)
# Tell me all about the Shepherd Who / Left the ninety-nine to find the lost sheep; / How You came to earth to search for me, / And came rejoicing when You found me. (Song on, Jesus Christ, You are the Man-Savior)
# God’s heart toward us is good in every way; / And our hearts too, in all we do and say, / Can minister and build up all the saints; / With cherishing and kindness, love constrains. / Tend to the sheep and care for all their needs / ‘Til, lacking nothing, God’s supply exceeds / Whatever seems too much for us to bear, / Restored in heart and soul by loving care. (Song on, Shepherd the flock)
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