Shepherding others According to God – According to His Nature, Desire, Way, and Glory

As believers in Christ, we are under His tender care and shepherding, and we are commissioned by Him to shepherd His sheep and feed His lambs (see John 21); therefore, in order for us to shepherd according to God, we need to learn how to shepherd by being one with the Lord in His heavenly ministry.

The key to the entire Gospel of John is shepherding; the Lord Jesus came as God incarnated to be a man so that we, His sheep, may have life and may have it abundantly, and the way He gives us life is by shepherding us.

First, the Lord comes to us wherever we are, and He cherishes us by healing us, touching us, feeding us, and taking care of our need…and then He nourishes us by giving us His divine life and life supply to meet all our needs.

Christ came to be our life by cherishing and nourishing us; He makes us happy, pleasant, and comfortable, and then He nourishes us by feeding us with all His riches and supply.

Day by day we can testify how much the Lord takes care of us; we may seek to do certain things or achieve certain things, but the Lord in His shepherding takes care of us by cherishing us and nourishing us.

Furthermore, when we come to the meetings of the church, no matter how our condition and situation is when we enter the meeting, we are so shepherded by the Lord that we love Him more and more after every meeting. And as we enjoy the Lord’s shepherding, He seeks to make us one with Him that we may also shepherd others.

We may have failed times and again, just as Peter did, but the Lord comes to us, shepherds us, and commissions us to shepherd His sheep; He knows that it is only those who were broken-hearted and then healed by the Lord that can also shepherd the broken-hearted, and it is those who failed and even denied the Lord – and then enjoyed the Lord’s shepherding, that can also shepherd others.

We need to learn to cooperate with the Lord in His heavenly ministry to shepherd the saints according to God.

Christ is the Chief Shepherd, and the elders are shepherds under Him; we all need to learn to shepherd one another by realizing that Christ is the life-giving Spirit in our spirit to shepherd us from within us, and He knows our situation, cares for us, oversees our condition, and cherishes us and nourishes us so that we may be one with Him to shepherd others according to God.

Shepherding others According to God – According to His Nature, Desire, Way, and Glory

What does it mean to shepherd others according to God, that is, shepherd the flock of God according to God (1 Pet. 5:2)? First, it means that we need to live God and be one with God, even to become God in our shepherding of others.

To shepherd according to God is to shepherd according to God’s nature, His desire, His way, and His glory – and not according to our own preference, our interest, our purpose, and our disposition.

Let’s be honest: many times we shepherd others because we like them, because we may have a preference, or because they match our disposition. But to shepherd others according to God means that we need to open to the Lord to save us from our preference, interest, and purpose, and we need to let Him deal with our disposition.

If we still shepherd others and let our disposition come out instead of Christ being lived out in us, this nullifies everything.

We need to receive more of the Lord’s shepherding by dealing with our disposition; we need to remain open to the Lord, so that He may go deeper in us and bring more God into us, removing anything of ourselves.

To shepherd according to God is to shepherd according to what God is in His attributes; He is light, love, holiness, and righteousness, and we need to express Him in our shepherding (1 John 1:5; 4:8, 16).

For us to shepherd others according to God, we actually need to become God in life, nature, expression, and in particular in function – in His function of shepherding others.

We need to be filled to the brim with the divine life: we need to enjoy the Triune God as the fountain (the Father), the spring (the Son), and the river (the Spirit) to become the totality of the divine life, even to become the divine life itself (see John 4:14; Col. 3:4).

We need to daily come to the Lord, drink of Him as the living water, let Him fill us and flow in our inner being, and He will flow out of us as rivers of living waters to water others and shepherd them, flowing in us and out of us with us into eternal life – the New Jerusalem! Amen!

We need to become the same as God in His attributes; when others come to us with questions and problems, we should not seek to give them answers but rather, be one with the Lord so that He may be ministered into them.

When others receive more God, they get shepherded. We need to be the reproduction of Christ, the expression of God, so that in our shepherding we express not ourselves but God!

May the Lord save us from any peculiar traits, and may not express the self with its disposition and peculiarities when we shepherd others!

We all have characteristics by creation, but the fall of man made our characteristics to be biased and warped; the Lord knows, and when the time comes, He will aim at a particular peculiarity, and He will shepherd us all the way through.

Oh, may we see and realize that, in order for us to shepherd others according to God, we need to become God in His function of shepherding the flock of God according to what He is and according to His goal in His economy (see Psa. 23:6b; Eph. 4:12, 16; Rev. 21:2, 10-11)!

God’s goal in His economy is to build up the Body of Christ in the local churches, and our shepherding according to God should be according to God’s goal.

The issue of our shepherding others according to God should be the building up of the Body of Christ, the preparation of the bride, and the bringing in of the kingdom of God.

Lord Jesus, we want to learn to shepherd others according to God by being fully one with You and by being filled with You to become You in Your function of shepherding the flock of God. Lord, we open to You – we come to You as we are, so that we may enjoy Your shepherding. You see our inner being, our interest, purpose, motive, and disposition. Have a way to break through in our being, and have a way to make us the same as You are in shepherding the flock of God according to God. Lord, may the result of our shepherding others according to God be the building up of the Body of Christ!

For Eternity we will Enjoy and Experience Christ as our Eternal Shepherd and His Shepherding

The Lord came in His incarnation to be the good Shepherd, laying down His life for His sheep; now, in His ascension, He is the great Shepherd, the chief Shepherd, and the Shepherd of our souls, working night and day to shepherd His sheep and oversee the condition of their soul.

For eternity, as seen in Rev. 7:16-17, we will have the experience and enjoyment of Christ as our eternal Shepherd. In eternity He will not only be the Lamb, the Husband, the Son of Man, the spring of life, the temple, the King, the Ruler, the tree of life, and the shining One – He will also be the Shepherd.

Our problems will end with this age – in the next age will not have any more problems, but we will still need the Lord’s shepherding. As the good Shepherd, the Lord not only cares for us in His earthly ministry and in His heavenly ministry, but for eternity He will still shepherd us.

A good shepherd doesn’t only solve the problems of his sheep but also feeds them; actually, the most important task of a shepherd is to feed his sheep. In the New Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus will feed us as His sheep – He will still be our Shepherd.

He will lead us to the springs of water of life so that we may enjoy the eternal dispensing of the Triune God, so that we may express Him to the fullest extent for eternity!

Under the Lord’s shepherding in eternity, we will lack nothing (Psa. 23:1), but we will drink of many springs and enjoy many waters! Hallelujah!

He will wipe away our tears (a sign of being dissatisfied when we were in our human life) and will give us to drink of rivers of water of life. He will wipe away our tears one by one – He understands our situation, and He replaces our tears with living water.

And what is most amazing is that we can enjoy this today in our experience, as indicated by Psa. 84. Today in the church life we are journeying to the reality of the Body of Christ; on the one hand we go from strength to strength, but we also pass through the valley of weeping.

We don’t only weep – unavoidably we pass through the valley of weeping; and as we pass through it, we make it a spring. The sweetest dimension of shepherding comes from many dear saints in whose heart are the highways to Zion, who have God’s goal – the Body of Christ – as their goal.

In their inner man, such saints go from strength to strength; at the same time, the enemy opposes them, they suffer many things, they walk through the valley of weeping, and the more they walk, the more their weeping becomes a spring, and what the church receives from these shepherds as the reproduction of Christ as the Shepherd is not tears but the water of life.

May the Lord – for the fulfilment of the desire of His heart to have the Body, the Bride, and the kingdom – shepherd the souls of all the saints and reproduce Himself into all of us, so that we may have a mutual shepherding, and thus end this age, enter into the new revival, and bring the Lord back! Shepherding will do this!

Lord Jesus, we want to be those in whose heart are the highways to Zion. May we grow from strength to strength into our inner man, and even when we pass through the valley of tears, may these tears become a spring of water of life to shepherd others according to God. Keep us under Your shepherding, Lord, and make us one with You in Your shepherding. For the sake of the desire of Your heart, shepherd us and reproduce Yourself into all of us so that there would be a mutual shepherding and thus end this age, enter into the new revival, and bring the Lord back!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Ron K. for this week, and portions from, The Vital Groups, msg. 8 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Ezekiel (1), msg. 11 (week 11), God’s Recovery by Life through His Shepherding.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee / With the saints into Thy temple, / Where Thy glory we shall see. / From peculiar traits deliver, / From my independent ways, / That a dwelling place for Thee, Lord, / We will be thru all our days. (Hymns #840)
  # Foll’wing Thee, Good Shepherd, I would feed, / Shepherd those allotted me, / E’er I’d touch Thy heart’s desire, / Live in Thine economy. / O my Lord, All thanks to Thee! / Goodness, mercy follow me; / I’d ever dwell within Thy house, / As Thy Body glorious! (Song on Shepherding others)
  # How blessed are those men indeed! / Trusting in Thee they are made strong; / Highways to Zion in their hearts, / The way they care not, rough or long. / Passing the weeping valley they / Make it a place of springing wells; / The rain with blessings covers it / And in the way God’s mercy tells. (Hymns #851)