We have a friend who has a small farm. They have alpacas, chickens and now sheep. They received a call asking if they could take in 3 sheep whose “shepherd” had passed away and his wife overfed them to the point that they could barely walk. Our friends agreed to rescue these sheep from eating themselves into oblivion and now they are much healthier and are being well cared for by a new “shepherd.”
I am a rescued sheep. Baaaa!
Sometimes when believers grow up in Christian homes and accept Christ as children we think we have a boring testimony because we can’t remember a time before we were saved. But the story in the Bible in Matthew 18 is about 1 sheep in a fold of 100. All of the sheep had the same shepherd, but while grazing, one sheep wandered off and got lost. The shepherd (Jesus) tracked the lost sheep down and rescued it. Just because we have accepted Christ as our Savior and Shepherd of our lives doesn’t mean we don’t wander off and get lost sometimes.
I was really young when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I grew up in a stable, loving Christian home. I went to a Christian school and our family faithfully attended church. I witnessed to every neighbor and unsaved family member when I was a kid. I was bold and fearless. I remember riding in the back of our truck on our way to the city dump with a load of junk and singing Sunday School songs at the top of my lungs, hoping to save anyone who might hear me.
When I graduated from high school I enrolled into a Christian college. My parents understood something about me that I didn’t. I thought my faith was strong enough to withstand any opposition that the devil could throw at me. I was firm in my faith and convinced I would not waver. But my parents would not allow me to go to a public university if I was going to live on campus. They were concerned I would be lost to the world. That hurt my pride but I wanted to be independent. I was ready to prove I could take care of myself so I agreed to go to a Christian college.
I didn’t realize that the way Satan would detour me be so subtle. I thought it would be so obvious which choices were right and which would lead me astray. But Satan is so good at blurring the lines of right and wrong. He also recognizes and exploits our weaknesses- especially when one of those weaknesses is pride. And boy was I full of myself! Talk about pride!
I was so sure my faith was solid and I could withstand every temptation. I was confident in my education and my spiritual pride was off the charts! Was I reading my Bible daily? No, but gosh, I had read the Bible so much over my lifetime - it was all familiar and I didn’t need to read it EVERY DAY did I? I had never really developed a daily reading habit- I just relied on school and Sunday school to feed me what I needed. And if I needed anything more, I could just look it up as necessary. How arrogant!
I spent only a year at college. During that year I dated a guy who was not saved and who chewed tobacco and complained that he had to drink non-alcoholic beer because of the school’s no alcohol policy. I also went with a friend to a party in a different friend’s college dorm (at a public university) where I tried alcohol for the first time. Actually, my friends were guys (one was a Christian and a ex-boyfriend) who mixed my drinks for me so I could safely experience what it was like to be “buzzed” (drunk). Fortunately, my body rejected the poison and I spent a half an hour or more expelling all the alcohol and then I was driven back to my dorm. It was also during this year that I decided that swearing was okay as long as I didn’t misuse the name of the Lord. Interestingly, it was the non-Christian guy I was dating that told me that kind of language was NOT attractive. It was uncomfortable for me to use curse words since I wasn’t raised in an environment where I ever really heard that kind of coarse language so it was easy for me to just stop. I later heard someone say that if you can’t get your point across without using curse words, you are lazy in your speech and don’t have a good command of the English language. I wasn’t lazy, I had Satan whispering in my ear the way he did to Eve in the garden- “Did God really say you couldn’t use swear words?” It was a question I thought I knew the answer to. I did not pray about it or consult my Bible. I was wandering. Baaaaaa!
I decided not to pursue further college education. I had no direction. I was interested in a lot of areas but nothing enough to pursue a degree. But the real reason I left after only 1 year was I felt like I was more mature than the people around me. I felt they were holding me back from becoming a responsible adult. So much pride! I cringe when I recall my arrogant attitude!
I wasn’t career minded. I decided I was ready to get a job and pursue life. My plan was to get a job and just do my best at whatever job that was and work hard until I found a man to marry and spend my life with. So, at 19, with my life all figured out, I moved back in with my parents during an economic downturn. There were no jobs to be had by college dropouts with no work experience. Undeterred, I scoured the newspaper want-ads for jobs I could apply for (back in the days before the internet existed). Without consulting the Lord, I lined up an interview and went to the mall to purchase a professional pant-suit to wear for my interview. As I was leaving the mall with my new outfit, the owner of a bakery in the mall stopped me to chat. He offered me a job at his bakery on the spot. But I was not open to the idea of working in the food services industry and I had an interview lined up for a job selling perfume. I turned down his offer. Sometimes I want to go back and confront my self-righteous younger me about my dumb choices and the motivations behind them! It wasn’t an evil decision, but it was a bad one!
I was naive. I interviewed for a business that it turns out wasn’t even a legitimate business. They hired me to sell cheap copies of name brand perfumes and colognes door-to-door. I had to go through their training program and learned how to sell these knock-off products to unsuspecting citizens. I was taught to use charm, humor and fast-talking persuasion to get people to buy something they didn’t need - or want. I was the only female salesperson. They told me they didn’t have a storefront because you have to have a business license to have a store and they did not have a business license. I was too inexperienced in life to recognize that if they didn’t have a business license, selling even door-to-door was illegal. In fact, one business owner at a store I visited trying to sell perfume and cologne, told me it was illegal and offered me a legitimate job. I refused. Because I’m dumb. Like a sheep - baaaaa!
I prided myself on befriending the unlovely people of the world and thought I was being a testimony to and a good influence on a group of “salesmen” who were drug addicts, alcoholics and at least one was out of jail on parole (drug possession). One day the people we worked for told us they wanted all of us to go on a sales road trip up to Ferndale and sell our wares up there. We would drive ourselves up there and they would pay for us to stay overnight in a hotel but only had enough money for 1 room. So 6 of us (one couldn’t make the trip) loaded up and went North. I was a fool. I was headstrong and naive and that is a bad combination! I should not have gone. But I did. I stayed in a room with 5 men. I had strayed so far from the voice of the Lord! But He knew where I was the whole time and He protected me. Nothing bad happened to me and I quit that “job” as soon as we returned. Did I learn anything? Not at the time - I continued wandering- baaaaa!
I actually started dating the one guy who didn’t go with us on that road trip. He was the one on parole - an alcoholic and a drug addict. I thought I could be a good influence on him and save his soul. I tried to encourage him to check back in with his parole officer, I talked about Jesus. I refused all forms of drugs or alcohol he offered. There were lines I would not cross. One night I went to his house (he lived with his parents but no one was home but him). He was drunk. I was compassionate - and an idiot. When it was clear to me that I needed to get out of there he hid my keys so I couldn’t leave. He turned all the lights off and got a butcher knife that he kept playing with as he talked to me. I have no recollection of what was said or how I got out of there but I was finally able to leave, terrified but unharmed.
It took me awhile before I was able to find a legitimate job. The job market was still bad and I still had no work experience that I could use for a resume. I went into a depression and stopped looking for work. I slept a LOT during the day. If you have been reading this blog all along then you know about my nightmares. I wasn’t sleeping at night - my nightmares were intensifying. I still wasn’t spending time with the Lord even though I regularly cried out in prayer. God hears every prayer. But sin in our lives block all effectiveness. He protected me through everything because I was His child, but He let me continue to wander until I recognized how lost I was. BAAAAA!
I have written before about more unwise choices I made before and after these events. It was years before I finally decided I didn’t know what I was doing and started reading my Bible regularly. But reading it every day isn’t enough. It’s the WAY you read.
I was found by Jesus and He started leading me back. It wasn’t until the COVID lockdowns that I recognized how far I had let myself wander.
A lot of people had a difficult time adjusting to the absence of activity or freedom of movement from one place to another. The social isolation was very difficult for many people. But for me, personally, the forced slowing down of activity and the forced isolation was exactly what I needed. I needed to refocus my attention and I needed the quiet so I could hear God. I think we all should have learned some important lessons during that time but not everyone was able to get over the fear they were experiencing.
But this is when my Bible reading time took on new meaning. I stopped skipping over the parts that were familiar to me or were more “boring” like genealogies and laws and temple dimensions and started asking the Holy Spirit to direct my thoughts and show me what He wanted to teach me.
My mind exploded with new and amazing revelations! I was reading my Bible as if I had never read it before.
Every page opened my eyes to the incredibly intricate details I had been missing. Most of all it created a desire in my heart to know more and more about the love of God and how to take that love in. How does one grasp a love that can’t be measured? God poured His love into my life so that it was overflowing and I needed to find ways to pour it into others so that none was wasted! It was then that I committed to serve the Lord in any capacity He asked of me and trust Him to provide the opportunities, energy, time and ability to perform that service.
This past couple of years for me have been all about Christ. More of Him, less of me. It has been my goal to point as many people to Jesus as possible and to be an encouragement to others in any way I am able because that is what the Lord asks of me.
I am a sheep, rescued by my Shepherd and I will follow Him wherever He leads. Baaaaa!😉
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