Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Come, let us bow down in worship,
    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    the flock under his care.
Today, if only you would hear his voice,

• Psalm 95:6-7

“Cattle are driven; sheep are led; and our Lord compares His people to sheep, not to cattle.
“It is especially important that Christian ministers know the law of the leader—that he can lead others only as far as he himself has gone. …
“The minister must experience what he would teach or he will find himself in the impossible position of trying to drive sheep. For this reason he should seek to cultivate his own heart before he attempts to preach to the hearts of others. …
“If he tries to bring them into a heart knowledge of truth which he has not actually experienced he will surely fail. In his frustration he may attempt to drive them; and scarcely anything is so disheartening as the sight of a vexed and confused shepherd using the lash on his bewildered flock in a vain attempt to persuade them to go on beyond the point to which he himself has attained. …
“The law of the leader tells us who are preachers that it is better to cultivate our souls than our voices. … We cannot take our people beyond where we ourselves have been, and it thus becomes vitally important that we be men of God in the last and highest sense of that term.”

• A. W. Tozer, The Price of Neglect

It’s funny, Ken Davis in his comedy routine (and sermon really), Super Sheep, gives a lot of attributes about sheep, none are good.  When he mentions that sheep follow, in other words needing to be led, he talks about a sheep getting disoriented and he fell over a cliff, and a bunch of sheep blindly followed and, as he says, several of those puppies died that day.  They blindly follow.  Then he says that we as people aren’t like that.  Then he gives an example …  Yes, he says that we wear a shirt that is many times more expensive than another shirt exactly like it because of what is printed on a label in the collar that no one else will ever see.  We cannot help ourselves.  We follow and we need a good shepherd to lead us.

I have always been a driven person.  Maybe I was always like that, but Boy Scouts drove me over the edge.  Do these ten things.  Get a leader to sign off to prove you did it.  Get a badge.  Get enough badges and be active in the Scout Troop for so long and do some service work for the church or the community and you get the next rank.  I lacked four months in getting to Eagle Scout in the minimum time.  Driven.

But as I write my blog posts, somedays I have five ideas that popped into my head the previous day.  I get a lot done.

Then on other days, I look over my notes for the past month and anything in my journal that I listed as a possible post idea, I had already written.  That’s when I look at a blank canvas and ask God, “Okay, now where will You lead me?”

The second scenario is when I have done the best work for me.  You might like any of the posts, but the post that came from me asking God to lead me did the most for me.  Because I drew closer to God that day.

Rev. Tozer talks about leading where we have never been results in driving people into the unknown.  That is indeed a bad idea, but at times, we all step into the fog, praying that there is solid ground ahead.

God, lead me today.  This morning, the quiz was on the word “eyes.”  And somehow this afternoon, my eyes are not seeing so well.  I need You to lead me.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.