God Will Take Care of You (Ezekiel 34:23-31)

On May 2, 2023April 9, 2023 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

I will give them a king like my servant David to be their one shepherd, and he will take care of them. I, the Lord, will be their God, and a king like my servant David will be their ruler. I have spoken. I will make a covenant with them that guarantees their security. I will get rid of all the dangerous animals in the land, so that my sheep can live safely in the fields and sleep in the forests.

“I will bless them and let them live around my sacred hill. There I will bless them with showers of rain when they need it. The trees will bear fruit, the fields will produce crops, and everyone will live in safety on his own land. When I break my people’s chains and set them free from those who made them slaves, then they will know that I am the Lord. The heathen nations will not plunder them anymore, and the wild animals will not kill and eat them. They will live in safety, and no one will terrify them. I will give them fertile fields and put an end to hunger in the land. The other nations will not sneer at them anymore. Everyone will know that I protect Israel and that they are my people. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.

“You, my sheep, the flock that I feed, are my people, and I am your God,” says the Sovereign Lord. (Good News Translation)

We all need a safe place to live and our needs provided. When protection from harm and provision of needs are realized, we call this “peace.”

So many people long for peace, simply because they aren’t experiencing it. They feel unsafe – either physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually – and are separated from the sort of resources which would give them what they need to live well.

God is the expert on security and safety, peace and protection. The Lord has provided what we need.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4, NIV)

The Shepherd Ruler

God made a covenant with David that was to last forever. There was the anticipation of a leader, even the Messiah, who would come from the line of King David. Such a ruler will bring unity to the people. This leader shall be a servant of the people, a shepherd, characterized by humility. And, most of all, the hoped for ruler will usher in an unprecedented time of peace.

The flock of sheep – the people – will not have a care in the world. The new divine shepherd will not live off the sheep, but will instead live for the sheep. The shepherd shall be the ultimate non-anxious presence among the sheep, assuaging their fears and keeping them well-fed.

“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.”
Jesus (John 10:14-15, NIV)

From the standpoint of Christianity, this great restoration project of the Lord finds its fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus. We needed a faithful shepherd, a merciful ruler, and we now have one.

The Settled Rest

Wholeness, integrity, thriving, flourishing, satisfaction, contentment, and a good life are all wrapped up in the biblical concept of peace and rest. And that is what the shepherd does for the sheep.

There is no peace when shepherds view the sheep as merely animals to be fleeced and used. But with a good shepherd, predators are kept away from the flock, plenty of pasture is provided to feed upon, and other shepherds in other fields attempting to steal sheep don’t stand a chance against the Good Shepherd.

A large chunk of humanity lives in a state of fear and anxiety because of violence, lack of basic necessities, disease, or natural disaster. Life can become so overwhelming that the future seems bleak and without hope. People long for peace – personal peace, family peace, world peace. They’re tired, and just want some rest.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Jesus (Matthew 11:28, NIV)

Although the list of stressors may seem endless, divine blessings shall create the conditions in which humanity can live without fear and with hope in the world. No one will make them afraid, ever again.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27, NIV)

The Sure Restoration

The divine/human relationship, so marred and messed up by the presence and power of sin, will be perfectly restored. The Lord is God; and God is with us. The divine energy is no longer against us, but is for us. And if God is for us, who can be against us?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39, NIV)

God will care for you. Along with you, the Lord will care for your loved ones who need a faithful leader, a place of peace and rest, and a new life.

O God, the source of all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works: Give to your servants the peace which the world cannot give, so that our hearts may obey your commandments, and that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness, through the merits of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Pastoral Care (Ezekiel 34:17-23)

On May 1, 2023April 8, 2023 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

“Now then, my flock, I, the Sovereign Lord, tell you that I will judge each of you and separate the good from the bad, the sheep from the goats. Some of you are not satisfied with eating the best grass; you even trample down what you don’t eat! You drink the clear water and muddy what you don’t drink! My other sheep have to eat the grass you trample down and drink the water you muddy.

“So now, I, the Sovereign Lord, tell you that I will judge between you strong sheep and the weak sheep. You pushed the sick ones aside and butted them away from the flock. But I will rescue my sheep and not let them be mistreated any more. I will judge each of my sheep and separate the good from the bad. I will give them a king like my servant David to be their one shepherd, and he will take care of them. (Good News Translation)

“Only through love can we obtain communion with God.”
Albert Schweitzer

I have a zero tolerance for bullying. And, I believe, this is a conviction which must be shared together with everyone. If not, we will continue to see spiritual abuse in the news, so-called Christians and churches throwing their weight around, and a world enveloped in the darkness of mean-spirited persons who only care about themselves and getting their way.

It is most necessary that spiritual folk let compassionate pastoral care have its way in the world.

Pastoral care, for me, is rooted in the compassion of Jesus Christ. It is my connection and relationship with this living Savior, Teacher, Healer, and Lord which enables me to extend genuine care to others.

I believe that it is the grace and mercy of God in Christ through the enablement of the Holy Spirit which brings comfort, hope, and encouragement to people in need. My philosophy of pastoral care addresses three significant factors, in this order:

Being in a safe environment is paramount. Building trust and connection is important. The caring relationship needs confidence so that the pastor can compassionately encourage and help the person to pursue being in a secure place – whether that is a physical moving away or out, or finding a safe and sacred place within one’s own soul from which healing and holistic health can begin. Bullying can be physical, verbal, emotional, mental, or personal in talking abusively to oneself; and it must be stood up to and stopped.
Grieving is necessary. Mourning and lamenting a significant change or loss must occur to learn to thrive and flourish again in a new situation. This requires being open about one’s feelings, communing freely with God, and being vulnerable with a pastor, therapist, church group, or some other secure human connection. It is common to get “stuck” in grief and believe our situation can never change. But it can, so we must not remain there.
Reconnecting with the world is vital. Bullying and belligerent people can take a lot out of us and from us. Therefore, we need to find joy in the simple pleasures of life again; to reach out and relate to others who have gone through similar experiences; and, to regain ordinary rhythms and routines of life are all crucial to being alive. The compassionate pastor gently assists, encourages, exhorts, and walks with others toward relating well with the world once again.

Recovery is not an event, and not even a process; it is a way of life.

All of us are vulnerable to the brokenness of this fallen world. We must learn to navigate troubled times with someone who cares, and not by ourselves.

We all struggle to live out our faith commitments in a complex web of various family, work, social, and neighborhood relationships.

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility!”
Søren Kierkegaard

I am passionate about a biblical understanding of living in the world for its betterment and blessing as a pastoral minister. The following is a kind of manifesto of what I feel called to be and to do….

With God as my help, and with the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as my guide for grateful living, I seek with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength:

To foster, support, and realize spiritual healing in the world

To cultivate the human spirit and do the work of soul-craft deliberately, carefully, and patiently
To consult and collaborate with others who share a spiritual vision for blessing the world
To engage in spiritual practices which strengthen faith, enlarge a compassionate heart, and expand the soul’s capacity for growth
To walk in the way of Jesus through engrafting silence, solitude, fasting, giving, and prayer into regular and habitual rhythms of life
To wed integration of learning with an alignment of head, heart, and gut.
To embrace suffering and adversity as sacred Teachers of the soul
To continually pursue self-awareness and utilize that awareness for the common good of all persons
To liberally use the spiritual tools of faith, hope, and love; and, to sharpen those implements with great care
To weep with those who weep
To keep vigilant presence with the dying
To extend mercy, respect, and hospitality to those considered by society as the least, the last, and the lost
To eradicate loneliness in all its forms

To extend basic human dignity and divine grace to all with mental illness, cognitive disorders, soul-sucking addictions, and suicidal ideation
To embody the Beatitudes of Jesus and live by Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)
To embrace humble service as demonstrated and taught by Jesus in his Upper Room Discourse (John 13-17)
To picture a world without poverty, racism, patriarchy, gender bigotry, verbal and physical violence, religious wars, and emotional immaturity
To imagine a future with an abundance of the Fruit of the Spirit, clean water, creativity, beauty, and equity of resources

To promote an egalitarian spirit and social justice, especially for those without power and/or privilege in the world

To see the image of God in persons very different from me
To grieve and lament my unwanted changes and losses
To express daily affirmations of faith
To exercise gratitude in all circumstances
To live in a healthy rhythm of receiving and giving
To encourage the telling and listening of stories
To champion women everywhere and alleviate all barriers to their voice in the world
To reform and keep reforming
To choose vulnerability and courage in life and leadership
To perpetuate, in both word and deed, the ancient Scriptures and ecumenical Creeds, paying attention to the worldwide church’s contribution to scriptural understanding

To use Holy Scripture for the encouragement of others and the strengthening of faith, and not as a weapon to damage others and create divisions

To observe the Christian Year and conform to its liturgical rhythms.
To die well, with no regrets and with a legacy of faith

Care For the Flock (Ezekiel 34:1-16)

On April 29, 2023April 6, 2023 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

The Lord God said:

Ezekiel, son of man, Israel’s leaders are like shepherds taking care of my sheep, the people of Israel. But I want you to condemn these leaders and tell them:

I, the Lord God, say you shepherds of Israel are doomed! You take care of yourselves while ignoring my sheep. You drink their milk and use their wool to make your clothes. Then you butcher the best ones for food. But you don’t take care of the flock! You have never protected the weak ones or healed the sick ones or bandaged those that get hurt. You let them wander off and never look for those that get lost. You are cruel and mean to my sheep. They strayed in every direction, and because there was no shepherd to watch them, they were attacked and eaten by wild animals. So my sheep were scattered across the earth. They roamed on hills and mountains, without anyone even bothering to look for them.

Now listen to what I, the living Lord God, am saying to you shepherds. My sheep have been attacked and eaten by wild animals because you refused to watch them. You never went looking for the lost ones, and you fed yourselves without feeding my sheep. So I, the Lord, will punish you! I will rescue my sheep from you and never let you be their shepherd again or butcher them for food. I, the Lord, have spoken.

The Lord God then said:

I will look for my sheep and take care of them myself, just as a shepherd looks for lost sheep. My sheep have been lost since that dark and miserable day when they were scattered throughout the nations. But I will rescue them and bring them back from the foreign nations where they now live. I will be their shepherd and will let them graze on Israel’s mountains and in the valleys and fertile fields. They will be safe as they feed on grassy meadows and green hills. I promise to take care of them and keep them safe, to look for those that are lost and bring back the ones that wander off, to bandage those that are hurt and protect the ones that are weak. I will also slaughter those that are fat and strong because I always do right. (Contemporary English Version)

We have a pastoral duty to care for one another. Individuals need not have the title of “Pastor” in order to function as pastoral people who seek the welfare of the flock. A part of our responsibility (and privilege) is to know the flock well enough in discerning when there are some lost ones out there. Whenever that happens, we care about them enough to go after them.

If we either ignore the flock, fail to care for it, or seek to fleece them for our own benefit, we will have to contend with a God who has no tolerance for unnecessarily putting the sheep at risk. And we are to be attentive to the ones who have strayed and are lost.

Caring about the lost, enough to go after them, has always been, unfortunately, a scandalous activity for Christians who do it. In the Gospels, the religious leaders had a big problem with how Jesus was spending his time (Luke 15:1-3). From their perspective, Christ was guilty by association. Many of the people Jesus pursued and hung-out with were unsavory characters; there was really no doubt about their bad character.

But we must come back to why Christ made the decisions he did: Jesus did not come to earth to make already righteous people feel good about being around him; he came to rescue sinners and restore them to God.

Jesus never wavered from this fundamental mission. With everything he said and did, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, communicated that lost people matter to God – and that practice eventually got him killed.

Early in my Christian life, I adopted a practice, on most Friday nights, of going to a certain bar known for its less than virtuous clientele. I typically ordered a bowl of chili gumbo, and simply sat and talked with fellow students. I learned a lot about people – their hopes, fears, and spiritual inclinations.

I learned even more about God. I saw the terrible brokenness of many people’s hearts, and saw that the heart of God was pained in longing to restore such persons to a place of spiritual abundance, peace, and joy.

One Friday night, in the middle of winter, as I was walking back from the bar with a friend at about midnight, we encountered a guy so drunk that he could not walk straight. He wasn’t wearing any pants, nor did he have a coat. In below freezing temperatures, he was in only a shirt and underwear.

All the people who passed by him laughed and kept walking. But we stopped. It took several minutes to get some semblance of a story out of him about what happened, where he came from, and where he lived. The poor guy couldn’t remember losing his pants, which had his wallet and keys.

He lived far enough away that there was no way he would have ever made it home. It’s quite probable that without someone helping him he would have passed out somewhere and died. We got him home, found a way to get into his place, and tucked him in his bed.

The next day I went and checked on him. Even though he had a bad hangover, we still had a good conversation about what happened and why I helped him. We ended up meeting several times together and talked a great deal about God, guilt, grace, Jesus, and salvation.

Meanwhile, however, not everyone was happy about my practice. Some of the people in my church were not pleased with me spending time in a bar with “sinners.” They told me things like, “Bad company corrupts good character” and “it doesn’t look good.” I merely matter-of-factly responded, “I like the way I’m reaching out to lost people better than the way you’re not.”

We are in danger of becoming encrusted with so much insulation from lost people, and their very real hurts, that we do not know God’s heart for them.

Jesus, better than any of us could ever imagine, knows how awful and horrific sin really is. That’s because he suffered by taking on the shameful baggage of every person who ever lived. Since Jesus understands how awful guilt and shame is, it’s God who goes uncorked with joy and celebration when just one lost sheep is restored to the flock.

Grace lies at the center of God’s heart – a scandalous grace that defies all earthly sense. God’s deepest desire, greatest yearning, and most passionate dream is that lost people return home. (Luke 15:11-32)

In light of the reality that God’s heart burns for lost people, we as churches, faith communities, Christian ministries, and believers everywhere really need to:

Put away all petty concerns and realize there are lost people, far from the flock, at risk and dying apart from God
Put all worries about the future in biblical perspective – because there are people with no hope and no God all around us
Put aside all pre-occupations with optics and marketing, numbers and money; and instead have a holy obsession with people knowing Jesus Christ, and him crucified, risen, and coming again

We are to make it our aim in this life to pray for, long for, look for, run after, and pursue lost people and restore them to life.

For what does it profit a person to gain the world but lose their life because they was too pre-occupied with everything but caring for the flock? And what does it profit a church to have buildings, budgets, and butts in the pew, but never see a lost soul come to Jesus?

Rev. Tim Ehrhardt

Tag: ezekiel 34