Episode 1267: Scattered the Flock

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,267 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Wade Galt: I'm Wade Gault. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to live to.

[00:00:22] Instead of working to live is key and one way to be inspired to do that. Listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:39] Scott Maderer: It's not our job to determine where the this gets played out. It's god's. God will raise up and make the judgements. God will determine what's right and what's wrong, not us. And yet it's so easy to forget that and to end up hating [00:01:00] and calling it love. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:07] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:34] In today's spiritual foundation episode about developing your influence, I talk with you about Jeremiah chapter 23 verses one through six. I also share how we often think about the shepherds in this story, maybe the wrong way, and I share why it's way too easy to go down the path of hate and disguise it with.

[00:01:55] Jeremiah chapter 23 verses one through six says, whoa, to the [00:02:00] shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pastor says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people. It is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away and you have not attended to them.

[00:02:16] So I will attend to you for your evil doing says the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I've driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold and they shall be fruitful and multiplied. I will raise up shepherds over them. Who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.

[00:02:39] The days are surely coming, says the Lord. When I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days, Judea will be saved and Israel will live in. This is the name by which he will be called the Lord is our righteousness.

[00:02:59] A [00:03:00] lot of times I hear people talking. I've even been guilty of it myself about how this person or that person is doing right work or doing what God would want us to do. I think oftentimes we're drawn to people that are doing the things that we feel are right, that we feel are the right way to represent what is being godly.

[00:03:27] What is being a good Christian, a good follower of Christ? I'm a Methodist and right now there's a big split going on in the Methodist Church and a lot of people are fighting in different ways over the ideas around. Whether or not we should change what we call the book of discipline, which is the organizing book or the set of rules that we run the church by to allow folks who are practicing homosexuals to become in [00:04:00] ordination, to become pastors in the church.

[00:04:03] It's causing a lot of fighting and there's a lot of name calling and a lot of people saying, this side or that side is right or wrong, or, this is what the Lord wants for us to do and this is the right way to look at this, or the wrong way to look at this. . And I think a lot of times we look at the people that are out there leading the pack, and we think of them as these shepherds that are being rise, risen up by, by the Lord, these shepherds that are being put in place to lead us.

[00:04:35] And yet I think oftentimes we look at it the wrong. It says, I will raise up shepherds over them. Who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing. And to me that's calling for people that don't call out fear on either side of a debate, that don't call out and say, yo, you should be [00:05:00] afraid of this group or that group.

[00:05:02] You should be afraid. If you don't do something, you know your world is going to end. It's not going to be like it is anymore. I think this idea of leading out of fear by definition isn't generally going to lead us in the right direction, and yet that fear is often so attractive because it feels like if we have people.

[00:05:31] Calling out the things that we struggle with, calling out something that we believe in or don't believe in, and saying, if you don't act like this, then this other group will destroy your life. Will destroy the world. As it's so easy to give fear and to hate and yet to disguise it with love to say we're doing this out of love.

[00:05:57] It. It's the idea. We [00:06:00] hate the sin, but love the sinner. You've probably heard that description before, and the problem is that if you hate at all in those situations, you're usually hating both, or at least that's how it seems to be played out. When I look at folks, I've yet to see anyone, myself included, who could.

[00:06:24] love the person, but hate the sin. I don't know that we're capable of that as human beings, but we disguise our hatred and call it love. But strangely, if we ask the people that are on the receiving end of it, does this feel like love to you? Their answer is always no. And I'm not saying that you should always do everything just to make others feel good, or that at the end of the day, our feelings is the only measure of rightness or wrongness.

[00:06:56] I'm not saying that anything goes or we do [00:07:00] whatever we want, but I am saying that I think raising up the shepherd is God's job, not mine. And making these judgements is God's job, not. I'm not supposed to be put in a place where I have to determine that you are wrong and therefore I'm right. Instead, I need to be looking at myself first and figuring out am I actually doing what is right?

[00:07:26] And I will guarantee you in my life I've done many things that are wrong in the eyes of the Lord. I've often sinned and. At the end of the day, I've also repented from that and tried to turn my life around and do better. I've spent long hours in the valley, in the shadows, in the darkness, and I would argue that I think all of us have, I think it's part of what we have to go through as human beings, and yet [00:08:00] at the end of the day, it's not our job to d.

[00:08:04] Where this gets played out, God will raise up and make the judgments. God will determine what's right and what's wrong, not us. And yet it's so easy to forget that and to end up hating and calling it love. Thanks for listening.

[00:08:30] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired. And like our Facebook page and market [00:09:00] that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there.

[00:09:13] Until next time, invest your. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.