Full life - Herding the flock (Part 2)

How to feed God's people? The apostle Peter gives us the formula "... watching over him, not out of obligation, but voluntarily as God wants; not because of the greed of money, but with sincere desire either as having lordship over those who have been entrusted to them, but by proving to be examples herd. ". (1 Peter 5.2-3).

So the Lord demands of us a very clear mission when it comes to feeding his people: to do it with love; that is what voluntarily means (1 Peter 5.2) and it is what God wants. The feeling of obligation is devoid of passion; Feeding the flock out of sheer commitment will never bring blessing. The shepherd who gave his life for the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, warns with fatherly zeal those who treat His flock with meanness and grim authority and exhorts them to be an example within the fold as befits a true shepherd. The Lord wants those who graze to also be watchmen within his people, knowing that some sheep may fall into some dunghill in this world and it will be necessary to lift, clean and love them.

God's love for the care of his flock is agape that has no end (“… love never ceases to be” (1 Cor 13)), sacrificial, grown like a river of grace, but also a love that does justice to those sheep that take advantage of the weaknesses of the most broken: “I will search for the lost sheep, I will gather the lost ones, I will bind up the wounded and I will strengthen the weak, but I will exterminate the fat and robust sheep. I will shepherd them with justice ”(Ezekiel 34.16 NIV)

A fourth meaning of pasturing could be to instruct for communion, that fellowship so necessary in the bosom of the church, in sadness and in joy. There may still be brothers around you who require the merciful act of "breaking bread" at their side to satisfy their spiritual (or physical) hunger. Stand firm in communion, in prayer, feel unanimous in the Lord's affairs and share the table and the shortcomings "with joy and simplicity of heart" (Acts 2.42 and 2.46). Feeding the flock is also not forgetting the joy that flows from permanent adoration, from continuous praise to the only Savior and Redeemer.

Finally, to feed is to help the flock to put on the armor of God (faith, the Word, the gospel, the church) to defend themselves from the perversion of this age (this age) and to preserve ourselves for the coming of the Prince of the Pastors who is the hope of glory for that Christian who has a vision of the eternal. It is about the glory that one day will be revealed, not the glory that man seeks today adorned with wreaths of flowers that wither, but the crowns that do not deflower or die because they are cultivated by the hand of the Lord, the best farmer. , in his garden of abundant grace. Feeding is also beginning once and for all to clothe ourselves with humility and leave behind the pride that has done so much damage to the shepherd's flock of shepherds.

The Lord came in search of his sheep, those who are not of his fold. And Jesus replied, "I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Mt 15.24). Our love for him must also manifest itself in the work of pasturing his flock, to the church that today bears witness in the face of brutal humanism and prepares for the joy of the glory of the Kingdom of the age to come, of the enduring hope that began in the cross and will last for all eternity. "Do you love me?" Jesus might ask us one day. And it is wonderful to already know the answer that we can give him: –Yes Lord, send me to feed your sheep!

God bless you!