1 Thing You Can Do This Week to Change Your World

You Can’t Be a Shepherd and Act Like a Sheep

If you want to shepherd your ideas, guide your plans and steer your dreams, you have to stop being a victim to your own circumstances or a prisoner to your own limited “mental barn.”

Sheep clump.

Sheep are often afraid.

Sheep don’t know how to move to greener pastures.

Sheep are vulnerable to wolves.

Sheep are not comfortable unless they’re doing what the other sheep are doing.

A sheep is an animal

As an animal, it responds to its environment instead of changing it.

A shepherd, on the other hand, is a human who understands sheep weaknesses, and is able to lead them to more prosperous and safer adventures.

A shepherd does this in two ways–sometimes a shepherd uses tenderness; sometimes, stern.

If you want to change your world, you have to stop being a sheep. Because if you are, you cannot shepherd your own passions.

So find your own humanity, develop some spunk, don’t respond to the greenness of the grass–and bring leadership and compassion to the sheep around you.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly donation for this inspirational opportunity

 

Jesonian: Pillow and Little Ships … October 25th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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The Bible is not meant to be a story, but rather, a script.

When we approach the Good Book as a story, we end up isolating off a few verses without considering what comes before or after.

When you look at it as a script, you can study what motivates the scene of our story, and also what the outcome ends up being.

In Mark the 4th Chapter, Jesus spends all day teaching on three distinct subjects. It’s important to know this in understanding the story that follows. It helps us to comprehend the mindset of our protagonist, Jesus, as he encountered the elements of the unfolding of our script.

Here are the three points Jesus made to his disciples all day long:

1. “If you don’t sow seeds, nothing happens.”
2. “Since you’re going to be sowing seeds, learn the process by which things grow.”
3. “Understand that what you’ve been given is a responsibility to prepare you to use it well, to be given more.”

So when nightfall comes, Jesus is tired and heads for the boat to go to the other side. The disciples follow him and other folks also decide to make the journey, but their ships are not quite as big. Matter of fact, they are referred to as “little ships.”

Jesus doesn’t stop them. Instead, Jesus grabs a pillow and heads for the stern to take a nap.

Although I think it’s important to consider “what would Jesus do?” in our everyday lives, it is much more effective to notice what Jesus is already doing.

Any astute disciple should have registered that Jesus had taught all day about taking responsibility for your life and that he was heading into the ship to take a nap, while lodging no objection about other tinier vessels traveling alongside.

Did Jesus know there was going to be a storm? Possibly so, since the sky usually foretells of such things.

What was Jesus communicating to his disciples? It’s clear to me.

Sometimes God would like to take a nap.

And since we’ve been well-trained, well-taught, and by the way, several of us are fishermen, we should be able to handle a storm.

We should also notice that Jesus is sleeping without any fear for the smaller ships which would be in much more danger from the upheaval.

I believe Jesonian faith is doing what we can, knowing that God is responsible for the rest.

But the storm rages and the disciples do what ungrateful souls always do. They wake Jesus up and accuse him of not caring. “Don’t you care that we’re perishing?”

Please understand this–if the big ship is in trouble, the little ships must be in jeopardy also, but the disciples don’t have much concern about them.

Jesus is pissed off. Even though he calms the waves, he rebukes the disciples for having no faith.

Where did their faith fail?

• They didn’t take responsibility for what they had just heard and learned.
• They didn’t notice that Jesus was communicating complete confidence by taking a nap on a pillow.
• They didn’t understand that Jesus would not let the other littler ships suffer.

They thought they were being faithful by being overly dependent. And Jesus told them it was actually the opposite.

They had little faith.

What do I learn from this?

After Jesus teaches me and trains me to be a born-again human being, he just might grab a pillow and expect me to guide us through a storm … and take care of the little ships.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

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