shepherding the shepherd
from PreachingToday.com
Destiny
One of our basic pastoral responsibilities is to help our people die well. That age-old ministry assignment is not only about bolstering their deathbed courage or helping them plan their funerals, although those are pastoral privileges. We prepare them by obeying and echoing Jesus’ command to Peter, “Follow me!”
‘Feed My Sheep’
Here’s the gift: When Jesus restores us he doesn’t take us back to square one, back to where we were before. Jesus not only forgives our failures, he repurposes them to make us better than we had been. Just ask Peter. Thanks to the grace that reinstates us, we love Jesus more deeply. We are better carriers of grace, better models. We are safer and more sympathetic to our people because of our new-found humility.
The Healing
Imagine the damage Peter’s denials had done to his soul. He must’ve been utterly bewildered. … As we all know, it’s hard to get back up after our soul takes that kind of a beating.
‘Do You Love Me?’
“More than these.” Comparisons plague pastors. We’re not supposed to do it, of course, except for edification purposes, but who hasn’t? When we stand knee-deep in the sludge of greater-than, more-committed-than, and more-strategic-than, Jesus’ question will call us out, “Yes, but do you love me more than these?”
Take a Deep Breath
Four years ago, almost every church building in America and beyond was closed and silent on Easter. … In a way, like the disciples that first Sunday, we had “locked doors for fear” of the pandemic. But the risen Lord came to us, as he did to them. In the struggles, wounds, and heartaches of these four years, the Lord Jesus has not left us alone or helpless. This Sunday remember that the Lord has been with us.
‘He Has Done It!’
So much was wrong with hearts, with the world’s systems, with creation itself. Satan reigned and death inevitably had the last word. But then all the promises of God, every jot and tittle of his law, every vision of his prophets, converged in the cross where the last mortal words of God’s Messiah declared the almost incomprehensible salvation miracle: “It is finished!”