Precious Little Lambs! --Part One

If you know me, you know I love using the analogy of a shephard and his sheep to explain our relationship with God. Well, I want to write about it here and go into more detail.
I saw the significance of this relationship when reading a book about servant leadership called "The Way of The Shephard" by Kevin Leman. This a good book for anyone who is in a leadership postition or wants to be. Its a small book and has seven principles to go by when leading a group no matter the number of people under your supervision. I had to read the book when I was a Resident Assisstant at Bryan. It helped me in leading people and knowing how to handle difficult situations with grace and paitence. As I read the book I couldn't help but be humbled by how perfectly we can be compared to sheep. Ever since reading that book, I love reading in the Scriptures when Good refers to us as sheep.
I used to read those passages and think "okay, we are like sheep because we are stupid and need a leader." But its more than that. We are stupid, like really stupid. Do you know how stupid sheep are? I found out by reading the book mentioned above and going to a sheep farm.

I will list the dumb things sheep do and their neediness and see if you can see the similarities:

• If sheep get stuck in a fence or between two trees, they are stuck there until someone gets them out. All they have to do is walk backwards, but they are too afraid to do that.
• Sheep will not go out and look for greener grass. If it was up to them they would stay in one spot forever, whether there was still grass there or not.
• Sheep will drink dirty water if that is where they are led to.
• Sheep trust when they shouldn't and don't trust when they should. Like for instance with food and drink, they will go where led and eat and drink what is offered, but they fight to follow their shephard.
• Sheep have to be constantly trained and retrained. I met a shephard who trains sheep for fair shows and he told me about how he has to train the sheep every day to do the same thing. If he misses one day of not training, he must start all over again.
• In a storm, a sheep will not run for cover, the shephard must lead them to safety. If a sheep stays out in the storm, they could get struck by lightning, or their wool can get drenched and weigh them down so they cannot move.
• Sheep have no defense mechanism, they might try to run away from predators, but they can't last long and soon give up.
• When a shephard guides his sheep he must use force to get them to go where he needs them, They don't follow easily.

Now, its not all bad, sheep are smart in one thing: They recognize their shephards voice and follow him. I actually didn't think this was really truly what happens, but the shephard I met said it was true. They can distinguish between voices and will only follow voices they recognize.

Okay, This is part one of the subject. If I keep going it will be a very long post. Please post questions and comments.
The next post will focus on the Scriptures that use the Shephard/sheep analogy. I want to look at them more in depth and so that means a whole new post.  Thanks for reading!