John 10:14-15  I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me - just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father - and I lay down My life for the sheep.

My Shepherd knows me. This is the first great realization of the heart. That I, of all people, am Jesus' little lamb! I belong to Him. I am not some insignificant nameless number at the bottom of the corporate barrel. My Shepherd knows me even as I know Him. Our relationship is mutual.

Second, my Shepherd knows me in the same way He knows His Father. And They are one! This means that the life of God = Father, Son/Shepherd, and Comforter - iis life in me. The heart of God is in my heart. The Holy Trinity has chosen, as my Shepherd said, to come and make a home in...me!

Finally, my Shepherd laid down His life for me. He knows me as I am. He knows that I love to wander. He knows that I am by nature sinful and unclean. He knows that I am frail unto death. He knows all this! And as a result, He laid down His life - for me - that I may be His own. There is no greater love than the love of my Good Shepherd for me. And for you. There is no greater love than the love of our God for all the lost and wandering sheep of the world, including me.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Rev. Dr. Brent L Parrish

John 10:11  I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

The Associated Press reported that in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a youth shaved his head as a sign of love and support for his mother. His mother always had beautiful hair but had lost it because of cancer treatments. However, when the young man went to school, some of the students beat him up thinking he was trying to be a skinhead. Support for his mother ended up giving him a black eye!

Young and old alike support others in a variety of ways. They shave their heads. They walk or jog in a rally. They protest. They sit by a bedside holding a friend's hand.

Few, however, give their life for another. It is the greatest act of love someone can show. Yet that's exactly what God did. He who created us perfect was saddened to see us flagrantly disobey Him; nevertheless, He did not give up on us. He continued to love us enough to lay down His life for us on the cross. He died in our place, rescuing us from the consequences of our sin - death. He did it so that we might "have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). It is what a good shepherd does for his sheep!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Rev. Dr. Brent L Parrish

John 10:9 I am the gate; whoever enters through Me will be saved. He will come in and goi out, and find pasture.

A Jewish survivor of the Dachau concentration camp related this story. He was a university professor in Berlin during the early years of the Nazi regime. He had always considered himself a German first and had served proudly in the military during World War I. He had never dreamed that the Nazis would come for him.

On the night when he was arrested, a friend of his who was still an officer in the military sent him warning that his family was going to be arrested that night. He hurriedly packed his family up and sought refuge at the American Embassy in Berlin. But when he got there, the gate was locked, and he was arrested on the road out front while diplomats looked on from behind the gate. He never saw his family again after that night.

Many years later he tracked down a friend of his who had worked with him at the university. He was surprised to find out that his friend was now a Christian. His friend, also being hunted by the Nazis, had managed to make it to the gates of the church, which he found open. The church, through the underground, helped his friend to safety. And this church proclaimed the truth of Jesus to him. In this church, his friend found life, both on earth and forever.

Jesus is the gate, and the gate is never locked. We are often chased by the minions of the devil. Sin, temptation, greed, and lust seek to consume us. But in Jesus, we know that we have safety from these soldiers and that through the gate is salvation.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Rev. Dr. Brent L Parrish

John 9:3 This happened so that the work of God might be displayed.

Cause and effect, also referred to as the "law of the Medes and Persians" (what goes around comes around) is and has been through the centuries one of the tried and true counsels of wisdom passed on from the old to the young. "Don't do it. It'll come back to haunt you." And there is human truth in this counsel. Divine truth, however, runs deeper.

Conventional "wisdom" dictates that blindness, birth defects, or any human tragedy reveals in its malfunction the reality that "what's going around is coming around." To this Jesus says emphatically no!

Every human situation is redeemable in Christ. Every tragedy, every difficulty, every hard edge can and does bring us to a place where the "work of God might be displayed." That place, for you and for me, is at the foot of the cross. There God was reconciling the world in Christ. There God delivered healing and salvation in His Son. There what goes around and what comes around are stripped of their power to destroy. And what remains is life eternal in Christ Jesus.

If you have been laid low by some terrifying agony, take it to the cross. There the work of God will be displayed in your life.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Born Free is the title of a book and movie that describes the plight of lions and their captivity at the hands of human beings. As the title suggests, these lions were born to be free as the rulers of the jungle.

Many people today, expressing their desire for individual rights, claim that they have been born free. Citizens of the United States claim "inalienable rights" as defined in the Declaration of Independence.

Yet, in reality, we are not free. Sin binds us in its chains, making us confess with the apostle Paul, "for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19).

All of us have times in our lives when we feel the binding frustration of sin hold us back from being all that God wants us to be. Where may we turn? Ultimately, it is God's Son, Jesus Christ, who alone sets us free. His death and resurrection assures us that we cannot be bound by our sins. He carries our sins to the cross so that we are forgiven.

God assures us that through our faith in Jesus Christ we are reborn to be free: free to live with Him today and forever; free to love as He has loved us; free to give our lives away in service to Him and others.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 6:35  The Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never thirst."

Jesus had just fed 5,00 men and probably many others who were with them in the area of Tiberias. When He departs for Capernaum, the crowd follows. After all, this is some bargain! We can sense the pounding of their hearts as they feel the beginning of a new time when their meager existence would be enriched with daily bread provided by their new king!

Most of us aren't asking for the world or don't expect to win the Reader's Digest sweepstakes. But our life experience is confined to limits imposed by life and death. So we are wary of throwing out lot in with someone who claims to be "the bread of life." We can taste the food on our table, even if it is only peanut butter. How can we let go and trust Jesus to provide for all our needs, spiritual and material?

Jesus tells us that if we will let go of our lunch pail we will have a much greater banquet in store. Still, we take along our sandwiches in case the great wedding feast fizzles. Finally He meets us at the door with the wedding garment of salvation, and we know that we have to drop everything to put it on. And, miraculously, we do! And we discover the Bread of Life is more than adequate to all our needs.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 5:39-40  You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life.
 

Perhaps you have read books about the Christian life that tout the seven steps toward an effective prayer life or the five attributes of a Christian giver. To be fair, Scriptures often do address practical issues of the Christian life. But such how-to books can give the impression that our walk with God is a series of stepping stones that finally bring us home to the Father. In reality, our walk with God begins with the Father's sending Jesus Christ to us, thereby bringing us home. Out of the living faith He gives us, we respond by searching the ways in which Christ's love and forgiveness apply to our lives.

Jesus addresses just this issue here in John 5. We can diligently study the Scriptures without ever discovering their focal point. To learn "how to" without learning of Jesus and His saving work provides us with a manual for right living without giving us Christ's righteousness. So we are left destitute of the one and only thing that counts: the eternal life He wishes to shower on us.

But the Scriptures testify about Him as they grab us and make us see the futility of our own efforts at godly living. At the moment when we realize all is hopeless, they give us new hope because He suffered and died and rose again for us. So search the Scriptures, for in them is found His eternal life.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,