ShepherdLeader.com

Lost. That’s the best way to describe my life until I was about 23. I had failed at just about everything. I got kicked out of school; wasn’t much of a son or brother; had very little motivation, but that was ok because I had absolutely no direction anyway. I wasn’t just lost. I was a loser as well. Talk about being the black sheep of the family.

I grew up in a family where each generation had someone serving the Lord in fulltime ministry. They all wondered who it would be in my generation. Never, never did they expect it to be me (except my grandmother and brother who were praying for me). I was not only the lost sheep, but the black one, the pink one, whatever you want to call me of the family, and I was it! But He chose me. And I’ve come to realize that this is the way that God does things very often. He will do the most unexpected and choose the lowest of the low, the blackest of all black sheep, and simply, the lost to serve Him and glorify His name. He did not simply want me to be found. He wanted me to fulfill my destiny. And isn’t that the essence of shepherding? The lost sheep are sought and brought back safely so that it can become that which it was meant to be. Being found and recovered is just the beginning of an incredible journey ahead. I think that is part of the joy of finding the lost—that they now have a chance to fulfill their destiny… to glorify God.

O can I ever relate to that! I was an only daughter among four brothers...and then became the black sheep of the family. I got so lost that the Lord himself came to find me and direct me apart from any other person or church. Now I am the only Christian in my family ( though those in my family lay claim to the title Christian, loosely, they do not live it). My very politically conservative republican family now has a very committed Christian among them...not something they are comfortable with, but they do see the difference in my life since abandoning a life of sin and turning to a life of purposeful pursuit of God's will. That was 37 years ago (I was 18 when he got my attention...and lower than at the bottom, crying for help). But the Lord cleaned me up, gave me a husband, children, allowed me to serve in missions (20 yrs now), and go to seminary (am almost finished my MDiv)...he has also continued to reveal himself to me in the most miraculous of ways. Truly it is incredible how the Lord takes the most broken and insignificant and glorifies himself through this vessel.