Human Care

Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among whom the Holy Spirit has placed you as overseers to shepherd the church of God, which He obtained through His own blood.

Acts 20:28

The urgent and present need of the church, which the Lord deeply impressed upon me is "shepherding." Of late, the Lord burdened me for this and as I have been laboring in His grace, planting and watering faithfully, He causes the growth ( 1 Cor. 3:7). If there were none to plant and water, I believe God has no way to go on.

Brothers and sisters, though they are saved, they still need a lot of shepherding. As regeneration is not the end of a Christian life, but just the beginning. For them to grow, they do need shepherding. This need has been felt very much these days. As much as there is a need for shepherding, I myself need a lot of shepherding. And in shepherding, I am shepherded in return. And many fellowship during shepherding shepherded me too. An incident that touched me was what happened last Lord's day. 

After the table meeting, the Lord burdened me to spent another hour of free fellowship with new ones who came for the meeting. And He gave the utterance and released the burden. Praise the Lord! Still after this, two very new brothers in the Lord and also in the church-life opened up and requested for deeper personal time, which I obliged to. And they opened themselves up with much thirst and hunger for shepherding.

They both narrated their life stories and concluded that they really have been starved to spiritual death because of lack of shepherding in the denomination where they used to be. Recently, their introduction to the church-life was a matter of great revival in their lives. And both of them testified of the shepherding they received in the church-life. 

One of them have been struggling for 15 long years in the matter of baptism with many questions and doubts, but in the church-life in a small group meeting all doubts were cleared in 15 minutes fellowship on the truth of baptism. He later, got baptised and are now writing a new life story. The other brother opened up on may issues related to youth and their struggles in life, often times leading to depression and unwanted addictions.

To these brothers, exercising my spirit, I fellowshipped with them the need for personal and corporate enjoyment of the Lord and for this, the need for spiritual discipline in spending time with the Lord and eating the Word of God daily. Every genuine growth in life is a process and takes time. I encouraged them to come to the Lord and trust in Him only for every matter great or small; and if they need further fellowship and prayer, I offer myself to be available and contactable personally or at least over the phone. In our concluding fellowship we all prayed one by one. The Lord really worked in them and especially one of them, just confessed with tears and prayed and consecrated his life to Lord anew. Praise the Lord.

Today, when we had the God-ordained way class, this very experience was confirmed by the Lord's speaking through a brother. Shepherding is the need of the hour. May the Lord raise up many shepherds to shepherd the church of God.