You Are More Than You Think You Are…

I have been given an opportunity to share about my new book, “MESSY POEMS AND-NOT-SO PRIVATE PRAYERS.” How it came into being and what it’s all about, and maybe by the end of this blog, I will have taken the time to do that.

But right now, my heart wants to speak a word, a word of declaration. “You are more than you think you are.” You are not just a sheep roaming around the pastures of your life, grazing and waiting for your Good Shepherd to take you home. It’s so much bigger than that. 

I learned something new the other day as I was looking up the Sheepgate in Scripture. The Sheepgate in biblical history was the first gate ever built. Its purpose was to lead the hundreds of sheep into the temple courts for sacrifice. Once a sheep went in, well, it never came back out. It was actually a one-way passage. There was no provision on the other end of this doomed and quartered enclosure. 

The plan for these sheep was always the same. Everyone knew how it would end. It would be just like yesterday’s sacrifice.

Isn’t this where we sometimes get stuck? Stuck in our thinking that we know the “game plan” for ourselves and for our lives. That somehow nothing new could be true, at least based on our yesterday’s point of view. We so easily develop our own one-way kind of thinking. We think we already know what the full meal deal is for us. It sounds so dreadful and limited in view yet, it’s true. But, here’s the good news, we can shift our gears right out of these familiar and captive perspectives. It comes by reading the Word, the Good News in John 10:1-4 BSB 

“I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.  The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice.”

Only Jesus was willing and able to go through the one-way Sheepgate to the ultimate sacrifice. 

But we also need to recognize these three powerful words, “Leads Them Out.” Jesus himself has led us out of our doomed death; the sacrificial alter has been staid. He alone had the authority to turn a one-way gate into a two-way gate. Now, as His sheep, He faithfully takes us to quiet brooks of living waters. Because of Him, “We are more than we think we are.”

We have been given the right as His sheep to accept the Holy Spirit’s challenge. Go out of the gate, don’t stay, don’t stray, or rest in your own comprehensions of yesterday’s quarters-the ones that lead nowhere.          

SWING WIDE OH HEAVENLY GATES, AND LET THE KING OF GLORY COME IN!

This is the place I purposed to write my book from. My heart was to reveal, through my writings, the redemptive work of the cross. These are persuasions of how Jesus leads to the revelation of our spiritual freedoms in Him.  

I nearly flunked school. All my life, I have felt only half as smart as your average sheep. So, when the Holy Spirit started to download His poetic words of wisdom into my life, I ran! I ran as fast as any sheep could. Running and jumping out of the one-way Sheep Gate onto the path and through the two-way Sheep Gate of my Good Shepherd. 

I now challenge you. Take hold of your courage, and run past yesterday’s limitations and comprehensions. You are more than you think you are! So, go write your own book! Go out and declare His mighty working in your own life! Show the world the redemption of the two-way Sheep Gate!

Love, your sister Melissa