The Stupidity of Shepherds

For the shepherds are stupid: they don’t seek the Lord. Therefore they have not prospered, and their whole flock is scattered. – ‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭10:21‬ ‭HCSB‬‬

What could we do to really steward what God has given us.

So often we are not able to capitalize on the opportunities God provides us to follow up, minister, encourage etc. the various people that walk into our lives, our churches.

Jeremiah 10:21 (ESV) – For the shepherds are stupid and do not inquire of the LORD; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.

This is specifically speaking about fault of the leaders.

There are several times when people walk come to church and may not be able to grow or see the fullness of God’s plan for their lives, because they are genuinely not interested or hungry for anything more. It can truly be an aspect where they don’t want God.

We’re talking about the fault on the side of the leaders, not the flock. But not one senior pastor or one elder in the house but multiple shepherds appointed by God over a flock. The shepherds are stupid because they do not seek the Lord. So they don’t prosper and their flock are scattered.

If we’re not growing or prospering ourselves, then we cant expect the people that are following us to grow themselves. Why would we expect them to be any better than us. That is why it is a huge responsibility that a pastor and leader has that they themselves grow.

It’s not just about prosperity in finances, or bank balance, but also physical prosperity, in your walk with God, in relationship with other people. If there is no growth or evidence of God’s blessing on your life then we obviously wont be a role model over people’s life.

Can we take an inventory of our own lives ? Where do we need to prosper this season ?

Don’t just limit in walk with God, but also our love for others, our interactions with people, our careers, our excellence, our dressing, everything needs to represent the King of Kings.

The flock cannot necessarily see Jesus. Jesus asked peter ‘ do you love me ? if yes, you need to feed my sheep ‘. Jesus entrusted under peter’s leadership.

Reason one why we may have bad results is that – We ourselves may not be growing.

Can’t just be one leader growing and another taking it easy, but every leader grow together. Then the church will prosper.

Another reason is that we don’t seek the Lord, and there is no increase and prosperity and the flock is scattered.

How often do we seek the Lord ? and what is it that we seek Him for ? What do we go to Him on an everyday basis for ? To be a better leader ? to be a better pastor ? better father ?

Anything we don’t invest into, we cannot expect returns from. If we don’t invest in your marriage, we won’t get returns from our marriage.

Here are few things we need to seek the Lord for:

1 – Compassion : Pray for the gift of compassion

The world is filled with negative role models of pastors, who can preach a great sermon but can never be compassionate to someone who is broken. They can preach from the stage saying ‘ God is with you ‘ but can’t really demonstrate that God is with someone by spending an extra minute with someone or shedding a tear for someone else.

We live so disconnected with people, a world of overdose of negative information and our sensitivity to pain has decreased so much, reading on the news how people are being killed, raped, murdered etc. and when someone comes and tells us that they couldn’t sleep an entire night because of a bad headache, we react telling them ‘ come on, it’s just a headache, there’s way worse stuff happening out there in the world than a headache ‘

But what Jesus did was never look down on a person’s problem as if there are other problems are bigger than theirs. He was willing to empathize with every person. That kind of compassion truly comes from God.

Let’s pray for a compassion in our heart like Jesus. Not just love people, because we can love people and still be disconnected from them. Jesus was so moved with compassion when He saw the people of His day, He starting weeping seeing people without a shepherd to guide them, to see people without hope or a reason to live or direction.

2 – Strategy: How to show the compassion

Show us a pathway to show the compassion. Some people when Jesus healed them, He asked them to do something, go show to the priest, wash themselves in the pool as an act of obedience. A strategy. God provided Jesus with a strategy for every single person.

We need to go to presence of God and ask for a strategy for every single person that comes up. As a parent we cannot deal with every child in the same manner, there needs to be a strategy in place. Not every child is the same way.

3 – Money: Provision to put strategies into practice

The good Samaritan who took the man to the hospital and paid his bills, that takes money, not everybody can afford that.

Seek Him for the provisions to take care of His flock, provision of time, money, physical health that needs to fall into place.

Sometimes we think we can only do things by reaching out to rich people to help others. We have to learn to God first before we go to people. God will direct you to somebody, He spoke to Elijah and directed to widow of Zarephath and she will feed. Without hearing from God and if he went to any widow, that would have been a violation of trust in God. As we depend on God, He will give us the address to go to people who will take care of people. Do this with a lot of prayer.

If we want to prosper in our ministry as God wants us to, then we need others, we need a team, people who will work hand in hand with us to invest into God’s kingdom.

4 – Influence: Seek the Lord for influence

Not just about the people that come to our church but to seek and pray to give influence over certain kind of diseases in our living area, kinds of marital problems, struggles in people’s finances. People who come to us with problems, have to go back healed and breakthroughs.

We need to contend with God over prayer requests, entire areas, where the church is planted in, the nation we live in, the city we’re in.

5 – People: Seek God for People to come

God will prosper us. He will bring people that are suffering, into our lives and into our care.
The bible says the shepherds stupidity is in not seeking God.
When we depend on ourselves and have the capability to do good without God, and live by ourselves, we will reach a place that is stagnant and our flock that we are supposed to lead, will get scattered. Our wisdom will be that we seek the Lord.

– Seek for compassion
– Seek for strategy
– Seek for provision
– Seek for influence
– Seek for people

Let’s pray and share this podcast with friends, families and leaders to understand the heart of God and function as wise shepherds. For in the scripture it says ‘ Shepherds ‘, it’s plural. It’s for the entire leaders, collective groups who lead flocks. Let’s be that shepherd who is wisely leading, and into prosperity.