Out Our Way: Hey! I know you! - John 10:27-28

Out our way, the horses often run free in the pasture, and you have to go out and get them. Now, sometimes there are horses that don't know me and when I approach; they shy away. Sometimes they even run. But usually ole Doc stands still when he sees me coming, for he knows me; and because he knows me he trusts me. He stands patiently for me to come, to slip on his halter and then lead him out of the pasture. Why are we leaving the pasture? Where are we going? He doesn't know - but he knows me and therefore trusts me.

Now Babe is a different story. Babe is a beautiful sorrel paint and Doc's paddock mate. When I come up the hill to get Babe, she doesn't stand still. She often will back off as I approach and call to her, turn and run away. Unlike Doc, she doesn't fully trust me because she doesn't really know me. She knows who I am, but does not know me. And that is the difference. Trust is not automatic, for it is based on a relationship. Babe and I are just acquaintances while Doc and I are teammates - connected - "pards." In short, we know each other.

That is the key. We know each other. That didn't happen overnight; it took a lot of relationship building to get to that point. Anyone who has had a special bond with a horse knows that horse and rider begin to "read" each other over time and build a special "vocabulary," communicating with each other through body language, ear tilts, vocal commands, knee pressure, and sometimes in ways that cannot be really explained. You just know your horse and your horse knows you - and that almost mystical bond develops. Trust is based on relationship, for it is in the relationship building that I know and am known. The same holds true in our relationship with God.

As everyone knows, this past year has been a time of real testing for our nation and our world. Confusion reigns as the COVID crisis continues and voices of authority arise cursing, dividing, spreading hate and chaos. People grow discouraged as the powers of darkness continue to grow and seemingly thrive in a divided world in which evil, prejudice, deception and corruption, have become acceptable and even praiseworthy. This is the "voice of the present age" and it belongs to one whom Jesus called "the prince of this world" (John 12:31). His is the modern "voice" that rises up age after age, loudly boasting of having replaced Christ as the "new lord" and pointing to ever growing numbers of followers and increasing power over culture. Chanting the mantra "the ends justify the means," whole mobs of gullible people embrace evil as good and denounce good as evil. Ah, but this is nothing new. We have heard this voice since the beginning. For in every generation, while many know of God, many do not know Him. Not knowing the Light, they become easy prey for the darkness. Yet even so, we have cause to hope.

Take, for example, Psalm 2. The psalmist cries out how the elites and powerful of the world "rise up and take counsel together against the Lord and His Anointed (Messiah/Christ)." Now check the headlines and "breaking news" stories and there's that voice again. Some things never change. The news is filled with stories of deluded and often corrupt leaders "taking counsel together" for this very purpose. So the Psalmist cried out, for so it was in his time. But read on, for as the Psalmist and history reminds us, in the end, most people wake up and the darkness is eventually exposed. And God laughs.

For, you see, here is another Voice: not the voice of the present culture or fad, but the Voice of God. Despite all the propaganda, deceit, slogans, gaslighting, and domination of the gullible; there is the "still small voice" (1 Kings 19:11-13) that the cultural elite who serve the Dark Lord cannot silence. And it is the Voice that speaks to us most clearly because, inside, we know the One Who is speaking.

In John's Gospel, Jesus uses the image of the shepherd and his sheep. The sheep know the shepherd's voice and no matter how powerful and deceiving the other voice may be, it is not the Shepherd's voice. The "prince of this world" deludes many, but not all, and few fail to eventually realize his goal is to control, manipulate, divide and destroy us. Once we wake up to that fact, we are no longer so easily fooled or brainwashed, and we begin to say, "depart from me for I don't know you" (Matthew 7:21-23).

And, as the connection and our relationship with God grows, the Voice of God becomes more familiar and the trust stronger. We come to recognize, know, and follow the Voice, saying, "Hey! I know You!"

Be blessed and be a blessing.

Brother John