This last lambing season, I ended up with four lambs that got rejected by their mom, or their mom died. Also, two additional rejected lambs showed up, and those were adopted by other mama ewes. Yet one of those adopted lambs fell behind, and it later revealed that the two-teat milk supply was on one side with abundant supply, with the other half barely producing. For just over one month, while the bottle lambs each received their daily five cups of milk replacer, I assumed this fifth one got enough from its adopted mom. But she wasn’t. Normally a lamb like her will not switch to eating from a bottle, but she was showing interest at bottle feeding time. To my surprise, she did like the taste of the milk replacer.

To feed the mama ewe, I moved her to new grass away from my expensive feed reserved for the bottle lambs. So the adoptive family went to our food forest pasture just behind the bottle-feeding area. In between them and the bottle lambs was a wooden panel, with a hole to allow lambs in to eat, but block the mama ewe from entering.

Now that it was time to stop feeding milk, I wanted this struggling baby to get more high-protein grain that I could only buy when I was in Hilo, nearly two hours away. The thief was her huge adoptive brother and he bullied everybody. So in trying to get her to eat grain, I would bring her in, and leave her with the other bottle-fed lambs, only to see her disappear in search of her not helpful “mom.” Try as she might, there was nearly no milk for her since her brother took the favored side each time. Each time I found and fixed her escape to the non-productive mom, she always pushed through somewhere else. First, it was holes created by the wild piglets, then she learned to push up the unfastened fence and go back. That was bad enough, but the most independent boy who got daily milk rations followed her actions. So both were not getting access to their grain rations.

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When is enough enough? My effort can feed new spiritual growth, but lacks power to cleanse wrong choices.  It is possible to pray, read life-giving books, hear sermons, watch YouTube content, gather with believers, and all types of spiritual effort and miss the point. Am I there and satisfied with my effort to be WITH Him, no, but when I see God’s zeal toward me, I’m changed.  He never quits on me.  My feelings or thoughts don’t make him leave.  Do my choices limit His active, unfailing love towards me? His passion means He’s active and guiding me always.

So the annoying “fly” buzzes and says, “hey are you walking with God this very moment,”  or “this morning,” or “did you do this important thing to be in a better relationship with God?” The reality remains that even if weakness in spiritual discipline rears its head, He never quits on me. Jesus is the perfect substitute, not me. I am weak, He is strong. His strength means there is no condemnation when He lives within.

Strength is from facing weakness and yet remembering that Jesus perfection lives within. It’s still not license to do whatever, or believe whatever is convenient.  The following example is from my sheep, and they don’t naturally stay inside safe boundaries.

I experience my Lord more each time I feed, protect, medicate, and discipline my sheep.  I know how they might die physically by going outside boundaries of the fence into the path of a car, or get tangled in that same fence and strangle. They don’t know this. I’m angry when they think they can poke their head through the boundary because I’ve witnessed sheep with the netting twisted around on their neck so tight they choked to death.  I pay money for better electric fences and more powerful shocks so this doesn’t happen.  But baby lambs are still testing that boundary and some ignore the electric jolt.  I don’t give up, I’ll fix the broken fences, check the power, and I’d even yell at them, but once they find one weak spot in the fence, they keep trying.

Becoming more in tune with Holy Spirit means everything to our Father. This love response isn’t a level in a game to improve ourselves, it signals we hear and receive what Jesus declared to us. 

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