I read a sentence the other day that broke my heart — “I no longer hear the voice of the true Shepherd among all the bleating sheep.” It was in a blog post entitled Why We Left The Church. I read through each story, and the more I read, the more I recognized. The cries in these people’s hearts proclaiming that it wasn’t Jesus that turned them off, but His followers. It wasn’t the Word that sent them running, but the words of those who proclaim to know the Gospel. The more I read, the more I felt the cry in my own heart that I’ve been unable to vocalize for weeks.

I know somewhere, way in the back of my heart, there’s a humble man with kind eyes and a soft touch, beckoning me to come to Him and sit at His feet and rest. If I close my eyes and block out the rest of the world, all of the other voices telling me yes and no and right and wrong, I see Jesus’s sweet smile, the way His eyes crinkle in the corner as He looks at me with love.

I cling to that image — the image of my Shepherd.

Because all around me, more and more, I am assaulted by irritating sheep. They bleat and cry and scream and speak in a language I don’t understand. And if I don’t even understand, someone who’s been in the church for nearly her whole life, then how can our brothers and sisters who have never heard words like justification and sovereignty and sanctification even begin to?

It’s a problem when the sheep are what keep people from knowing the Shepherd.

It’s a problem when the bleating of the sheep becomes louder than the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. It’s a problem when people say that they might consider becoming christians if it weren’t for christians. Do you see what I’m saying here?

I’m guilty of this myself. I want to beat myself in the head for all the times I can think back to when I used big words and fancy vocabulary and difficult theology because it made me sound smarter, like I knew what I was talking about. I have no clue what I’m talking about! There are so many things that are so over my head, and yet I pretend to be some theologian because I want the title. The good christian. The wise believer. My focus was on myself, not others. It wasn’t telling them about Jesus, the man who loves them and wants to be their friend, their savior, their shepherd. It was about trying to win them to my side, to bring them onto team christian.

I could hit myself.

And now, I feel like I’m on their side. I can’t stand to hear the “christian vocabulary”. I’m so tired of trying to fit the bill of the "good christian sorority girl". Don’t get me wrong, and please don’t get offended. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, except for when it becomes more important than simply being a student of Jesus.

I am so weary of fighting this uphill battle. I’m tired of having questions that I feel like I can’t ask because I don’t want to “doubt”. Don’t question the blessings, don’t question the heartache. Just use big words and wear big t-shirts and carry your bible in your backpack and make sure you do your devotionals and oh, by the way, you probably shouldn’t listen to Hozier anymore because his songs are about sex, and don’t and don’t and don’t and do do do and… Does it make anyone else tired? The rules? The regulations?

Where is the love of Jesus in all of that? Where are the disciples? I don’t know about you, but when I picture the 12 disciples of Jesus, I don’t picture squeaky clean, cookie cutter men. These men were rough and tumble fishermen, tax collectors, zealots. The women that followed him — some of them had been prostitutes and adulteresses. And Jesus loved them. Not just in a pristine, perfect sense of the word. Jesus loved them. He loved them hard, He loved them in their brokenness, and He loved them so much that he refused to leave them in their sin. He loved them even though they probably said a curse word every now and then because that’s what they were used to. He loved them as people. They were His friends. Not just His followers. His real, honest-to-God friends.

Can I be honest?

Right now, I find more rest listening to secular music than I do in hearing a podcast from John Piper. The words of these musicians are more soothing to my soul than the chafing requirements of “righteous people”. Peace comes in the form of writing, of putting words down on paper that aren’t even necessarily about God and hope and faith except for how I’m not sure I even have the capacity for it right now.

And then, in the midst of fear and frustration and feeling like I’m not good enough, He speaks.

“I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10.

He speaks life into my weary soul.

It’s not easy for people when they don’t walk in others shoes. When they don’t live the life they live, or deal with the things they deal with. When they haven’t felt the heartache, when they haven’t stayed up till two o’clock in the morning just so that they can fall into bed completely exhausted, fall asleep without having to stare at the ceiling and think. When you don’t have to do that, you don’t understand.

But God does.

God searches our hearts and examines our minds. He sees into our souls, and He understands. He understand the hurt, He understands the pain. He understands what brokenness is, what pain is.

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” That’s Isaiah 53:3, and it’s a beautiful testament to who our Savior is. Who my Jesus is. My friend. My Shepherd.

I've decided that I don’t want the title. I don’t want to be a good christian. I don’t want to be a “believer”.

I just want to be a friend of Jesus. I want to come and rest in this kind man’s presence. I want to sit at His table and eat the bread and drink the wine. When I listen to Him, the bleating of the sheep go away.

I don’t have any more pretty words.

I don’t have any more complex theologies.

All I have is the soft whispering, the strong voice of a Shepherd who loves me, who has asked me to come to Him and sit at His feet and listen. From here, I will learn again. From here, I am okay. At the feet of my Savior, I can breathe easy, because I can rest in the knowledge that He knows my heart, even when others don’t. Even when I don’t completely understand myself. When I feel like the blackest of sheep, He still leaves the other ninety-nine to come find me. He never lets one of His sheep go. He only loves us harder.

Thank God that He does.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew 11:28.