The Floundering of the Soul – Soul Care Devotional Day 13

How Is It With Your Soul?

Soul Care – Day 13

Floundering – The Cast Sheep

Prepared by Pastor Calvin Cook – 11/18/2024

Scripture – Hosea 6:1-3 “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. 3 Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises,   he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.”

Many years ago, when I was at home and there were sheep in the field, I remember one instance vividly. There was a sheep, heavy with a year’s growth of wool, that had gotten stuck on its back and couldn’t get back up. This situation is called a cast sheep. My neighbor referred to it as floundering. All that was needed was for the shepherd to help the sheep back onto its feet. If it had stayed on its back without assistance, it would have died from worry and stress.

I’ve thought of this situation many times and places in my life, when I felt like that sheep, when I felt like I was floundering. When nothing seemed to be going right, feeling alone, beat down, with no way to get back on my feet. Then suddenly out of nowhere the great shepherd appears and gets me back on my feet and I go back to life. However, I must be willing to seek the Lord. The Hosea scripture from chapter 6 gives us some clear direction from verse 6 “Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him”. The problem is we get in situations we shouldn’t be in because we didn’t acknowledge the Lord in the first place.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a bad place because we depended on our own plans or on someone else’s plans, instruction, or ideas who maybe didn’t have God’s plans for us but their own. Remember what we read in Isaiah’s words last week. God’s ways are not always our ways.  

Through the prophecy of Hosea God speaks and promises that God will always be for us. That God will be our rescuer! Just as sure as Spring is coming, sooner I hope than later, God will always be there. Soul care is realizing and accepting that right now whatever we are going through that God is making a way.

If you feel like that sheep on its back with no way to get back up, have hope! I am hopeful today of the way that God will make through some situations that are troubling me. I also realize that I must be patient but not complacent and wait because deliverance is on the way. Always has been and always will be, we just need to be willing to receive.

Prayer – For the cast sheep this morning I am praying. For myself I am praying that when I feel as if I am floundering that you my God will always make a way. In the name of Jesus I pray- Amen