Patrick Kee - Living With Our Shepherd Of Love: Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person

L IVING WITH O UR

S HEPHERD OF L OVE

L IVING WITH O UR

S HEPHERD OF L OVE

Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person

Dr. Patrick Kee

2018 Dr. Patrick Kee

Living with Our Shepherd of Love

Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Elm Hill, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Elm Hill and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Elm Hill titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail .

Scripture quotations marked ERV are taken from the Easy-to-Read Version. Copyright 2006 by Bible League international.

Scripture quotations marked esv are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version). Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked gnt are from the Good News Translation in Todays English VersionSecond Edition. Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked niv are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked nkjv are from the New King James Version. 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked nlt are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked the message are from The Message. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938710

ISBN 978-1-595556790

ISBN 978-1-595557407 (eBook)

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

Dedication

for

Our grand-daughters

Hannah

Lauren

Philippa

Zoe

Give thanks to the Lord for He is good

For His faithful love endures forever!

P SALM 107:1 (NLT)

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

M y sixtieth birthday was a turning point in my life. It was a time when God had to break my dreams so that He could give me His dreams for my life. I was led to share my reflections on Gods amazing ways of living the more abundant life in my autumn years. I completed my first book, Living Well In The Autumn Of Life, just before my grandson, Zachary, was born.

I had written on The Secret of Nothing - that without God we are nothing and without God we can do nothing. But six years later, I wrote in my journal that there is nothing I can do to please God. All I need to do is to BE nothing so that Christ will be everything to me. It is only when Jesus Christ is truly everything in my life that I will have nothing to fear and have everything I need. It dawned on me that knowing the truth is a far cry from living the truth.

After the birth of my grandson, I felt inspired to write my second book, Living With Our Heavenly Father, to share my reflections on The Lords Prayer for my grandson, Zachary. The Lords Prayer draws attention to our identity as a child of God and provides us with a vision of Gods Kingdom in the here and now and our mission is to do Gods will on earth as it is in heaven. It is a prayer to increase our awareness of Gods provision for our daily needs, His pardon for our sins and His protection from evil.

The birth of my grand-daughter, Zoe, led me to reflect more deeply on my identity as a child of God as well as the life of compassion. Christians are often exhorted to live a life that is pleasing and honoring to God. We are told that we need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But many, if not most of us, struggle to do so.

Jesus died on the Cross both to give us our identity as a child of God as well as to show us a clearer picture of God as Abba, our Heavenly Father. Only then will we seek to have an intimate relationship with God and to truly experience the joy of our salvation.

The bad news is that there is a war against sin and evil. God is at war with evil and the cancerous growth of pride, greed, lust and hate that leads to death and destruction. The Good News is that God is seeking to redeem and not to condemn the sinner. God is seeking to save and rescue fallen mankind and to make all things new.

With a new and clearer consciousness of my identity as Abbas child, I became more aware of my need for Gods grace to change my heart. On New Years day of 2016, I had written in my journal that the gospel truth is that God has given everything we need not only for eternal life but also to lead a God honoring life. God will not call us to do anything without providing a way for it to be done.

I felt led to write my third book, Living with Our Shepherd of Love to share my reflections and thoughts on Psalm 23. As I did so, Psalm 127:1 was a stark reminder that unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Likewise, unless this book is written with the Spirit of the Lord, it will not bear fruit but will only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. My prayer is that this book will bear fruit not only in the lives of my grandchildren but will also be an encouragement to all who are companions for the sick and terminally ill as they live their lives with Jesus Christ as their Shepherd of Love.

Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.

1 P ETER 2:25 (NLT)

The Lord Is My Shepherd

P SALM 23:1(NLT)

W e are living messy lives in a messy world that is unpredictable, uncertain and imperfect. Children are deprived of their childhood in a meritocratic society that is obsessed with success in examinations. Adults live like rats in a race of futility to get more and more but live less and less. And our elderly live their lives with quiet desperation - fearing death and struggling to find meaning in suffering. Life seems futile and without meaning when we live only for ourselves - when we try to be G.O.A.T.s - Greatest Of All Time. When we are alienated from God and we live our lives purely under the sun, life is meaningless and a chasing after the wind. This is the truth that the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible paints for us so vividly:

I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless like chasing the wind. What is wrong cannot be made right. What is missing cannot be recovered.