When I graduated from high school and started my farm business, a family friend gave me an Australian Shepherd puppy to be my farm dog. I named him Blake. He followed me every day as I did chores, always eager to help. One of his favorite jobs was chasing down escaped chickens and pinning them until we arrived, out of breath, to grab the runaway bird and carry it back to the coop.
We raised hundreds of free-range chickens back then, moving the flocks around our pastures inside electrified netting. Our biggest predator problem was hawks, so we brought in some geese. Geese are aggressive and will scare off birds of prey. The trouble is, they can be mean, too. With those snake-like necks and strong beaks and wings, I’ve seen them chase grown men right out of their pen.
Blake didn’t like the geese, and he was protective of me. Normally he left them alone, but he always kept an eye on them.
One day we were moving the flock to fresh ground. I had taken down the netting, and the chickens were still shut in their portable coop, an old twenty-four-foot cotton wagon we had converted. The geese were loose, since they usually followed along on their own. Blake was watching, looking for a way to help.
He and the geese ended up on the far side of the coop from me, and something must have happened. All of a sudden the geese were running and flying in every direction, with Blake right behind them. One landed at the far end of the pasture, the other in the woods. It took me a long time to round them up and get them back with the flock.
Knowing Blake, I didn’t fault his eagerness. Chasing down birds was something he helped with when we needed to get chickens back in. But this time he wasn’t listening to his master. The whole time he was zealously chasing those geese, I was yelling, “Stop, Blake! No, Blake!” He was too busy trying to help to hear me.
Later, as I reflected on it, I felt God say to me: “You’re just like Blake sometimes. You want to serve me, and you’re doing all these things for my glory, but you aren’t listening to me. So you aren’t helping accomplish my plans. You’re doing your own thing and feeling good about it because you say it’s for the Lord.”
What I do shouldn’t simply be what I want to do to glorify God. Even good things, done for Jesus but not done in obedience, can be evil in His sight.
Can you glorify God through farming? Yes. But what if our pursuit of farming (justified because we’re doing it for God!) is distracting us from a clear calling: to care for aging parents, to invest in our marriage, or to stay at our current job until the debt is paid off? Are we really bringing glory to our Master, or are we like my dog Blake, zealous but disobedient?
Obedience requires listening, submission, and relationship. Jesus said:
“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:22–23)
God isn’t looking for us to integrate stewardship and discipleship as a technique or a ministry approach. He is looking for an intimate relationship with us, one that transforms everything in our lives: how we look at eternity, how we plant our corn, how we parent our children, how we manage our finances.
When our lives become a growing reflection of the kingship of Jesus in the radically normal moments, making disciples becomes a natural by-product, not a ministry strategy.
Where might you be chasing geese right now, busy with good things for God without stopping to listen?
