Aug
31
2011

The Stimuli Diet and Hearing the Shepherd

An article by Matt

In last week’s interview Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative, spoke a little bit about the idea of a stimuli diet. At first, I have to admit that I hated the concept… mostly because it meant that I need to be more proactive in filtering what I fill my brain with. But the more that I really think about it, the more that I realize that Todd is on to something.

Tuesday morning, during my weekly men’s group, we somehow got to talking about John 10:

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

That is when the importance of a stimuli diet really clicked for me. As I read through the first five verses of John 10 the importance of familiarity was driven home for me. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd, they recognize it, and they are drawn to it. This recognition comes because he is the one who feeds them, who cares for them, who binds their wounds, and ensures their safety. He is the one who is consistently with them. When I see a pasture full of sheep I have a hard enough time telling the difference between the black ones and the white ones… yet the shepherd knows each of them by name.

We live in a world where we have on-demand access to unlimited entertainment, information, and distraction. There are screens everywhere: last week I saw them mounted on gas pumps! With this constant bombardment of stimuli, what voices are we becoming familiar with, and how is that affecting our ability to recognize the voice of the shepherd?

How do YOU ensure that you recognize the shepherd’s voice?