Corban Shepherd is not my name. I can imagine that seems a less than genuine way of introducing myself. But it is actually a very personal treasure that I am sharing with you. Maybe even more personal than sharing a handshake and a first name.

 

Corban

Somewhere along the road following Jesus, I was told that the Hebrew word Korban/Corban means "a gift consecrated to God". Like an arrow hitting the mark, that one word has a deep prayer I had always had but without the words or means to acknowledge it. I want to be a Corban. I want to BE a gift consecrated to God. The kind of gift that you open and overwhelms you with joy. I want God to be delighted with me like that. I spent the first part of my life striving for this by being a good Christian. Give me a rule and I would follow it. Tell me what is bad and I would hate it. But little did I know, with every good thing I did and in every way I was better than others in my own eyes, I was just making a personal-sized Tower of Babel for myself---trying to be like God without Him.  

 

Then everything changed.  

 

In His unfathomable mercy and tenderness, the living, resurrected Jesus revealed Himself to me the day after my 18th birthday. I wish you and I were sitting here together, chatting over tea or coffee and I could go on and on about the details of that day. So many things were made clear to me. But the most important piece I want to share with you is this: I got to feel the weight of the great, dark distance between His actual goodness and mine. What I was feeling was the weight of my own sin. Not the sin Adam and Eve committed that couldn't possibly be my fault, not what my family or friends did that I could shift blame onto. Mine. My sin. My darkness. So much darkness. I wanted to not have been born when I saw it. I wanted to be sucked into a shadow of nothing.  

 

I had been covering this wretchedness up with a badge that said "Christian". King Jesus, in His mercy, peeled back the fake badge and let me see the real. I had made myself an enemy to God not a Corban. And I was utterly helpless to do anything about it. If I were walking past me in the ditch I would have turned my eyes away in disgust...But there was Jesus, hand extended, eyes seeing everything. Not disgusted. The love I felt from Him was so intense that I wanted to run from it. It was more than I could ever possibly earn. He was offering me His own robes of Corban to wear in exchange for my sin rags of death. He lifted me from the mire I had created and I was born again.

 

So yes, I am a consecrated gift to God that brings Him delight! But not because of anything I have done. You can give Jesus all the credit. It is by simply trusting and believing in His own love and obedience to the Father to be born a man, live a sinless life, die an excruciating death and be raised from the dead. By faith, I am now a consecrated gift from God to God with me sandwiched in the middle like a bear hug.

 

He has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.  2 Timothy 1:9

 

All of that is hidden in the letters of Corban when I say it. Corban is my salvation, walk of faith, times with Holy Spirit, who I presently am, and who I continue to press on into the upward call of my God, my Savior to be. 

 

Shepherd

Following Jesus has been my great undoing. Doesn't that sound ominous?  It is definitely ominous to my flesh. It can feel like death to choose His ways over our ways because it is our flesh dying making room for His glorious light. Trusting Him has often felt like I was losing everything but it has never actually meant that in the end. Because He was there and is here. And He is everything. He has been such a Good Shepherd to me. He has pried my fingers from bitterness, arrogance, self-reliance, judgement and so many other things that were killing me from the inside out. He did it in ways, and through circumstances, one would have never expected.  

 

It has been a couple decades since the day after I turned 18 and I sit here weeping even thinking about what a Good Shepherd He has been. He is a Safe Savior. Whatever this present moment may look like, He is worthy of our trust. And bonus we get to be living sacrifices, consecrated to Him in the process. When I tremble a little or tremble a lot...the answer is always to get my eyes back on the Shepherd. 

 

God is deeply involved in every moment of our lives. Let Him Shepherd you today. This business name is a reminder to myself to do just that.

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So now you know that when you see Corban Shepherd on your planner or this website you are seeing a wink from a child of God who wants her life to be a fragrant offering; and a loving wink back from her Shepherd who is ever-presently helping her do just that.

  

Nice to meet you!