During my entire federal law enforcement career, I worked the same territory and there were many recidivist lawbreakers that became well known to me. There was one such offender that I felt progressed through his career of crime in parallel to my career of crime fighting. Since he repeatedly committed the same offenses, I would look up the date of his release from prison because I knew within a couple of months I would once again chase him down in order to arrest him.

My fellow agents joked about it and posted a picture in my office of the old Warner Bros. cartoon of the sheepdog and the wolf who greeted each other every morning while they punched a time clock. Their workday activities consisted of the sheepdog chasing the wolf who was bent on eating the sheep. Then they would say goodnight to each other as they clocked out for the evening. On the picture, my co-workers labeled the sheepdog Teri, and the wolf with the name of this suspect.

On my last day of work before retirement, I picked up this cartoon and thought of the divergence of each of our paths. My path led to retirement and new opportunities to serve the Lord, while the suspect’s path led to a long prison term. This divergence in paths was due to the choices each of us made. I shared my faith with this suspect on several occasions, gave him a Bible, and even invited him to church. Yet, he always seemed to return to that time clock as a wolf.

Are you punching the time clock as a sheepdog or a wolf? That is, are you living according to the Holy Spirit and serving Jesus, or are you living according to the flesh and serving yourself and your own selfish desires?

Inside each of us, a deadly war is raging between the sheepdog and the wolf. The wolf greedily latches on to the temptation and sin around us, while the sheepdog desperately fights off the overwhelming hunger of the wolf. In Romans 8:13 Paul tells us, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (nkjv).

We can only defeat sin and the flesh by starving it and replacing it with righteous and godly behavior. Jesus triumphed over sin when He willingly died for us on the cross. When we follow Him and obey Him, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, His victory becomes our victory in that we will have eternal life. We obey the commands of Jesus by filling our minds with God’s Word and staying in constant communication with Him through prayer. Don’t feed your wolf. Instead, unleash the power of prayer and God’s Word upon your life so that your inner sheepdog may triumph.