A Father- The Family Shepherd

I’ve heard it said that a father is the family shepherd of the home. I just love that title. By God’s divine order, the father is head of the house. His role is to tenderly lead and guide his family like a shepherd would for his sheep.

The great truth however, is that a family shepherd isn’t perfect. He’s an imperfect man who follows a perfect God. He isn’t afraid to confess his sins or when he’s screwed up because his ultimate goal and desire is to love and fear God. His ambition is to genuinely live out his faith in front of his wife and children.

When I first got married, my husband asked me one day, “How’s your heart?” Those words really caught me off guard—I’d never been asked that before or at least asked in that way. But knowing that my husband cared about my heart meant the world to me. Three years later, he’s mentioned his desire to make sure our newborn son John, will know in the future that he can bring his whole heart before his father. And that John will have that security knowing it will be protected.

Proverbs 20:5 says, The purpose of a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out (ESV).

It’s the business of a father to draw out from his wife and children the deeper matters of the heart. While this takes time and some humility, his role is to draw this out so there will be healing, love, respect and harmony among his family.

This Father’s Day, remember that you are the family shepherd and what an awesome role that is!

Thanks for all you do and Happy Father’s Day!

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Adventures in the Holy Land with David Nasser

I don’t think our producers would’ve guessed that their recent trip to the Holy Land to film David Nasser would be filled with so much adventure. Our team came back with some great teaching, footage, and some funny stories (well funny to look back on).

Upon arriving in Tel Aviv (the second largest city in Israel), going through security was always interesting with David Nasser because he’s Iranian and well, he was in Israel. But several hours later, all of them made it through the check points.

They traveled to the Valley of Elah, where David fought Goliath, to shoot teaching for a separate series we’re doing on the life of David. They spent about six hours filming. Shooting the caves where David hid from Goliath was next on their plan, but on the way to En Gedi, their GPS system neglected highways so a 45-minute trip turned out to be two and a half hours of driving! Frustrated a little from wasted time, they still were able to shoot all the teaching under a tight schedule.

Two solid weeks of teaching, filming, traveling, and sweating went by fast. But the hard work wasn’t completely over. On their way out of the country, security at the airport insisted to check their equipment (which isn’t typical). Security proceeded to say they would have to disassemble all the hard drives (containing all the teaching and video). Our guys demanded that they absolutely cannot do such a thing. Disassembling could destroy everything on the drives!

After 45 minutes of intense persuading, security let them through without messing with the equipment. It was a close call! Because of the holdback, they got on the plane just barely in time. But through it all, God’s hand was on them in the Holy Land and they made it back to Dallas in tact!

The guys and our team as a whole are really excited to have had the opportunity to film great teaching in Israel to share with you the life-changing truths in God’s word.

So keep an eye out for our Why Jesus? Youth series and our series on the life of David releasing this fall on Bluefishtv.com.

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