The concept of shepherds fire is very personal to me. I was on a hunting trip, one of many, I used to do a lot of big game hunting and one of the trips was very dangerous. I'd been out for a couple of days, bow hunting in the Rocky Mountains in Montana, right on the border of Yellowstone National Park. I had killed an elk with my bow, and quartered the elk and stayed with it there overnight with meat hanging in the tree to try to keep any bears from coming and getting it. And the next morning I woke up and my friend had gone to get to the pickup truck and come as close as he could to where the meat was so that we could pack it out.

We packed it out and took it in to Livingston, Montana for processing. Then we came back that evening, we parked the truck walked, and about a mile and a half to the base of the mountain where our camp was, and where we were supposed to have our gear. The other two guys that were with us were supposed to leave our gear there, but it wasn't there. So we decided, “well, what are we going to do? Are we going to go back to the truck and just spend the night in the truck or are we going to hike up the mountain and try to get to camp?” Well, it's about a three and a half or four hour hike to get up there. It was already dark and and it was starting to rain. And we thought, “Ah, let's just go ahead and do it.”

So as we started up the mountain, it got colder and colder, the rain turned to snow, and we weren't dressed appropriately. We started struggling severely with hypothermia. Once we got to the the top of the mountain, it was foggy and we were exhausted. We couldn't hardly see more than maybe six to eight feet in front of us. Fortunately, by God's grace, I happened to stumble onto a large pile of rocks that shepherd's had put there many years before to mark their territory. I knew that there was an old piece of barbed wire fence that ran from that pile of rocks to our camp, which would have been maybe 100 yards away.

So I got down on my hands and knees with my buddy. There's about maybe three inches of snow on the ground. And we finally found that little piece of wire, and we followed that wire on our hands and knees until, all of the sudden in the distance, we could see the glowing of a fire. That fire literally saved our life. That was the fire that we were able to come to, get warmed up, and immediately get all of our wet and partially frozen clothes off and get into a sleeping bag to survive.

So the idea of a shepherd's fire is very powerful to me. But beyond that, every man knows that when you get around a campfire, especially when you're up in the mountains, there's something about the romance of the fire, and just the power of a fire that causes men to open up and to begin to talk about the real issues of life. And that's what this is all about with shepherds fire. And as a shepherd that is my desire. Certainly I have fire in my bones with respect to the gospel but, to be able to sit around the fire with other people, especially men, and to be able to really address the real issues of life and bring our lives before God and before His word and allow Him to minister to our souls, that is so so powerful! That's what we want to do when we come together every week and address the issues of life.