Shepherd of the Hills: The Story of a Shepherd Boy Who Became a King

By Brother Ken

This is the story of a young lad who began his life as a shepherd boy and became a king. Along his life's journey from the shepherd's field to a throne in his palace, he learned many lessons about life, love, guilt, and forgiveness. Psalm 23 is a saga, a song of King David's spiritual quest to know his Creator. King David experienced all that life has to offer. He lived big. When he succeeded, he succeeded big. When he failed, he failed big. Along the way, he found himself seeking to know the discoverable God who reveals Himself to those who will seek Him. Psalm 23 is David's Shepherd's Psalm. He learns the lessons God would teach him in the fields with his flocks. Join David as he ponders the meaning of life, love, failure, and success. This is a story of a person on a quest for the fullness of life. David's Psalm still speaks to the hungry soul, the God seeker. This is a universal story of people who hunger for life, love, and to know their Creator. Watch David enlarge his soul. Rub shoulders with him, as God meets with David in the sheep fields as well as in the palace. Let the shepherd boy who became a king enlarge your soul as well as you journey with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781640038028

Book preview

A Psalm of David

Song of the Shepherd Boy

I have been a patriot, and I have been a traitor. I have been a soldier, and I have been a bandit. I am the son of a peasant, and I have walked the halls of government as a king. As a shepherd, I defended my flock against lions and bears and thieves. As a soldier, I have fought for my nation, and I have waged war against my nation. I have been a maker of laws, and I have been a breaker of laws. I have fought with beasts and won, and I have wrestled with my own weaknesses and lost. I have fought with a giant and prevailed, and I have sired a child and failed. I am a saint, and I’m a sinner. I have conquered nations, then failed to conquer my own weaknesses. I have brought glory to my nation and I have shamed my own name. I once herded sheep in the hills of my homeland, and I have sat with kings in palaces.

My name is David. I am the king of Israel.

My greatest achievement is that I am known as a man after God’s own heart. That achievement came only as a result of God’s goodness and mercy.

This Is My Story, This Is My Psalm

Please, if you will, laugh with me and cry with me, curse me for my failures and praise me for my victories. Most of all, journey with me in soul and spirit and body. I have lived life fully and successfully, and at other times, I have failed miserably. I have disappointed myself and others, and God and I have brought honor to those same people as well. I have many memories I cherish and other memories I would rather forget. I speak to you as one whose greatest achievement is that I humbled myself under the mighty hand of God.

Now I look back over the years and recall the best days of my life. Those were the days when I wandered the hills of my homeland tending my sheep. Those were days when I began to seek God and found Him. Those were the times when life was simple and God became very real to me.

I will tell you of the formative days of my youth. Today, as I write to you, I am a king. I give commands, and people obey. I order armies to do battle, and they march. I lead my nation, and my nation follows. Now I am an older and wiser man. I often long for those years of long ago when I cared for my father’s sheep in the quiet solitude of the hills of Galilee.

Let me share my heart with you. Join me in my time as a shepherd boy leading a flock of sheep, growing as a man, and finding my God. Let me tell you what I learned about my sheep, my people, and my God as a shepherd in the sunburnt hills of my homeland. Most of all, let me tell you what I learned about myself and my God during those years of my youth.

Can these fifteen lyrical lines of my psalm change your life? I believe they will if you are willing to open your heart to their message. Listen closely to them. Read them with an open mind and a yielded heart. I believe I can give you some answers to questions you are asking about life, yourself, and the world in which you live.

Our world is not a perfect world, but it is God’s world, and that makes all the difference. God cares for us, helps us as the Good and Great Shepherd who cares for His sheep in an often-uncaring world. The world is a less frightening place when we know that God is with us. Goodness and mercy follow us whether we are in green pastures or moving through a Valley of Shadows.

My psalm deals with life as it is. I have grown stronger as a person with God’s help as God and I face the challenges of life. I am a better person—a wiser, stronger person than I would have been had life not challenged me to grow.

You and I cannot always control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to what happens to us. We cannot choose to be fortunate, to be talented, or to be loved; but we can choose to be grateful, to be content with who we are and how we live.

If you are anxious, I hope my psalm will give you courage to conquer your fears. If you are grieving, it will comfort you and help you find your way through the Valley of Shadows. If your life is made difficult by unpleasant people, my psalm will restore your joy. If you are worn down by life, I pray my psalm will bring assurance from God to you.

Thou art with me.

This psalm is the story of my journey—one that began with my pleasant, comfortable life of soft grass and cool waters. Then my life got complicated, difficult, challenging. I faced giants, a king who hated me, the loss of friends, the pressures of leading armies and ruling a nation. Then I encountered God, my creator and shepherd of my soul. The miracle is that I found a life worth living. God answered my prayers by taking me by the hand and leading me through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My past and my present circumstances did not change, but God changed me.

I pray that my psalm will soothe and comfort your soul. I pray that the closer you look at my psalm, the more God’s Spirit will speak to your heart. I will share with you the insights that have come out of a lifetime of seeking God. Please examine these words line by line, image by image, in the hope that they will enrich your life as God has enriched mine

The Shepherd of Our Souls

My is one of the most wonderful words in this psalm. David does not say, "The Lord is the shepherd or a shepherd but The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord as my shepherd" reveals God’s intimate relationship to me as a warm friendship developed through long and close association.

My faith thrives not because I have any extraordinary spiritual stamina but because God is persistently good and righteous. When I stray, God is faithful. When I wander, God remains true to His character, relentless in His grace and unwavering in His love for me. God’s grace for me does not depend on my motives or moods or morals but on God’s unwavering commitment to me. God’s love and grace are persistent. When I come to God wavering or angry, I know that no matter what I say, God will remain unwaveringly gracious toward me. God sorts through my feelings and confronts or consoles me as I may need.

As you walk with your God and look to Him and expect from Him, He will never fail you. In the most difficult times and under the heaviest challenges and deepest needs and necessities, you can depend on your God.

My psalm has a way of touching men and women, boys and girls, the healthy and the sick, the fortunate and the not so fortunate.

I will tell you of the time when my soul and spirit were being shaped within me. Please, if you will, join me in my quest of God.

Consider with Me

This shepherd’s psalm touches the heart. Why do we love this psalm so much, more than any other of the 149 psalms in the Bible? Why do we reach for it in times of personal distress? In just a few lines, it conveys the refined wisdom of generations.

This Twenty-Third Psalm shows us how to deal with the loss of people we love and with conflict with people who hate us. It shows us how to recognize the presence of God at times and in places where we might think God is absent or simply doesn’t care. This psalm has the power to teach us to think differently and, as a result, to live differently.

This psalm from the song book of Israel presents us with answers in wonderfully crafted words and skillfully chosen images. We respond to the honesty and optimism of David’s poetic and heartfelt words as much as to the beauty of its language. It teaches us to look at the world we live in clearly and without illusions, and at the same time to see the world in which we can live courageously, doing good for ourselves and others.

This is my song. I pray that this psalm will become your song as well.

Fret not thyself because of evildoers,

neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down liked the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land,

and verily thou shalt be fed.

—Psalm 37:1–3

2

The Lord Is…

Psalm 23:1

The Shepherd Boy’s Story

During the long days and endless nights tending my sheep, I came to understand how much my flock needed a shepherd. My sheep do not understand their need for a shepherd. My sheep are so content, so well fed, so at peace because of my constant presence with them. My sheep prosper because they are not alone—I am with them.

As young man, I felt honored that I was trusted to shepherd my sheep. As I grew older, I realized how much my time as a shepherd shaped my life. Much of my character has been shaped by my years tending my sheep in the sunburnt hills of my homeland. I grew from an irresponsible young boy into a man. I went from a child ignoring my sheep to skip rocks across a pond to a young man who relished the responsibility of nurturing my flock of sheep. I learned about nature, about myself, and even about my Creator.

Being alone is one of the first fears I conquered as a young shepherd boy. I am alone with the unfamiliar sounds of the nights in the vast wilderness. I am alone when my flock faces dangers, and I am alone in a strange and sometimes terrifying world.

I am very aware of how vulnerable I am. I face dangers that are beyond my ability to handle on my own strength. I am often reminded of how powerless I am when it comes to the things that matter most to me—life, health, being loved, the well-being of my flock. I crave the reassurance that some guiding power in the universe knows me and cares for me.

I remember the stories my elders told me of people of faith and their growing trust and faith in the Creator. It is in my wilderness years that many of those faith lessons have become real to me.

What is true of me as a shepherd is also true of me and my Creator. My earthly closeness to my sheep is a reflection of my growing relationship with my Creator, whom I have learned to trust, confide in, feel secure with. This is the Creator, known among the nations as Elohim, who responds to my desire that He be available and involved with me. The keeper of my soul never sleeps, always is capable, and never fails to understand.

It was during those days of my youth in the wilderness when I first began to seek Elohim, the Lord, the shepherd for my own searching soul.

I desire to know God, but the more important reality is the fact that God knows me. I am written on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His thoughts. My knowledge of Him depends on His sustained interest in knowing me. I know Elohim because He first knew me and continues to know me.

My God who created me has not abandoned me to grope blindly in search of Him. God is my personal creator, and He wants to be my shepherd who protects and provides for me. God has declared His unqualified love for me. He waits only for me to respond to Him as He reaches out to me.

Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which You have done, and your thoughts towards us; there is none to compare with you; if I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count. (Ps. 40:5)

I Will Call Him Yahweh

During my time in the wilderness, I learned to love the name of Yahweh. Elohim is the name of God used among the nations. Yahweh is the name of God used among the people who personally and intimately know Him. God tells us we can call Him Yahweh. Yahweh is even more of an intimate name than Elohim, which is a common word for God. He is Yahweh who is near, Yahweh the great I Am, Yahweh who is and who was and who forever will be. Yahweh is more than His creation and is intimately involved with His creation. Yahweh who is always near and involved with His creation and at the same time beyond and more than His creation.

My soul desires more than my job, my relationships, my recreation can supply. My soul is bigger than this world. Life itself is not big enough to satisfy my soul. My soul is bigger than anything this world can supply. Relationships change, my health will change, the weather changes, but my soul hungers for more out of life. I have a soul in search of God.

I seek a life that can give me more. Call it destiny, if you will, but I see it as seeking all that this life has to offer. I seek to know my Creator in this life as much as is humanly possible. I am on a quest.

Every day nature displays the truth, goodness, beauty, and the power of my Creator who brought it all into being. Every day nature offers a new and fresh declaration of my Creator’s glory. Do I see Him through that beauty, or do I merely glance at it and shrug it off in indifference? The majesty of nature is not wasted on this shepherd boy. Each day and every night under the sun and the stars, I look into the heavens and am amazed by the glory of creation.

All nature declares the power and beauty of the One who created it. Our response can be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving for the radiance of a flower, the splendor of the morning sunrise, the shape and majesty of one particular flower.

I wonder how I will cultivate a heart toward my Creator. Then I look at a stream and splash my face and hands in a little waterfall. I watch the glory of the sunrise and the sunset. I see the majesty and mysteries of nature around me and ask, Why not start with this? A singing waterfall, the rustling wind in the willows, the chirping of birds and the sound of nature, the color-drenched flower. Why not begin my thankfulness and search for my Creator with this? I will begin here where I am and search for my Creator in things both great and small. I will begin right here where I am at and see where God’s revealing of Himself takes me.

My Creator placed beauty on this earth to reflect His character. God must have a wonderful