BraveMen S3E52: Will Ford & Matt Lockett - A Soup Kettle, Slavery And Providence

Will Ford is a friend of mine. He's a minister and author well known across the United States for his stands on intercession, reconciliation, awakening, and reformation. I first met him when he began attending a church that I pastored, which is now C-3-4-worth, and Will and I instantly became friends, and he taught me so much about prayer. He's an amazing man. He was known then as an intercessor, but then something happened that now has impacted literally hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. and really around the world. And today we're going to hear the full story of what happened to Will Ford and how he found out the legacy from his slave ancestors and how it's impacted all of us. Sitting with me as always is Chris Shields. As always this season anyway Chris. Yes. Yeah we'll see about it. Yeah I'm praying about it already. You're praying about it. In tongues though. Not anything we're praying about it. Now Will Ford and Matt Lockett. Yes. We did this interview with them. They wrote a book about their experiences called the Dream King. Yes. How the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. is being fulfilled to heal racism in America. They wrote that. They also have done a number of speaking engagements talking about how Matt Lockett's life intersected with Will Ford's life. Not just because they met each other. Yes. But because Matt Lockett's ancestors actually were slave owners. Yes. And Will Ford is best as they can put it together. His ancestors were actually owned by Matt's ancestors. Yes. Is that right? Yes. That's 100% right. It's mind blowing. It's mind blowing. And then they meet. I mean they just meet at a prairie vet. Is that right? Yes. Put on by I believe it was looingle. Yeah. And it's just phenomenally amazing how God just works this thing out. Matt didn't even know who looingle was. Yeah. Yeah. He showed up to an event. You know who all these guys were. And then it turns out they end up becoming friends. Yes. And this story today is really is and we go on depth in the story of what happened to background. But it it really is captivating. It's absolutely one of the most amazing stories in Will Ford. He and I became friends and now with his wife to have a land they have a ministry called 818. This sign. Yep. Yep. They have events going on. Yes. Different things. Annual events. He was at Christ for the nation's for a number of years. He was teaching what area? Because Marketplace ministry. Right. Funny thing about it. You mentioned Christ. Because here he is traveling and speaking. Yes. So a lot of us would think of him as a minister, intercessor speaking on a reformation in the United States. But really he's a great business man. Yes he is. Yeah. And that's what he was doing when he and I met. See what he was doing when I met. He was actually the first person I met at Christ for the nation. Oh really? Yes. And we met on the basketball court. I taught him a couple things. Yeah. Come on man. I know Will's background. He's got some ups. He does have some ups. But he also has some downs. Yeah. Well, you know, he's an old Rosedale boy. Yeah. He's he's from Southside or Fort Worth. Yes. And he played ball there. And he played college. Of course so did you. But yeah. So yeah, but spoken about like a true player. Because if you play if you play basketball. Yes. And you're going to go out together and everything. The first thing you have to learn playing basketball. I'm going to teach my grand sauce is smack. Oh, you have to. If you don't have the swag with the ball, you don't need to touch the ball. Like they need to know that you're here and you mean business. Oh, shoot. Matt plays. I don't know. I think that's why they've stayed friends because he doesn't. Yeah, man. Wait till he hears this. Yeah. He'll be calling you. He'll be texting you going, hey, man. It's time to play. Yes. Just meet me tonight. It's been a while. Yeah. Well, then he'll just say old people. See, he'll go and play us. And then he'll always say old people. So he wants us to give him a break, but we don't give him a break. I know, I know this man. He's got tenacity. Oh, he does. And the thing is he's going through a lot of different things in a life business marriage, different ups and downs, as you say. But and so has Matt. So when they bring this together, they have this seasoned look at what is reconciliation really look like when we talk about race. Yeah. Okay. And the fascinating thing to me is is they take it to a new direction, I think. Yes, Chris. And I really appreciate their candor and the freshness of their vision on this. Yeah. And I totally agree. I mean, that was one of the things even when he spoke for C three, four words just here recently. I told him because I heard will when he first spoke this message. And I said, it just amazes me will how this just becomes fresh and fresh and fresh every time you share it. It's not still bread. And that's how you know that the Holy Spirit is breathing on. Yeah, no question. I'm really excited today for you to hear from Will Ford and Matt Lockett on this special edition of Brave Men. It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Wisdom encourage for the journey. I'm here with Matt Lockett and Will Ford and the two amazing men who have a great story. Now, I just want to get right into it. And thank you for being with us on the Christmas Network Brave Men podcast. And then also we're going to put this out and show it to people because your story and you actually wrote it down in a book. How the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. is being fulfilled the heel racism in America. And it's called the dream king. And the website that people can find you at is dream stream company dot com dream stream company dot com. Now, here's the thing what I do know is that both you guys are are giants in prayer and but you're also very humble. So when I asked something, just jump in there, just jump in there, whoever's got the answer. So this will be fun. And thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. You know, and Will, right now, let's set the stage. You're you're also a professor right now, right? Yes, right. I said, the nation's institute directly in chair, the marketplace leadership may have been doing that for eight years now. And so, and so this is a Christ for the nations. And you do marketplace ministries there. Now, you, you know, when you and I first met, you were in business. Yes, right. Full time. And then the Lord moved you into a place of sharing your story. And then Matt, you're in Washington, DC. Yes, sir. Yeah, I've been a part of a house of prayer on Capitol Hill. And it started in 2004. So we've just recently celebrated our 15th anniversary. Wow. There's any place that needs prayer, bro. It is this watching DC, right? There's not much going on here. You know, the funny thing is, you know, when we talk about that, we do look at that and leadership and all that. And it's funny. I traveled with Christmas network all over the world. And I can't tell you how many times I've had pastor come to me and say, we're trying to, you know, stir up the ministry demand and they go, you know, you don't understand this place. This is the toughest place for ministries. Oh, yeah. Right? It's not everywhere else. You know, it's all it's funny. But, but at the same time, there are, and you guys can explain this better than me, there are. If you will hot spots, is that right? Yeah. There's hot spots where it seems that there's a stream of leadership. It touches the world from these different places. And so God's put you uniquely there. How do you how do you end up getting there, Matt? I was in the marketplace before. And it back in 2004, I was seeking the Lord. And I was led kind of supernaturally and very strangely through a dream to come to Washington DC. It's actually where I met Will. We met for the first time in a fair meeting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But God kind of rearranged my life as a result of that. And I moved here full time and became a missionary left the marketplace became full time missionary. You're a missionary to Washington DC. Well, thank you for doing that. Where are you from originally, Matt? I'm a Hoosier. I'm a Hoosier. Okay, you play a little ball. No, I wish. Because welcome play. And Will had some ups. I know this. Yeah, back in the day, that's what back in the day. Yeah, that's the thing. It's all back in the day. But you grew up, you grew up South Fort Worth Southside. You're a Southside Rosedale boy, right? Yep. Yep. Drip Southside Fort Worth, they have left in the stop six area. And then we moved over to the road and here's area for work. Yeah. Kind of upper black middle class. Yeah, I was going to say that was the moving on up. That was the Jefferson. Yeah. That was that was my Jefferson move right there. Yeah. But see, you're a Fort Worth man and then in the marketplace and ministry and now teaching that. And so Matt, now you guys meet and you met at the prayer meeting at the Lincoln Memorial. Yeah. Yeah. We made a prayer meeting at the Lincoln Memorial. So how I wound up there. I had a dream about Dr. King. And in the dream, Dr. King is a killer with me about my own unforgiveness issue that I had around the race issue. And basically, he's confronted me about my white baggage about my, that I needed to get rid of. And if I really wanted to be used to hear the racial divide. So wake up from that dream, just grip it by it. I don't do it in greater detail in the book. I shared a dream with my friend, Mulingo. And he said, hey, you got to come and share that dream and bring that killer pop from the family that we used to prayer about a slave's in the family. Bring that. We'll do a prayer meeting at the Lincoln Memorial. And as January 17, 2005, 2005. So that's after the call. Yes, after the call, I met, met you. Right. Go to the call. You become my pastor after that. We become prayer partners, fast prayer together. I mean, we have an amazing time for it. Especially my time with you is amazing. So now, and let me set the stage because Matt, you come to that same prayer meeting and they're on the Lincoln steps. But will was bringing and I want to go back in depth on this because this is part of the whole story, really. There's a large kettle. And I mean, huge, just seeing how much does that thing weigh? With the case is about about eight pounds out of your. Yeah, it's a huge metal steel kettle that had been used by your ancestors, your previous generations who had who were slaves. And they had prayed into this kettle because they didn't want their voices to travel. So they'd prop it up and just praying to try to muffler. Okay, so now you've got this kettle and you're bringing it to this thing. And there's Lou and a bunch of guys and match shows up. Yeah, so I bring the kettle there to remind people that you know, the prayers of black Christian slaves, but also those white abolitionists like that, they knew the Christian slave was their brother. They laid those lives down for me. Those everlasting have a highly burned little shot here. And that's along with those black Christian slaves because they chose the stuff with the people of God, whether they compromised and wink at slavery. And it was the prayers of that godly remnant that prayed into being the first and the second great awakening. Wow. How did I bend for those revival slavery would have never ended? Right. So then I have this dream got some front of me about my own baggage that I need to, you know, just a people that will forgive me. So share that and adopt the King's old church. And then you ask me to share it on the steps of the little memorials and a story that some of my own pain in my life. And then that night, Matt and I meet and we talk for the first time because he was later by dream. Matt, Matt, share the dream. Yeah, what happened that term, Matt? Well, it has been exactly one year to the day, January 17, 2004, when my father unexpectedly passed away. And that really, it really threw my adult life for a spend. Now, I've been a Christian. I was, you know, 15 years old, but started asking those big questions like, why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? And I was very successful in my career, but I was I was searching. It's kind of like the divine discontent, you know? And it was during that year that I had a dream where God spoke to me and my dream about what he wanted to do, to impact the nation through day and night prayer. And there was a man in my dream named Lou Ingol. And I didn't know Lou Ingol. So I started chasing this thing down and found that there was a real guy named Lou Ingol. He was really doing this thing with prayer. And I I called, I got a phone number of somebody that worked with him and I called them and I told him my dream. And he said, that's interesting. You just jump exactly what God is sending us to do. We're going to DC to pray. And and then he told me about this gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Martin Luther King Day. And he said, you know, maybe you should come. God might have something for you there. So, you know, I packed up, you know, took time off work and and you know, came across the country. I lived in Colorado at the time and showed up at the Lincoln Memorial for a prayer meeting. And so that's the first place that Will and I ever came together. And so here's Will. He's there because of the dream. Here I'm there because of a dream. And we meet on the spot where Dr. King gave the I have the dreams. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to make that connection at first. But you know, we so we meet with there. And I bring the kettle out and I share the story and I share the dream with Dr. King in it. And look out in the audience after I get through speaking. And I see this white guy's hands buried in his face buried in his hands. And he comes up to him. He's met him. He says, you know, you just you just said this kettle comes from the locket side of your family. He said, my daughter elbowed me. He said, because I've been praying. That if this is really you, what would it be here? I need you to call my name. And so I say the name locket. No. Yeah. So he freaks out of comes up and that's the option you'd ever shared that detail of the story. Yeah. And that's the first time I've felt led to share the detail of stories. Yeah. I'd never heard because I'd heard the story before. Yeah. Never heard that. Yeah. So 2002, 2003, that's you know, I ran it together. It was 05. We met met and I met. So I incorporated that into the story that night. I just probably have to do a bit. And so what happens is he said, you said locket. And that's our name. I say interesting because I had never met a locket before. That's from thinking in my mind. Like I never know what I never met a locket before. One of these guys, you know, I said, how do you spell locket with two teams of one? I just read it for a response. Right. He said, we spell it with two teams. I said, oh, my family won't spell it with one. I said, uh, how do you, uh, he said, where are you? Where are your lockets from? I say, y'all from, you know, what part of the country? I didn't want to give up in existence. Yeah. Part of the country. You say, oh, we're from Kentucky. I said, oh, we're from Louisiana. So I thought, okay, just a cool coincidence, then this is not the family. And that kind of sent you know, because the connected to our family, especially the slavery kind of essentially thought, cool coincidence. But it was, there was enough where like they can get us. And we were actually brave together that night for healing. We did. And all those, you know, we just like ancestors, we just prayed together. Yeah. But that, that connect them point, you know, and that coincidence. But this is not like there's four or five people on the steps. And you just grab the guy next to you. This is no, no, this is a crowd of people. It's a crowd of people. It's probably about 700 people there, maybe. Yeah. Something like that. And then, but that night, 700 people, you guys end up next each other. It's this end up talking. And so we have friends, we have friends for a 10 years, you know, and let me let you for a second. We'll see. Go ahead. I'd kind of read adjusted my life. I became this missionary, a prayer missionary in Washington, you see with Luingle. But then Will and I, we, we struck up this friendship that developed into a very deep and profound relationship where we just started running together. So for years, Will and I would, you know, we just found ourselves together as brothers to pray for America, mostly praying for revival. Yeah, we do. But other things as well. Yeah. Yeah. So they're friends all these time this time. And so, and the other thread that connected us was a life issue. Oh, the first time I started talking about the life issue, Matt had a dream about the life issue of that time period. So we saw running together continuing for revival, continuing for the ending of abortion and continuing to see the ratio that we healed because we saw how all three were connected. And so we've been doing that for 10 years as friends, but five years ago, Dr. Po, I'll call you that. Like you're like the pop, about five years ago, what happened is Matt made an amazing discovery. Tell him what you found out. So for me, one of the things that was interesting about my family after I lost my dad was we didn't know where our family had come from. So when my dad passed away, I kind of took up the research, I'm trying to figure out where did the lockets come from? What was our family history? My dad was one of 16 siblings on a tobacco farm in Kentucky. But the, at somewhere along the way, people just stopped telling the story. There was a loss of records. And so no one in our families ever known the family history. And so I spent a lot of time trying to research that, but didn't find anything out. And so now fast forward, all these years of praying with will. And my brother was using these online tools and the way it works is somebody will fill in a gap. And then all of a sudden, things kind of click and snap to clear. And so it was the right thing at the right time. So my brother got this breakthrough on our family genealogy. And he found out that he got us all the way back to 1645. And he said, you know, we came in as settlers through Virginia. And so that was, you know, this little piece of the family history that we had never known before. But it was significant because at the very beginning of our house of prayer, God gave us a dream that marked us in a way that it sustained us in a prayer direction for 15 years. And I'll tell a dream because it's an important part of the story. In the dream, we were in a huge building that was filled with courtrooms. And we were being led from one courtroom to the next. And the Lord spoke through this dream and said, either you deal with Roe v Wade in your courts, or I will deal with it in mind. The end of this long haul was a huge courtroom. And on the door, it said, Appomattox Courthouse. Now, you usually have to stop for a moment in the story because most people don't know what that is. But Appomattox Courthouse marks the end of the American Civil War. That's where General Lee surrendered to General Grant. And he did that on today. Today's the anniversary of Appomattox, April 9, 1865. And so, you know, we started looking at that and we found out that the last battle of the American Civil War happened three days before that surrender. And it happened at a place called Lockett's Farm. And that was a piece of the story that it emerged. And we didn't, you know, we were kind of praying like, what does that mean? Because I'm here at, you know, I'd heard my name at the beginning of this journey. Now I was hearing my name again. And that was when my brother got the breakthrough. And he started telling me this story about the Lockets and settlers in Virginia. And I said, well, let me tell you a Virginia story. And I started talking about the end of the Civil War. And he stopped me. And he connects these pieces together. What we found out was that the last battle of the Civil War happened in my family's front yard. It was called the Battle of Lockett's Farm, spelled with two T's. So, so here in that interesting, so Will has this, this, this heirloom that's been handed down he has this relic from the past, you know, a memorial stone of this kettle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ended down from the slaves who prayed. And then after all these years, I discovered that my family too has this relic, this memorial stone from the past in the form of the actual property, the land, the farmhouse, where the last battle of the Civil War took place. Wow. Kind of interesting. Yeah, it's fantastic, man. What a coincidence, right? Yeah, well, yeah, God designed. Yeah, a coincidence like the part is a red sea, you know, coincidental happened to be a million people waiting to cross. And so you guys end up writing a book that it involves a lot of this, but the, but the thrust of it into the Civil War, this relic that represents people praying for freedom, you know, you've got so many different things wrapped up in that and pictures and, but, but what's the, so you start dream stream company? What's the center of that? And you're talking about healing the racial divide? How, how, how do we work that out? How does that happen? So Will's got this story. I've got this story. We're running together, praying together, but then the story, it shifts in that moment. So I went to that farmhouse, the locket farmhouse where the last battle took place. Wow. The man who lives there and I was stunned when I walked in and framed and hanging on the living room wall was the locket genealogy. And this man knew a lot about our family history. And so he started telling me a little, little bits and pieces, but then he said this. He said, you know, some of the lockets were, they moved to the deep south. They were involved in very significant historical events, but then he said some of the lockets left and moved to Louisiana. And in some cases, there was a clerical error in like the census ledgers and things and they changed the spelling of the name. So now I'm thinking this can't be a coincidence, you know, anymore. And so Will, why don't you share what we found out? So, you know, I do all this genealogy for research. Actually, when I was, when you were the pastor, you would pastor me that time, Paul, doing this genealogical research and this guy living by a bookstore, you know, there who worked there, does this genealogical research on who's a researcher. And he found out that my oldest known family member was a man named Isaac Martin. And he was there. And they're in Lake Provost, Louisiana, shows that they're on the census there. And it's the 1870 census. In the 1870 census, Isaac Lockett said he was, he was said he was 90 years old. So five years after slavery, probably the place where he was a slave. But in that document, he went on to say, as a Lockett says, that he was originally from Virginia. Oh, come on. And so we do more research. And we learned it. Yeah, we learned that Matt's family was one of the only few lockets in the Virginia area at that time period. So that led to another year, year and a half of research. And we learned from the empirical evidence that we found that Matt's family was the family who owned our family, what that kind of project. Come on. That's unbelievable, man. Yeah. So here's my family. Think about it, Pastor Pete. Here's my family, praying for the ending of slavery. And then all the way up at the farmhouse of the people used to own them, slavery comes in in their front yard. But then because he's the God of the past and the future, he takes two people from those same family lines, Matt and I. And it weaves our storylines together so we can war against injustice in our day and crowd for waking up. This is, this is just absolutely the most amazing story. This is going to be blowing people's minds. So where does that leave us now? What do we do now with that? Well, you know, what we found is that it's really uncomfortable for people to talk about the race issue and the divide. So I believe God has given us the story as a plan so that we can use it as a catalyst to get the conversation going to see in the future. Yeah, wow, that's, that is a brilliant strategy because, uh, yeah, if you, you know, men don't like to be confronted. I always say that the way to minister to men is on a bank shot, you know, yeah, um, you know, like billiards, your bank shot, this kind of come from an angle and Dennis Peacock, who's a mutual friend and Dennis described it this way to me one time who's one of my mentors. And he said in martial arts, a couple of things he said, he said, first of all, in martial arts, when you take your stance, you'd never give away your strength. So the problem for the church is too often we give away our strength. Oh, and, and that, you know, so that's what story does. Story, story, uh, lowers people's guard. That's why Jesus operated with stories so often, right? He wouldn't have done real well in the old word of faith movement where you had to have 21 points or it wasn't, uh, and then the other thing he said was he said, then you never attack from a straight angle. You're always looking for an angle that's that's least guarded. And if you will, a story like this comes from an oblique angle asymmetrical, if you will, in which we're touching somebody in a place that blows them away for this and then you go and yeah, this is about us. Yeah, it really is about all of us because this, this is sort of a layers of connection. Um, so Matt, tell them the other connection that we found with Daniel Locker. Yeah, so you have to understand that it wasn't the story that connected Will and I like, we didn't know any of this. You're already connected for a decade. I think if we, if we hadn't had that 10 years of becoming close relationship, I don't know that we would have survived it relationally. Yeah. So, um, you know, all those years I've been listening to Will tell the story of the cutting. And then all of a sudden, I find out that my connection, I'm connected to that story directly, but my connection is to that slave owner and that was really hard. Was it? It was because, you know, I think for people that look like me, it's, it's very easy to talk in theory and talk about things that we have an experience personally. And so, you know, the most common thing you hear is, you know, hey, I wasn't there. You weren't there. Get over it. And now all of a sudden, uh, I'll say it this way that the pain of an entire community suddenly had a space and it was a face I loved. And so I had to come to grips with that and we, you know, God let us sit right there probably for almost a year and a half. Uh, and we had to wrestle through what the ramifications of that knowledge, you know, what it meant to us, you know, in our relationship. And also, you know, we're little pea profits. We're trying to figure out what's God want to do with this for the whole nation. But then we made another breakthrough in my family. And it was, uh, totally the Lord's doing. He led me to read a history book on revival in Virginia. And I found out that in the previous four, see a lot of times you just got to go back a little bit further. Yeah. Because here's what I've learned through my own story is that God has started important things in our yesterday. He's made promises to people and they've not seen the fulfillment of those promises because God intended to fulfill it later in us. So I went back a little bit further. I found out during the Revolutionary War revival came to that area of Virginia where the locket homestead was. And I'm reading in this account. And it talks about men who were added to the itineracy of the Methodist circuit riders out of that revival. And in the list was Daniel Lockett. I get out my family tree, boom. Right there he is. Right. Right. And that's so your forefathers are hanging with Harry Hoosier and, and, uh, Asbury and, yes. Asbury John Wesley, all those guys. So a man named Daniel Lockett was a circuit rider. And that's important to the story because the circuit riders, they were carrying the gospel to the frontier, but they also carried in their saddlebags a legal document at that time in history called a manumission form. They were abolitionists and a manumission form is a document that you could sign and set your slave screens. So when you look at it, everywhere the circuit riders went, the population of freed slaves exploded. So that, yeah, I've got slave owners in my family. But I, if you go back a little bit further, God started a storyline of revival and abolition. Wow. So, so here is, you know, everybody has these things called generational cursive, generational blessings, and all of our families that talk about that. And I'm going to sit on that when you're in my pastor, you know, and, and the thing is, you know, they represent these dominating themes called storyline. You know, so you're the storyline of, of, uh, this alcoholic after alcoholic in a family that's become the theme or storyline of blessing on another side of generational blessings. And I had those bad storylines in my family. You met some of those who knew my pastor, but then we also have familyans who've done amazing things like these folks of freedom, which is proper freedom. Matt had family members of our own slaves. We also have these family members that, yeah, were revivalists and abolitionists and priests of gospel. So in other words, I believe what God has shouted to America right now, Pastor Pius, is this what storyline do you want to be a part of? Wow. The healing or the hurt, the blessing or the curse, what storyline are we going to do? I'll give you a good example of that. Uh, just to make it clear is after slavery ended, it still wasn't popular for slaves to learn how to read and write. Right. And, uh, and so they would do it in secrecy. You have this legacy of secret prayer meetings. It's what the kettle represents, what it came from, but even after slavery ended, these secret meetings are still going on. Only you've got former slaves trying to learn how to read and write. So 1867, a former slave there at the locket homestead was trying to teach her young son how to read and write. That she was doing it in secret. And in one night walks Lucy Locket, one of my forebears, and she catches them red handed. Only instead of consequences, I look at it at such a pivotal moment in the story because there could have been consequences, but she looks at the mother and she says, no, what you've chosen to do is very loss. And so Lucy Locket takes up tutoring this young boy and how to read and write. And we know that story because it's in his autobiography. His name was Robert Russa Mountain. He replaced Booker T. Washington as president of Tuskegee Institute. He was an educational advisor to legislators in 1922. He gave the dedication speech of the Lincoln Memorial in DC, where 41 years later, Dr. King would stand on that spot and declare I have a dream and 41 years after that will and I would meet on that same spot. Yeah, this is crazy stuff. It's amazing. Hey, this is Chris. Let's take a moment right in the middle of this great conversation to remind you how to get in touch with Paul and Christian Men's Network and the Global Fatherhood Initiative. You can find all the resources for mentoring and fatherhood at cmin.min. That's the Christian Men's Network at cmin.min. Christian Men's Network does special events across America and around the world. You can find all the information at cmin.min. Click on events. We also have tremendous resources for churches with special discounts for groups on that website. Everything your church needs from A to Z to mentor and disciple men of all ages and backgrounds. Before we get back to the interview, please take the time to hit the subscribe button to help us continue to reach other men. Now, let's get back to this powerful interview between Paul and Will Ford and Matt Lockett. To me, when you talk about blessings, generational, personal, all that sort of stuff, the thing that I always look at in Exodus 20 when it talks about that is, I don't think it was a linear thing in that sense. I think the writer for me, just my own looking at it, the writer was trying to bring a contrast because it says if there's a curse, it'll go down to 34th generation. It says, but a blessing will go to a thousand generations. I think the picture was like a painting in that sense. Like curses just aren't going to hang around because you're going to be set free from it, but blessing, what you push forward, what we put into our legacy, what a man does in his life becomes history, what he puts in the motion becomes his legacy. Oh, say that again. Well, it's in my book. No, what a man does in life becomes history, but what he puts in the motion becomes his legacy. So what happened for you, Matt, is they put this in the motion. What happened for you, Will, is they put it in the motion. And now, where the torchbearers, if you will, like carriers, the ministers of reconciliation. And now we carry this thing forward. So now, how does that, how does that practically impact the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., which is what the cut line is of the book that you guys wrote together? Well, I think in a couple of ways, I mean, you think about it, it's two guys who are led by dreams to the place where Dr. Keith said, and if I have a dream speech, I have a dream that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table or brotherhood. So maybe the dream speech wasn't poetry. Maybe it was prophecy. You know, maybe there's this dream king called the king of kings. He has a father that ends in his prayer from John 17, where he said, father, I pray that they will be one so that your glory could come so that the world would believe. Maybe God hadn't forgotten about the prayers of our grandmas and our grandpas, our grandmas, my grandpas and getting forgotten about the prayers of Dr. Cole, getting forgotten about the prayers of Daniel Lockett, getting forgotten about the prayers of Isaac Lockett and my family. You know, and so all that to say, there's something in terms of a legacy that's being perpetuated moving forward, especially in this nation in America, and it's incumbent upon men to take up the amount of a prayer. Yes, it's incumbent upon it. And I think that's one of the things I learned spending time with you and your father. That's really one of the things that russes in my prayer life to another level. I remember Peter Prambi without the co-wants himself and now's your son along with you. We're doing the 21-day fast together. Dr. Cole came in six in the morning. Come pray with us, man. And he said, okay, we'll go ahead and pray. So I wasn't sure how he prayed, man. So I just kind of like, you know, just kind of pray, oh God, you know, we just asked, you know, one of those, we just asked kind of prayer, you know, get rid of that word. And then now's kind of the, oh, we just asked kind of prayer. Dr. Cole looked at both of them and he said, okay, are you praying? Yeah, you can pray. Okay, y'all matter if I pray the way I like to pray, I said, sure. He stood up and he said, God, we are men. And we will come before you like men bully before the throne. They brace the fun. Brace the hell for that. Hallelujah. God, we come before you. Woo. Like that for about a good hour. Just woo, woo, woo, woo. Yeah, it's, it's top of men to pray. It's top of men to take that place. It's upcoming, it's incumbent upon you right now to change the spiritual cloud with others nation through your prayer lives. Hey, man, men, we need you praying. Yeah, go for war. See, the problem with a lot of this stuff is, if you will, I think a lot of times why men are not attracted to prayer is because in most settings, it's been feminized. And I don't mean that yes, I don't mean to women are prayer warriors because goodness, right? Right. What I mean is, is that it has a temperature and a texture that's not fully masculine. Right. And if we're going to be warriors, and it's not something out here, it's bam, it's right here because when one man changes, it changes, it begins to change everything. Even the world believes that, they have something called a Gaia effect. Right. When the butterflies swarm in China, it changes the weather and Colorado. So the interconnect into this of all things. And of course they come from a different place, but it's a parallel truth. And the fact is we're all brothers and we're all connected. You know, one of the things that I think for angle guys is we have a tendency to not have seen or understand some of the underlying pain. Chris, who you know, well, I don't know if you know Matt, if you know Chris shields works with us. I turned to him one day. We were doing a little Facebook live thing and I was talking about some of this stuff. It's talking about Charles Darwin, you know, who's, I mean, we talk about the theory of evolution, but that wasn't what the title of his paper was. It's the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. In other words, it was paid for a bunch of my guys in England in order to stay on, you know, they had everything. So I turned to Chris and I said, I said, how old were you when your dad had to talk with you? And he kind of smiled at me. He goes, I guess I was probably 12 or 13. You see, as a for most guys who didn't grow up in that culture, when I said that, he looked at me like it was surprising. I knew what I was talking about. Yeah. And the talk is just about every single man of color, father, who loves his sons will sit them down and say, here's how you're supposed to act when you get pulled over by the police. Here's how I want you to act. Here's how I want you to say, here's where I want you to put your hands. And in a good dad, we'll walk through those things. Well, you think about that. How painful is that, man? Yeah. How unbelievable is that that in a culture in which we celebrate, how far we've come and how quote unquote tolerant we are in all of those things that we actually still live there. Yeah, you know, my dad tripped me for the talk a couple of times. The first time I got the talk in the sense, I was six years old. Wow. My father got me a social security card. He said, I want you to work and value work. Here's your social security card. You're going to come up into the office and work with me. I paint. Here's your social security card, but I want you to I want you to memorize your social security number. And he was real me on it at six years old. And so later on, 10 years later, in 16, I gave my driver's license to say, you need to memorize your driver's license, man. That's okay. Why are you so obsessed with numbers? That's what we're here to do. Sometimes you say, our friends who are police officers, but even now that you know that some of their friends, they hide the insecurities behind the badge. And sometimes these guys will pull you over and they'll take your wallet from you and they'll ask you your social security number, or they'll ask you your driver's license number. You don't know if they can just take you in a subscription. And then you say, oh yeah. And by the way, don't take the badge. So what do you mean? You know, sometimes they're trying to pull you into a file or something. And so, uh, make me and when we share these things, but the fact is this is not just America. This is the Hutus and Tutsis. And this is the fighting in lower Russia, the Croats and Serbs. And yes, yes. You know, who to me, these guys all look the same. I'll look the same. But yeah, the enemy powers away, don't it? I mean, just ethnicities and wars and this. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's not like, yeah. You can find a difference. You can find divisions. Yes. So this really is in us as people, in other words, it's in us. It's not a cultural construct. Yeah. I mean, look at what Rwanda. That's the one that's God was unbelievable, man. Yeah. Absolute genocide. Absolute genocide. Yeah. I mean, one and a half million people. Yeah. Yeah. Just off time. But the Serbs and Croats, they're the same thing. Yeah. So, so my point is that when we look at Tulsa, you know, and what they're uncovering now and finally turning their faces towards and saying, okay, yeah, we this happened. And this very successful area of town was overrun and shot up and burned down and all this stuff. And that happened in our early 1900s, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tulsa, Tulsa, Tulsa. Yeah. When it went to a place called Black Wall Street. Right. This was very prominent after America. All Christians actually Christian. Yeah. They were. Yeah. It wasn't in 1906, 1908, something like that. Something like that. And they they come in and they destroy the destroy the the whole area and and kill thousands of after America's just. So now, yeah, because Matt, to your point, what happens is we have a tendency to go, okay, yeah, that was then there shouldn't, you know, we're not, but at the same time, if we don't, what who wasn't that said it was a great philosopher who said it, if we don't learn from history, where we are, we are bound. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So what you're doing is stirring this up in a sense of, hey, look at this. Not that I need to go everybody who meets Will needs to, you know, whose angle it needs to hug him. Because that becomes almost kind of a facade. Yeah. But we have to know this stuff and we have to get it in us and in order for our hearts to be changed. And Dr. King, you know, he, you know, reconciliation is fascinating to me. The actual word, the original Greek and Aramaic actually, it's the opposite of accusation. So reconciliation, where ministers reconciliation means we're carriers of Christ's reconciliation. But what the word means is it is we are the fighters of accusation and the enemy is accused every man. Shhh. Every man has a Goliath. Yeah. And so every man has, has curses, right? That's being put on him. The curses, Goliath and F bomb saw, the curses were, your God's not big, you'll never make it. This will never happen. You'll never go anywhere and see that's where, like Pastor Dwayne Pickett, my friend, I would've talked about the attack on the young black man. And, and, you know, the band the box, all that sort of stuff that we do. The fact is this stuff's real. We have to open our hearts up, open our lives up and the only way to oil it, if you will. First of all, story brings us there and in prayer is, if you will, for me, the oil that makes this able for me to carry this. Yeah. You know, the fact that, the fact that, you know, my kids don't act like that, the fact that their kids won't act like that, that we create generational things. And to your point, Matt, your forebearers speaking into this, now here you are, you guys have a national platform. You speak all over the world. You're on calls with people, you're pouring your lives into the people you wrote this book. And I hope people get this book, the Dream King, healing racism in America. And the fact is, I truly believe. See, I'm a believer that we occupy till he comes. Yeah. And occupy means Jeremiah 29 11. We all love it. You know, my, my thoughts for you and now for your destruction, hope, future. But the first six verses, seven verses of that chapter 29 is all of the people in captivity. And he tells him, he doesn't tell him, get out of there. He tells him multiply. Yeah. Have get married, have kids, build houses, be excellent, grow everything. And then he says, he says, and don't listen to the prophets who say they're talking for me or the divinators, but there's another word in one of the translations about magicians. So don't listen to them because when they're speaking of my name, they're speaking lies. And the, and the enemy lies to us all the time and says, okay, this is just the way it is. Yeah. This is just the way it is. You know, it's because, you know, it's, uh, what was it? I forget who it was. It said 11 am is the most segregated hour in America or something like that. Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. It's Sunday. Sunday morning 11 am. Yeah. Billy Graham said that. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact is, is that, uh, I think we're aware of it. I think what has to happen now. Will you tell me what has to happen now? Well, I want to go back. Something a point you were making just a minute ago. And it's saved in a different way. And I know this, uh, fix it in other words. About, no, no, it's just that you're talking about men, not, yeah, onto the activity of prayer. Yeah. Uh, you know, come to one of my prayer meetings because, uh, it's pretty live break. But a preacher say it like this one time and it's always stuck with me. He said, a man who's made for war in a time of peace will make war against him some. Wow. And, and I know, I believe that that's true. And I think the way that we see that manifest is in, in alcoholism. We see it in addictions, you know, whether it's pornography or different substances and things, but, but God has designed men to engage. And, and I think that apart from prayer, that gets expressed physically man against man when we've been designed for spiritual warfare in the heavenlies. And this is how we're going to, this is how we're going to end this thing. We need men that will throw themselves into the fray with the right heart for reconciliation. Yeah. And you just see that, you know, these walls that we've built in between, uh, brothers, uh, we're going to see these things fall when men answer that call into a spiritual warfare. Yeah, I believe that. It's in prayer, prayer is how you kick up into that divine reality of the storyline that God's already started. In the part from prayer, you'll never discover what that story is that God's been writing. Yeah, exactly. Uh, by maddening that, we're thinking about it. We've met first at a prayer meeting. Yeah. That's what we met. We met at a prayer meeting. That's what, I think, what's, what's, what's going to take for the, the Christian man to get, to get break to this thing. One, we got a meeting shot in the place of prayer. And then two, we got a growing relationship. You know, they really can't be reconciliation without conciliation. I've often, I've often thought about that and we're reconciled to what? Right. So, so Madden, we've had this conciliatory relationship. Wait, if it's 10 years, it's masked in 16 years, but for 10 years, it was already conciliatory. Then God lifts the covers, reveals the rest of the story. And then, you know, you know, we've profited, we've prepared movement folks. We're like, oh, this is all such a cool, prophetic, swirly thing. Listen, pastor P, when all this world died off, I was like, hold up. Yo, people owe my people. You know what I mean? It's so real. They got real. And I was like, so here's the, but the thing for me was this, I've been hearing all these stories about slaves being deeply deaf in my family and how they had to sneak away. But now I have a face connected to that, but now it's the face of someone that I love. And now I'm trying to forget how my friend was ever my family's enemy. Yeah. And so I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, like, personally, we talk, but then even the more just own, my own introspect, I have to get rid of my baggage again. I have to repent, I have to forgive and, and, you know, and leaving not just moving forward together and just we do a lot of things together. I mean, we've done things getting together and stuff. But we, that's why we put our company, Green Frame Company together. You know, everything is through that. We're, we're walking this thing out together. We don't do it always the best sometimes, but man, I think we're doing a pretty good job. You know, so really, we do have a great creative, we're working with it together. That's, that's amazing. So really, in one sense, I understand reconciliation. I think it's quite often misapplied. What, what you guys are talking about is, is, is a new creation. It's, it's a, it's a real reason. It's, it's kind of like there's some guys I've told, you know, they tell me about their past and everything I do, you know, what, listen, just chop down your family tree and start into the tree, bro. That's right. You can either want to start the whole thing over. That's right. So this is about new creation, new beginnings, new starts. And the fact is the beauty of this story and the kettle that was used by, you know, your generations past and they prayed under this thing and it was handed down to you. And here's this, you call it the prayer kettle. It was a big soup kettle. Yeah. And, and they would pray under that. It's, it's such a stunning story. And then Matt, you come into this and this whole story for me is about tuning me in to where God wants me to live and to be aware of things I don't see. Yeah. And, and to be observant and then to teach the next generation the things that I've seen so that they don't come back generations later and say, what do these stones mean? Oh, come on. Yeah. Yeah. And you think about it. And he gives us these little signs and these little landmarks along the way. So April the 9th, that's the day that the South Salinas to the North and the Civil War and that's today. April 9th is also the day that the Azusa Street Revival breaks out. Wow. That's today which was the Revival that got released to heal the racial divide 41 years after after slavery comes to an end. And then April 9th today is the day that Dr. King was buried. Wow. You know, I don't, I don't know that that this nation in the United States, I love our country that I live in right now. Even as many men hearing this in South Africa or you've gone to or Indonesia, you love the nation you're in. You love your people. But I don't know that this nation will survive beyond my grandchildren if we don't have another great awakening. That's a muscle with the ten. We'll become a secular, wealthy, immoral country. Yeah. So I just want to applaud you guys for being on the front lines of this thing for stirring up the conversation, for making it uncomfortable. Because God called us, you know, the old line, God called us not to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And so we have to have conversations. And this story helps put it in a place where I can have the conversation. And I don't feel threatened. Yeah. Right. I don't feel like, oh yeah, he's slamming me. No, no, no, this is an amazing story. So thank God for bringing you guys together. Obviously, this is a plan of God. Obviously, you guys need to be doing, especially in the digital age that we have now just entered. You know, I think you guys, I think there's a movie here. I think there's, you know, the things that shift and change color culture are conversations. And if you look at back at marking points of our culture and you say, okay, how does change where this shift? What was the conversation when John Kennedy became president? The conversation shifted, you know, from from Eisenhower and the 50s and all that into Kennedy. And it was the conversation that shifted. Yeah. And it changed the nation. So, so these conversations are game changers. So I want to pray blessings on you guys. And thanks for hanging out with me for a long time. This was fantastic. It's great. Obviously, it's good for my soul. It's good for kids. And man, I seriously, whatever it is that that needs to happen to take this book into, you know, I can see this in graphic novel form, you know, for young people where it's maybe, you know, 16 pages, you know, you can get graphic novels done. There's got factors guys out of work right now. So there's there's guys who are who are doing all the when I say graphic novels, I mean, it's like a comic book sort of look. So there's these these guys who write those and they just charge per panel per page. You write all this stuff and then bam. And I could see I could see Tony Rory with young with men of honor. All the schools, all the junior highs. Imagine if they had this story of the lockets and Appomattox and this kettle. And then, whoa, dude, here's this guy that's an awesome basketball player. That would be you. Well, you show me duck his back was right. And that's what the guy from Indiana basketball country doesn't play ball. I just didn't say it was any good. So, but you know, I mean, I could I could see that I could see the you know, the little cart. I could see this story on on a three minute movie on guys phones. And there's got to be a way to do that. And there's somebody that is in this world right now who knows how to do that. In other words, who knows how to do like bam, bam, bam. And you're two minutes in and you go, whoa, bam, and then I got you. And it's a three minute movie on a phone. And I just man, I'm all about this thing. So dream, dream stream company dream, just like dream stream like water, dream stream or internet dream stream company dot com. Get the books and let me just tell you guys get more than one of them because you're going to want to give this to somebody that whose heart needs to come alive. And what we don't need is just all the pat little cultural phrases and all the little stuff we throw around that that really doesn't touch the heart. Yeah, nothing changes until the heart changes. When we change the hearts of men, we change the soul of a nation. So I commend you guys on what you're doing. I love you guys. I love you. We'll all have your rates anytime with you. I've heard so much about you. And it's great to hear your side of the story. Yep. Thank you sir. But it's I mean, I just applaud you. I pray that every place you put your feet is holy ground and pray that everything your hands touch a little prosper and that God will keep you deep in the pocket of his favor. And that as you tell this story, it will help influencers, people who touch thousands, it will help them articulate a story and a word that brings us together. Yes. As a people of God, Philippians, citizens of heaven, amen? Amen. Yeah. This is pretty cool stuff, man. I'm digging it. We could talk about this for a long time. And so thanks for taking the time. I love you. We'll love you, Matt. God loves you, dear. Thanks for being there. Praise, man. This story just makes me think of the passage of Hebrews 12 and 2 where it says, looking on the Jesus the author and the finish of your faith. And it just leads me to a question, who's your author? Because it's like you see two men's life that could not accidentally come together. It's like somebody intentionally wrote this story before the foundations of the earth. Yeah, it's like a square, rational wrote that book or a friend's square wrote that book called Godwinks about coincidence is life. And this is like a Godwink. It's like this divine coincidence when these guys come together. And then not only that, they not only connect, but they actually personally become friends. Exactly. Yeah, it didn't just wasn't like, oh, hey, you know, you did that. You did that. Okay, great. Hey, I'll see you next year, maybe at the convention. Yes. You know, that kind. Yes. And yeah, or their friends on Facebook. Yeah. No, yeah. Actually, these guys are really close. Yeah, it's intentionality here. Yeah. Yeah. And they were intentional about it. And what's amazing is they became friends. And then they found out more of this stuff is it went along. Exactly. I'll never forget when when we'll first got that kettle. I was this pastor at the time. And he got that kettle been used by his ancestors, the slaves to pray under so their voices wouldn't carry. And I'll never forget the first time he carried that. I think it was the thing where he did that. Well, he took it to a couple stages. We did a couple things where he took it on the stage and talked about it. Then he took that train ride with Lou Engel. Was it with Lou? Yeah, it was with Dutch. Yeah, with Dutch. Yeah. And Lou. Yeah. And that was an amazing thing. They did the city to city thing carrying that big thing. I think weighs 90 pounds. It's crazy. Yeah. I know. I helped him lift it in here. Or did you, Roy? Yeah. So crates and all that sort of stuff around it. And just so amazing that God would give to you and me and to us this story for us to be able to tell others and to tell our kids. And I would say right now, anybody who's ever listened to this, if you're if you're listened to this, make sure you tell somebody. Yeah. Yeah, just text somebody and say you've got to listen to this. I think there's a way of like sharing it. Yeah, you can share it. You can share it in text message. Yep. Yeah, most of these Spotify wherever you listen to wherever the best spot. Yes, only with the best spot. That's where we are. So yeah, please share this because that not only gets the word out about Brave Man. Yes. But it also is going to really touch somebody's heart. And there's some guys who need to hear this stuff. Exactly. That I mean, especially the thought of that in the reality of it's not just a thought that your life is not accidental. Yeah. You're here on purpose for a purpose. Yeah. And part of that purpose is you connecting with the right people. So good. Because when you have the right brothers, you become the right person. You know, at Christmas Network, that's why we talk about brotherhood a lot. Seaman.men is our website is Chris mentioned at the mid break. But Seaman.men, you'll find tools for resources for the cycling men. But you'll also find like at the seaman summit that we do every year. Seaman summit.com whenever you're listening to the seaman summit.com where you can just go to seaman.men click on the summit. But the fact is getting together with guys, getting a brotherhood. This is I watch will walk through some stuff. Matt I know has also it's because they have people around them. Exactly. You know, pray with them, pray through stuff. You've had the same thing Chris and I have to. But what is you know, it just makes me also think about, you know, one of the things your dad always says is I can tell your future about the people you're around. Now I probably changed the wording a little bit. But you probably made it better. No, no, no, no. Oh, I gotta make sure I tell the team. Yeah, Chris just took Dr. Cole stuff made it a lot better. This is really good. Yeah. Wait till I tell Joanna. Wow. I might get fired again. Yeah, I get fired again. Now you can't get fired man. You're called. So that's a different thing. You're not hired. You're called. So, uh, you know, this christian men's network seaman dot man, we exist to help churches disciple men. Brave men isn't just stories about brave men. It is the tools for us to become brave men. That's why we do it. I want to thank all of our partners who make this possible. Even these microphones studio B that we're in right now at our studios here in beautiful downtown coliville, Texas, which is anywhere you are in coliville is the downtown. So nobody knows it's very, very ill-defined. But, but to be here in studio B and, uh, you know, have this these tools all the gear that we have. Yes, because of our partners. I want to say thank you again. Yes. To all of our partners, the men and women who have made this possible because you are, you're doing a work that's reaching men's lives around the world. And we change the man, the heart of a man, you change the soul of a nation. And we're talking about Christ transformation. Yes. That's what we're about. And the formation of Christ within us as men. Yes. And please take the time to hit subscribe as I mentioned earlier. And also, please write us a review. We would love to hear from you and how we can, you know, improve our continued. Do we want to hear that? Do we just want five store reviews? Well, we want to hear everything. We do? Yes. Okay. We can handle it. Christ wants to hear everything. No, we can't handle it. And in fact, if you've got an attitude, we love that. Yes. Because we can pray for you. Oh, dude. No, no, we'll engage, man. If there's F bombs in there, you're out. Put anything else. We're good. Even if you go harrow on it. Yes. Right? We know what we're talking about. That's a bad joke. As a clippers right there. Yeah. He's a good guy. Yes. He is a good guy. Good man. Because when you can apologize, that's when you really show you a real man. Yeah. There you go. Step up. Yes. Yeah. In front of everybody, man. Yes. Yeah. Good man. What we're talking about. What's his first time again? Marta's hurl. Yeah. Yeah. Good man. Yes. And hopefully loose. Because right now, as we're taping this, we all know the Lakers are going to win the championship. You heard it here first. Yeah. And that'll be edited. Most likely, it's a saying. No, it looks like it could be. I mean, there we go. We'll talk. We should do a whole show that's just basketball. We should. We need to get Chris. We're sorry. We need to Chris on and talk. No Jesus. Yes. Just debate it all. Just basketball. Well, let's go. Okay. We're all Christians. That covers it. We're a Christian program. But we probably should bring Brandon and Bryson to that conversation too. That would be unbelievable. Oh my gosh. The opinions. Hey, we love you. We thank God for you and for being with us here on Brave Men. Remember this. Hope is alive. Hope has a name. Hope's name is Jesus. We'll see you next time on Brave Men. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.