BraveMen S4E117: John Kelly Interview-02

It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. We've been sitting with Dr. John Kelly who's the leading convener of the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders and we talked about correction in our first time together. This being Brave Men the second time with Dr. John Kelly and one of the things that you mentioned, even off-mic as you said, it always has the lead to restoration. Right. You think that too much of what we do in our church today or in our world today really doesn't lead to the restoration of a man's life? That's a good question, real good question. You know, when we look at Matthew 18, which deals with confrontation, you know, I don't even know if I don't know how you can lead a church or a mission or a ministry, you know, whatever you want to call it. If you're not willing to confront, especially confront sin and be able to confront sin of the individual, sin of culture. And like I said earlier, sin that's within legislation, you know, sin of a nation. Yeah, just sin, period, okay. And if you look even at the seven deadly sins, you can find all that within culture and within government and so forth. So when we look at Matthew 18, it's talking about confronting the person that's in error. The whole purpose of Matthew 18 is restoration, you know. So you have been offended, you talk with them, you know, and the purpose of your talking with them is to bring restoration, but you have to bring correction first. And if they repent, if they repent, right, then in there, it's over. But if they don't repent, then you come back with two or more witnesses, two or three witnesses. You come back with the witnesses, you're the third party and you confront again. And if they repent, it stops right there. And restoration begins. At the third time, if now if they don't, you take it to the church. This is something that's has some magnitude to it. Then it goes to the church and expose that the church and then there comes the, you know, putting them out of the church like what Paul did in first Corinthians where he puts the young man out of the church for the destruction of his flesh, you know, the salvation of his spirit. Right. Right. It's restoration. Right. And then we see in second Corinthians where he's telling them he's almost begging them to bring him back because even Paul, when he fell off the horse of Damascus, we think all of a sudden he became the great apostle at that moment. No, he had to go to the desert and he had to go through a couple of years of lessons there where he was going through a process of restoration because there were still things in him. It's like after I got saved, I had this powerful salvation experience. But yet there were still still things in me that were not good that need to be corrected. And that's called a process of conversion. That's yes. And you see from negative to positive, from dark to light, right from chaos to Christ. Exactly. That is that process. So so many times in the church, it's like something has to hit a major, it's like a person is going through problem after problem, but we're not addressing it because we don't offend them. We don't want to hurt them. You know, for many reasons, none of which are good, you know, because they're all coming out of fear, you know, and they're all coming out of self-justification. And so, so when we, so what happens is you're to just cancel somebody. Well, it's like crime, crime, crime begins when you're like a, like a young teenager and you steal this and you steal that. But if it keeps being unchecked, that crime starts increasing, right starts increasing. Well, I can get away with more. I can get away with more and get away with more. You become emboldened. So that happens with these inner sins. So now these inner sins become outward actions over a period of time. And so, so this process is taking place. Meanwhile, everything's being winked at or, you know, being ignored or swept under the rug, swept under the rug. And then what happens comes the big one, you know, and that's where somebody actually gets really hurt. Yeah, because what happens is the Bible says, humble yourself in the sight of God. Why? Because if you don't, you could eventually get humiliated publicly, you know, and so, so you come in love, the whole, the whole part of bringing correction is because you care for them. Right. You care for them and you want to see them restored. And so what, but what I've seen many times in the body of Christ is people, you know, put out a ministry, put out a church, various things without a restoration process. Without a process of restoration. And I've also seen it too, where some leaders have, have, have been corrected, have been rebuked and never went through a process and I can name some of them. And they just, they just sort of, they just shortstopped the process or some of them left ministry for maybe a year or something and then they're right back or no, I remember one guy, it was, what was it was 90 days? And it was like, and it was a pretty egregious thing and moral issue that he had gone through and it was fairly visible, this is just a few years ago, about 90 days later, he goes, I'm good, I'm good. And I'm telling you, man, it, it, we know even just habits, even with, you know, psychological work and people studying these things, I tell, I'll tell you, habit is not 21 days, it can take, it can take a year to change a habit, you know, that you, you know, your daily ritual, you, you have to begin to change your mind, Romans 12 to, how do you change your life? You change your life by changing the way you think. And then you find out what God's will is for you, beginning to change your thinking. And too often we've just kind of put band-aids on stuff. Yeah, I mean, at my age, I'm discovering things in me that need to change. Wow. And I had to be committed to the process. Now, some of them came from self-realization, you know, some came from my looking at the scripture and saying, well, I'm not quite there, you know, but some of it came from my bride, my precious bride. And in some came, you know, from, from friends and we have to, we have to say, okay, let's say, let's say they're saying something and I don't really quite see it. What I've discovered is this over a period of time after I've overcome my early arrogance, you know, was basically this that I may, I may not be hearing or seeing what they're saying, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Right. I need to really search myself like many times I've been in discussions with my wife and she'll go and she'll be telling me things about what I'm thinking and I'm going, how does she know what to think? And I don't even know what I'm thinking half the time, you know? And, and then I discover either 15 minutes later or an hour and a half later, oh my God. I really was thinking that, you know, you know, that takes, that takes courage. Yeah. Because that's always those things in us that we don't really change your face up to. Courage in the book courage, in fact, it's with, if you can get the book, it's cmn.man. What's the website for I Cal? By the way. What's simple, yeah, you know, it's ww I, I see a leaders.com, I see a leader, all one word, all I, all, all low cap, I see a leaders.com. Yeah. Okay. So, so for more information on John Kelly and the great work that he does all over the world and help in being leaders of leaders. But my dad wrote a book called Courage and you get it cmn.man and it's on audio book now. And then it's also on YouTube and a 10 part series that we just completed. And courage in courage, one of the things that he talks about right into the start is to say, it takes courage as a man. We're talking about what it means to have Cahone. So we talked about that in the previous program and that there need, men need to be real men. And part of that is facing reality. I think in this culture in which we live, it is easy to put an Instagram picture on. And to believe your own picture. That's really what my life is when it's really not. It's a 10 second photo op, right, it's not really you. So it takes courage to face reality, it takes courage to admit need, it takes courage to change, right, right, it takes courage to hold convictions, right, and it takes courage to walk it out. And so these are things, I think facing reality might be one of the most difficult things for us as men because it's easier to say, ah, she'll be right. It's the Aussie thing, ah, she'll be right. Yeah, have a pint. She'll be right. Yeah, facing reality about ourself, and facing reality about not only my actions, but my inner thoughts, you know, and bringing all that, you know, and casting out the vain imaginations about myself, so that I can get the view of Christ about me, which means because he sees the good, but he also sees the bad and the ugly. That's why reading Word of God is so important for us as men, right, because it shines a light on us, right, and we, and I can be reading about something else, I mean, I can be reading a sum of David in one sense, you know, my soul rises up to praise you this or whatever. But in that anointing of the Holy Spirit, the power of God that's in, that's present there in His Word, something else can come up in my life. Right. Sometimes it can just be, hey, you forgot to call that guy, and you need to call him because he needs a friend right now, right, oh, man, I got busy. I didn't do it. It's so good. Right. And that's that creative power of the Holy Spirit that when you break open the Word and you begin to focus on it, remember, focus is not about greater intensity. It's about greater intentionality. Focus in our lives as men, like vision is forged in the discipline to extract yourself from the unnecessary. What I found in prayer and being in the Word is that quite often I'll start thinking of things I need to do immediately, right, but you ever start praying and stuff starts coming up. And I've always got, I've got this little journal, I've got things, I've got so many things written in here. Why? Because I just get put it on the paper, get it out of my mind and realize the Holy Spirit might just have been bringing that up to me. It wasn't a distraction. It was a prompting from the Holy Spirit, hey, don't forget to do this project. Do this. Hey, have you thought of this? Have you read this? Have you looked at this? Have you modeled this properly? Oh, God. No, I haven't. Yeah. No, I didn't do that right. And I need to go apologize to that person. You know, I think it's great that you're sharing that because I believe strongly in what you're saying. I think one of the problems is we don't speak strong enough about the fact that the scripture is the Word of God and that if you really want to know about God, you really have to, you really have to read His Word and see what the Spirit was saying to the, not only to the church, you know, in the New Testament, but the Ecclesia, or what He was speaking in also in the Old Testament as well, because whether it's older knew it's the Word of God and therefore it's inherent. It's inherent and it's infallible because it's not just a manual for living. No, it's not. I hear that for all that. So many times. Hey, here's it. It's a great door. Manual for this. No, it's not that. Because it is the Word of God and you have to accept it as such, you know, as the Word of God. So that's very important that we really understand that because there are several scriptures within the New Testament that, you know, after 40 some years in ministry, I still struggle with personally, you know, because they're the ones that convict me, they're the ones and they're the ones I always want to give a little different interpretation to. Well, we don't like, we don't like conviction in a culture in which everything's supposed to feel good. Well, and well, even Christianity's taught that way. Come to Jesus, you know, he'll heal your marriage. Yeah. He'll do this. He'll do that. He'll do this. When the truth is, he's sitting on the throne waiting for us all to do. Well, we talk about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and we don't realize what the true meaning of that is. Well, we're afraid many times even in ministry to use the Word, obey, you know, so now you're talking discipline. So read the Word, right? Read the Word, hear the Word, but obey the Word, you know, the only scripture, Rod Anderson, my great friend taught me this years ago, he said, the only scripture you truly believe is the scripture you're willing to do, right? James 125, you're a here, but not a doer of the Word, you're not going to be blessed, but if you'll do it, not just hear it, you'll be blessed. What's your faith, let me put it this way, what's your concern about the church of today, and what's your faith in and not only hope for, but your sense of man, I'm excited about the future of what's happening with the churches because of this. What's your concern and what's your, you know, what is it you feel good about? Hey, this is going well. What's your concern? What's the hope side? Well, I think one of my concerns, of course, is within the pulpit itself, and that is, you know, the willingness of the pulpit to speak out and to speak out against, like I said, liberalization, you know, and this leftist type of policies and this wokeness that we're having, because these are actually sin issues. You can speak to them through what my friend Jim Garlow calls biblical applicationalism. And by the way, he wrote a great book, Well, Verst, and on that where he discusses that and how to use biblical application to almost every issue you can think of that's going on within our country today. So it begins there, but I also think that, you know, leaders need to come together more regionally to accomplish things regionally, whether it be missions to the poor, whatever it may be, and but also to be able to, like, for instance, we're developing coalitions and nations and in cities and those nations and regions and those nations among apostolic leaders. And so basically, it's basically focused on spiritual influence, but also being able to, you know, speak biblically in the political realm, marketplace realm as well and to deal with those issues. So I think that's critical. But one of the things I noticed, especially in the last two years, and I haven't been able to travel internationally, one of the things I've noticed is we've had our two growing years in the history of ICal. And what I'm noticing is where there's pressure on the church, whether it be political pressure, whether it be social pressure, whether it's more of a totalitarian pressure, whatever it is, that's where coalitions are coming together and even growing stronger. So it's like, I can name some hard to access nations that we're in in Latin America, where we have our strongest and largest coalitions. Pressure has produced unity. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it's like like Jesus prayed, you know, and John was a John 17 each. So he prays, you know, that we all be one is he and the father are one. And I am convinced that we are called to be as one. Now, now very few will ever get that by revelation. Right. Now, and but the majority will absolutely get it by persecution. Like you want to see oneness in the church, you ought to look at the church in Ukraine right now incredibly one. And what pastors are doing there is absolutely incredible. You know, in the midst of suffering and the midst of all this sacrifice, many of them are staying with their flocks. They've turned their sanctuaries into shelters, you know, for feeding and sleeping and for aid for people. I just got a video back from there with a pastor and full military gear. You know, he's got an automatic weapon, you know, hanging from him. You know, the other guy that's doing the translation. He's an elder from the church. He's in full military guy. These guys are in combat. You know, they're literally in combat. And because the air fighting for, you know, to protect the innocence of their flocks. Now, that's a thing right there. John 1335 says by this, well, everyone know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Okay. Now, we have taken that to the so excess that would become so eternalized, that we've basically built this theology. When I was growing up, it was the same thing. Hey, if we love each other, people will see it and go, Oh, hey, let's be a part of that. That hasn't happened. It was called, it was called the seeker style of church. And I've got a great friend and Doug Miran who said, he said, you know, the problem is most men are not seekers. They're runners. Most men are not seeking work. We're trying to go the other way running from. Yeah. So the love that speaks to people is the love that actually touches them. Right. Right. Right. Not that they observe, which comes back to discipleship, which is it's always going to be about touch. Well, when you hear a lot of teaching on love, you know, it's more like sloppy agape, you know, and I can remember actually recently hearing a well-known speaker leading a particular movement. He was talking about feeling, smelling the perfume of Jesus and in Jesus and feeling the kiss of Jesus on his and a wet kiss from Jesus and so forth. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to stay in front of him. I want to stay next to him. I want him over me. I want him next to me. He's my king. He's my king. He's within me and all, you know, but and warriors' name, yeah, warriors' name means the king. He's the Lord. Yeah. So, but, you know, so so that when they talk about love, it's it's all about feeling and and and it comes into this this kind of almost mystical realm. When you look at love and especially with a scripture, you know, talks about, you know, how man's the love of woman is Christ, love the church. Yeah. And really, what he's talking about there, Christ gave his life. So that means that and then it talks about how the woman respects the man because women, I mean, they love idiots. I mean, they love they marry drug addicts, alcoholics, perverts. They marry all kinds of weird people because they, you know, they love them. Yeah, it's emotional. Yeah, it's emotional. It's emotional. I know that I can helping, you know, where but but they can see a woman can love you, but not respect you exactly. And so because she can't trust you because because you're immature. Right. So, so what it's talking about there is that a man has to find that thing in him that he must murder, that he must put to death, that he must sacrifice on the altar for her. So in other words, if he has a drinking problem, a drug problem, a money problem, many he needs to kill that thing. He needs to put it at rest in order to take her from love to respecting him. Wow. Because what happens, especially after you've been married for 20 years, you know, that puppy love stuff is not quite there. Yeah, I don't think it takes 20 years. And then I don't think so either, but I'm just trying to be nice. But but the thing is but but then there has to be this this respect and not only her to him, but him to her. Yeah. You know, so that has to take place. There has to be this self sacrifice on both parties. Well, the same thing, true with our relationship with Christ is the very same thing. You know, he's saying to us, you know, he's he's waiting for us to make that sacrifice to put on the altar, you know, that very thing that very thing that's causing us to run from rather than seek to or we don't like discipline. No. And we don't and we don't like self discipline. And we are master negotiators with ourselves. That's a good word. Yeah. We we one of the things that that I've talked about for some time is we have to make decisions against ourselves. You actually have to put into motion boundaries and parameters for yourself that help create paths of discipline so that you become the person you desire to be. Because otherwise, your flesh is just going to say, you know, it's okay. No, it's okay. It's like Jessica's here helping us with the podcast production. And she made a decision to start working out. And she just she made a decision, right, against yourself, that you're going to get up in the morning, you're going to go work out. How much can what can you do on legs now? What's your like it? She did 225 pounds on a squat. I mean, come on, man. Deadlift, deadlift, whatever. I don't know. That's all that. You know, but I'm the point is she had to make a decision against her own flesh. And we don't like that. And we're living in a culture that tells us we don't have to do that. And and follow your passion, follow your passion. And so we get three years into a marriage and a commitment and follow our passion, leads us out. We go, well, this is the new passion that I have. That's all emotion. Those are things you need to discipline. Those are things that you need. You talk about put it on the altar. That's a phrase comes out of the word of God that says, basically, you know, crucify the flesh. That means self discipline, make decisions to a point where you can't master and negotiate yourself out of it, right? You've actually made a decision. You made a commitment. This is what I'm going to do. And then you just do it. And we don't like that because we're told, hey, you can be this. You can be that. You can be this guy. You can be your biggest mistake I ever made in my life was following my passions. Please, you know, yeah. So I need to follow the truth of the word of God. Yeah. Follow the person. Follow the person. The person of Christ. Yeah. The person of Christ. That's it. So so we've got issues and we've got different situations. What's your what's your take on the future of the church? Where are you at right now on that? Well, I think the church is going through. Of course, I'm dealing with churches globally. Right. I know. So 40,000 foot elevations. So it's like in the middle third of the world, the church has been growing incredibly. Right. And still growing incredibly. And evangelism strong, you know, spirit of revival strong. What has to happen in that part of the world, though, there has to be much more focus on basically what we're talking about, you know, about character, you know, having to, you know, with scripture, you know, with, with basically training people in the word of God, but also also discipling has to take place more in that part of the world. And then in the Anglo part of the world, you know, which would be Europe, Canada, developed countries, you know, more developed countries, you know, Australia, different countries, the more developed countries, we see that we see a decline of church is what everybody's talking about, the decline of Christianity. But if you look at the statistics, the statistics, you'll discover that charismatic Pentecostal Christianity even in those places is growing. It's still growing. It's still growing. Wow. And now the problem is, especially among the charismatic is we also have the charismatic where everything is experiential and mystical and so forth. Right. Right. You know, and so, but we're also seeing an influx within those countries as well as of of Africans, of Central South Americans coming in. And, and so all of a sudden, those numbers in Europe, those numbers in those, in those more developed countries we're talking about, they're starting, they're going up. Yeah. They're going up. So that's adding to what's taking place within, especially what we would call the charismatic part of the church. And, and people that study this and do data on this, they're, they're seeing this, they're seeing this. I mean, you know, people that are with the lasagne covenant, people that are with the world, evangelical alliance and so they're seeing these things, taking place. And so, so, but what happened, what has to happen is whether we're talking, no matter whether we're talking about the bottom third, the upper third, the middle third, the churches have to get more involved and speaking into the culture. And they have to begin to raise up more people and have people understand, you know, the penetration that we have to have of the marketplace, you know, as woodlands walnuts started referring to as the seven mountains. Right. And, and how we need to not only, you know, we need to raise up leaders within that. And so, we have to look at our children and we have to look at, you know, training our children in the way they should go, but also educating our children, you know, what we need more than we do ministers in the pulpit right now. I think we have enough ministers in the pulpit, you know, what we really need are lawyers. Man, you are, you are exactly right. Our corporate heads. Absolutely. You know, entrepreneurs, what we really need are politicians. Absolutely. This, this is what we really need, but we should be, we should be raising them up and speaking on that, even, even in children's church. Raising is what you can be because what we've done is we've raised up, we've raised up the visibility of the pulpit to the point where we said, hey, unless you're doing that, you're, you really not in ministry unless you're doing that. And so we've raised up our children, if you will, in church in order to be in church. Right. When we need to be doing is raising them up within our churches to be in culture, not of it, but in it. My contention is if we raised up 600,000, just in the United States, where you and I live, if we raised up 600,000 new youth sports coaches, think about that. Think about how the impact your coach is out in your life as a man, right? You can still remember guys that coached you when you were in high school, right? They took the took an interest in you this, spoken your life. And it just think about youth sports, 600,000 coaches who were followers of Christ that come out of our churches. Think about guys who write code. I mean, it's the nerds rule of the world, right? I mean, that's the funny phrase. But it's true in the terms of coding. You know, the future of the world has to do with coding. If we raised up young men and women to do that, if we raised young men and women to be lawyers, if we raised up young men and women, how to serve in culture, how to run for the school board. If we did those things, that's the long game. Do you think that's part of our problem is we don't think of it a long game. We're looking for instant something. I think it's our total problem. Yeah. You know, and we're not playing the long game, even like I said, beginning in children's church. Yeah. That's where it begins. Yeah. And so we're not playing the long game and we're not saying to them, you know, you know, and relate these stories and everything that we're telling them to every day life and also to their futures. You know, you can be like a David. You know, when you grow up, you know, you can be, you can be a world changer. You know, you can, you can be a leader. Yeah. You know, we're not doing that. We need to be doing that, playing that long game. Give them one of my coaches. Yeah. Like my first real coach was my boxing and wrestling coach George Eberley. You know, and this was like I said in July before 5th grade. And he was with me all the way through all the way through high school. Still remember. And right now, as you brought that up, I saw his face. Wow. You know, because he, because and he said, you know, you got to, you know, you got to lift weights so that your shoulders and your arms and your back is stronger so that you can fight better. You know, and you got to build up your core. You know, and so he got me into bodybuilding as well. You know, but this guy taught me so much stuff. You know, even about life, you know, even about life. I mean, I can remember my first fight. Okay. It was in August. I've been only been training a couple weeks. We're going to go to Camden, New Jersey, police athletically. We're going to fight. And so he says, Kelly, you're going to win, right? And I go, well, you know, yeah, I hope so. And he says, all right, well, you can't go. Whoa. And I said, what? You said you can't go. I said, why? He said, because you don't believe you can win. Wow. You said I can't take you. That's so good. He said, I can't take you. And he said, because he said, you'll have too much fear in you when you get in that ring. Yeah. So I didn't go. Wow. He wouldn't take me. Took the rest of the team. And then, so about a month later, we're going to Trenton, Italy, athletically. And he says, Kelly, what are you going to do? I said, I am going to beat that guy to a pulp. And he said, come on, boy. Get in the van. You know, come on, man. But I learned a lesson. Wow. You know, why enter that ring if I don't have confidence that I'm going to win that I'm going to be a champion. But the whole thing was, it's all based on your training. It's all based on your discipline. All of life is like that. It's based on your training is based on your education. It's based on your discipline, based on your focus. See, faith is not an emotion. Faith is a substance, but faith produces the emotion of confidence, produces courage in our lives. Oh, absolutely. Think about this. I would say, like there are churches, they teach faith 52 weeks of the year, like a special eight-class for people that can't learn faith or something. And, but one of the things that I've discovered, though, you know, over the study in the word, is that in the Old Testament, faith is only in two places in one book, you know, but courage is mentioned. So if you look at Hebrews, where it says by faith, they did this and by faith, they did that. If that was Old Testament, it would have said by courage. And if you look in the New Testament everywhere, but four scriptures, the word courage makes the scripture even more contextual and clear and more relevant to today's because we look at faith as a mental accent, you know, so it's almost like, you know, by faith I can make one of these books move on the table or something, you know, rather than just push it with my hand. And so, but faith is really the courage to stand for what you believe, to stand for the truth at all cost, no matter what, you know. So that's why the apostles could say, well, their lives were not their own because their faith, their courage was so incredible. But think about this, their faith was based on something called eternity. So they believed that yes, you could put their body to death, but they will live forever in glory. You know, and we don't really have a clear understanding of eternal, eternal, of, yeah, so of eternity of an eternal heaven or an eternal hell. Strong stuff, talking with Dr. John Kelly, who's the leading convener of the International Coalition Apostolic Leadership. And one of my mentors and John, it's been great having you on brave men. I want to finish with this. I want to finish with the story of the guys who came by your house, the bikers, came by your house called you out. It's a great story. This is true ministry. This is what the ministry really looks like. You really want me to tell the story. I tell the story. So I'd only been in ministry for full-time ministry for about three years. Yeah. It was prison ministry and military. And so how do young man live in my home? And he was part of a, of a biker gang called the warlocks. He was actually the head of the warlocks, Tom Kaufman. And he was living in my home because I was discipling him. And he, he was imprisoned for murder. And then he was released because they found out he, he wasn't part of that group that murdered this particular guy. So, but he, but he came to faith in prison, not through my ministry, through another ministry. And so he was staying in our home. So then he left our home and to go on his own and he was working in construction. And he was dating a beautiful young woman who eventually married and so forth. So he was actually living in a whole other place. So I hear all this noise outside my home. And my home was in place called Delanco, New Jersey. And it sat on this road called River Road. And my front yard was like a point. So my home was sitting on an angle. So I had a big front yard. And I hear all this noise and there's knock at my door. So I go to the door and there's this huge guy, you know, dressed like a biker and a beard and the whole thing. And he says, it's Tom Kaufman here. And I said, no, he's not here. And they said, well, we know he's here. And we, we want to see him. So I said, well, he's not here. So he said, well, bring him out. I said, I'm telling you, he's not here. So I'm starting to get a little agitated. So he says, well, step outside. So I step outside and then I see these bikers. I mean, there's about 12 of them, you know, that are there around my around this point. And so I said, are you the guy in charge? And he goes, no, he said, let me talk to him. Oh, yeah, okay. No problem. So he goes and he gets the guy. And I'll never forget. I think his name was, I can't think, I know I'll get it wrong. So I won't say it. But so he comes. And so he, so he, so he, he once again, he brings up about Tom. And I said, he's not here. So he said, listen, he said, he says, if you don't let him out right now, he says, we're going to beat you up and go in there and go get him. And this guy was now the head of the, of the gang. So he was shorter than I was. And I, you know, I was still pretty buffed at that time. I was about maybe 250 pounds. But I still was, you know, I wasn't like when I was 235 or 240. But anyway, so I leaned over and whispered in his ear. You don't want to do that because I'm going to beat you to a pulp. And it's going to say preacher puts the head of a biker gang in a hospital. And maybe all these guys will get me and beat me up. But I'll get you first. And all of a sudden the cops came. There were state troopers and local police. And these guys all took off and all that. So I'm in Haiti. This is about three more, three, four more years later. I'm in Haiti. And I'm doing a crusade. And I think it's Saint Mark Haiti. And, and so there's a guy up on the platform with me and I'm praying over people and casting devils out and all and, you know, healing ministry and all this. So I get back to the, to the missionaries house and there was all the workers there for the crusade and myself and others. And I go to, and they offer me a drink. And there's a plate of cookies. I go to reach for a cookie and this guy grabs my wrist. Really strong guy, you know, real stocky, real strong guy. And he says, you haven't watched your hands yet. You've been, you know, your hands been all over these people and everything. He said, for your own health, you need to wash your hands. I go wash my hands. So he comes back and he says, you remember me? And I'm looking at this guy and I'm thinking, no, not really. I don't want to insult him and say, no, he said, he said, remember the biker that you met in the middle of your front yard? And I went, yeah, he said, that's me. Wow. He said, something happened when you whisper to me. He said, it's like you became huge. He said, he said, I never, he said, I had to chill in my body. I knew it was fear. And, and he said, several weeks later, I come, I came to faith. Wow. And he became an elder in a church over in Pennsylvania and everything. He became, yeah. So in Kaufman became a great business guy. So what we're going to do is advise most pastors to take MMA. No, that's just one of them free stories. You know, you're trying to bring out of me all my bad stuff. No, that was like, that's a good one. I think that's amazing. You know, and really what it is, it comes back to this is that there are times where where you have to learn when to stand, right? Yeah, I didn't have any weapons. I didn't want them going in my house, had a wife and child in there that I loved and I was about to protect. Yeah. And so, but there's times that we have to stand. Correct. And Ephesians 6 having done all stand. And I think stand sometimes is aggressive and I think sometimes even standing, if you will, loving others is aggressive. I believe the following Jesus Christ is an aggressive way to live. And I mean that in the kindest way, in the sense of where we aggressively love others, we aggressively help others, we aggressively help people get healed. We aggressively cast out the enemy. We go after this thing with reckless abandon. And that's how I want to live my life. And that's how I want to finish strong. Well, Jesus said, you know, the violent take it by force. Yeah. So, I mean, he's talking about being assertive. Yeah. You know, and being aggressive in what you believe, being aggressive, your faith is as to be an aggressive faith. Go after it. Yes. So, if we're going into business as a follower of Christ, we got to go after it. Yes. If we're going if we're running a company, whatever we're doing, go go after it's strong. Yes. And do everything you know to do to build that, to prosper, to protect your family, to help your children grow up strong. Do the stuff you know to do. I mean, I know some guys that don't do. I've talked to men who said, yeah, I don't really do the family alter thing. I don't get my kids together and pray. I said, why not? He said, I don't know what to say. So, dude, just say something. Say something. You know, just get them together. You don't have to know all the stained glass stuff. Just get them together and go, Hey, we're going to pray. It's going to take it's going to take three minutes because that's all I know. Okay. But I'm going to pray a blessing over each one of you as my children. Father, I just thank you in the name of Jesus for my kids. And I bless them now. Everything they're facing. And then just pray for each little thing. Well, I could do that. That's all you got to do. It's all this. But you do that and you become your child's hero and model. Yes. I mean, it's in that right there. It may take courage for a man to do that because he doesn't want to look foolish. But what'll happen in that moment and you're going to have to tell him to turn off. Hey, turn off your tablet, whatever you're watching right now, the music and create the atmosphere in your home of who you want that house to be who you are and just be courageous and go after it. Be aggressive. Yeah. I mean, a family is not a democracy. Come on, somebody. So, you know, a family has a government and has a governmental structure within it. Exactly. And it has delegations of responsibility and delegation of what are our values as a family. You know, what's our mission as a family? What truth? You know, what are our truths? What is it we're willing to stand for as a family? We're going to unpack all that in the third program we do with Dr. John Kelly. Thank you for being with us on Brave Men. It really is a blessing. And it's just, you know, when we talk about modeling, this is a man who's a general in the faith who speaks in the lives of leaders of leaders all over the world and really a blessing to have you on Brave Men. You 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.